Duke Ellington

By and large Jazz has always been like the kind of a man you wouldn’t want your daughter to associate with.

I never had much interest in the piano until I realized that every time I played, a girl would appear on the piano bench to my left and another to my right.

It’s like an act of murder; you play with intent to commit something.

Music is my mistress and she plays second fiddle to no one.

It’s all music.

Roaming through the jungle of ‘oohs’ and ‘ahs’, searching for a more agreeable noise, I live a life of primitivity with the mind of a child and an unquenchable thirst for sharps and flats.

When there was vinyl, I just loved opening a record and smelling that wonderful smell.

Know the business; you need to know the business side of things.

Critics don’t buy records. They get ’em free.

I kind of hate the fact that people are always trying to put you into a category. I hate walls, and I hate boundaries. I don’t like that. I listen to everything.

Nothing is so well-prepared as a great spontaneous performance.

I don’t know anything about music. In my line you don’t have to.

You don’t chose your inspirations, they chose you.

Jazz was not only built in the minds of the great ones, but on the backs of the ordinary ones.

Jazz is known all over the world as an American musical art form and that’s it. No America, no jazz. I’ve seen people try to connect it to other countries, for instance to Africa, but it doesn’t have a damn thing to do with Africa.

I’ve noticed that the more adventurous and in that mode that I am, it seems that the more the audience really likes it.

I could write six songs in one day with everything that’s going on.

Composing makes me feel like I’ve finally gotten all the way up the ladder as a musician.

Any particular style of playing which represents an authentic way of musical feeling is genuine expression.

People now have been conditioned to believe they should only buy one song at a time, that nobody can make an entire record that would merit you paying, you know, $7, $8, $10 when CDs in the ’90s were $18, $19 and people bought millions and millions and millions of them.

Don’t play what’s there, play what’s not there.