Duke Ellington

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.

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

A goal is a dream with a finish line.

Music is what I hear and something that I live by.

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

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

I tried to connect my singing voice to my guitar an’ my guitar to my singing voice. Like the two was talking to one another.

It is people’s hearts that move the age.

May you live to be 100 and may the last voice you hear be mine.

I could see that Bukka was born to be a bluesman, and I wondered if the same was true of me. I worried that I didn’t have his talent – or the talent of someone like Blind Lemon or T-Bone. I felt something beautiful inside Bukka’s soul. Even if I didn’t follow his style, I was moved by his sincerity. He loved telling stories, and used his blues to tell them. His blues was the book of his life. He sang about his rough times and fast time and loving times and angry times. He’d entertain at a party for two hundred people with the same enthusiasm as a party for twenty. Bukka gave it his all. His music had a consistency I admired. Like all the great bluesmen, he said, I am what I am. I wondered if I could be that steady and strong.

Music is the most interesting thing in the world.

As far as playing jazz, no other art form, other than conversation, can give the satisfaction of spontaneous interaction.

I see my body as an instrument, rather than an ornament.

I developed in my head that I’m never any better than my last concert or the last time I played, so it’s like an audition each time. You get nervous just before going onstage. I still have that, but I think it’s more like concern. You’re concerned about the people – like meeting your in-laws for the first time.

The blues comes right back to a person’s feelings, to his daily activities in life. But rich people don’t know nothing about the blues, please believe me.

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 said that playing the blues is like having to be black twice. Stevie Ray Vaughan missed on both counts, but I never noticed.

I think we musicians are emissaries. Every time we go before the public, we’re there to make converts.

I don’t like to hear someone put down Dixieland. Those people who say there’s no music but bop are just stupid; it shows how much they don’t know.

Music is everybody’s possession. It’s only publishers who think that people own it.

It’s all music.