Duke Ellington

If it sounds good and feels good, then it IS good!

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.

To keep a band together you simply need a gimmick. The gimmick I use is to pay them money.

Playing ‘bop’ is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing.

My attitude is never to be satisfied, never enough, never.

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

The music field was the first to break down racial barriers, because in order to play together, you have to love the people you are playing with, and if you have any racial inhibitions, you wouldn’t be able to do that.

Being so inescapably a part of it, I’ll never know what the listener gets, what the listener feels and that’s too bad.

You don’t know what love is, until you’ve learned the meaning of the blues, until you’ve loved a love you’ve had to lose.

90%, 100% are going there to hear the singing. The story is another thing. Nobody’s interested in the story. Happiness is happiness.

I never wanted to be like other blues singers. I might like hearing them play, but I’ve never wanted to be anyone other than myself. There are a few people that I’ve wished I could play like, but when I tried, it didn’t work.

Just allow your feelings to go with the music and you’ll find yourself carried along by it fairly quickly.

I came from an era when we didn’t use electronic instruments. The bass wasn’t even amplified. The sound was the sound you got.

I gave it my absolute everything I had in that howl at the start of the song. And then B. B. King opened up his mouth and I felt like a girl. We had learned and absorbed, but the more we tried to be like B.B., the less convincing we were.

Music is the greatest communication in the world.

The boppers flat their fifths. We consume ours.

If you got up on the bandstand at Minton’s and couldn’t play, you might get your ass kicked.

I say, ‘Play your own way. Don’t play what the public wants. You play what you want and let the public pick up on what you’re doing – even if it does take them fifteen, twenty years’.

Sometimes I sound like gravel and sometimes I sound like coffee and cream.

Miles told me not to use vibrato because when you get old, you’re going to shake anyway.

If you want to be a good blues singer, people are going to be down on you, so dress like you’re going to the bank to borrow money.