Duke Ellington

The most important thing I look for in a musician is whether he knows how to listen.

I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.

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

Life has two rules: 1. Never quite 2. Always remember 1.

What does music mean to you? What would you do without music?

I’m sure critics have their purpose, and they’re supposed to do what they do, but sometimes they get a little carried away with what they think someone should have done, rather than concerning themselves with what he did.

And ultimately the people who produce my records, they know that they’re here to serve the purpose of me expressing who I am at this period of time and augmenting that or pulling it forward and I love that process.

There’s a sadness to all kinds of music if you want to hear it. There’s also happiness to it if you want to hear it.

They teach you there’s a boundary line to music. But, man, there’s no boundary line to art.

I would sit on the street corners in my hometown of Indianola, Mississippi, and I would play. And, generally, I would start playing gospel songs. People would come by on the street – you live in Time Square, you know how they do it – they would bunch up. And they would always compliment me on gospel tunes, but they would tip me when I played blues.

If I were to call it black music, that would be untrue. I don’t know what that is, unless it would be some African drums or something.

I’ve worked with jazz artists, country artists, classical artists, pop artists. I never wanted there to be categories, because when I was a kid there weren’t.

I’m trying to make music a sensual expression, not and academic experiment.

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

When you listen to a pianist, each notes should have an identity, each note should have a soul of its own.

Don’t threaten me with love, baby. Let’s just go walking in the rain.

Music’s been around a long time, and there’s going to be music long after Ray Charles is dead. I just want to make my mark, leave something musically good behind. If it’s a big record, that’s the frosting on the cake, but music’s the main meal.

Even when you write it, someone’s got to play it. So if you can play it and bypass all the rest of the things, you’re still doing as great as someone that has spent forty years trying to find out how to do that. I’m really pro-human beings, pro-expression of everything.

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

Paint pictures with sound. First, find your white-the deepest, roundest sound you can play on the guitar. Then, find your black-which is the most extreme tonal difference from white you can play. Now, just pick the note where you’ve got white, pick it where you’ve got black, and then find all those colors in between. Get those colors down, and you’ll be able to express almost any emotion on the guitar.?

Jazz music is a style, not compositions; any kind of music may be played in Jazz if one has the knowledge.