Louis Armstrong

You blows who you is.

Man, all music is folk music. You ain’t never heard no horse sing a song, have you?

There are some people that if they don’t know, you can’t tell them.

What we play is life.

Hot can be cool and cool can be hot and each can be both. But hot or cool man, Jazz is Jazz.

I don’t need words. It’s all in the phrasing.

For me, there wasn’t a line between working and getting paid or simply playing for fun.

Jazz musicians have some outlaw in them somewhere.

I don’t care much about music. What I like is sounds.

I’ve never recorded anything I didn’t like.

Just because I’m playing jazz I don’t forget about me. I play or write me the way I feel through jazz, or whatever. Music is, or was, a language of the emotions.

Jazz is a living music; since its beginning has expressed the feelings, dreams and hopes of the people.

If you understood everything I say, you’d be me!

All a musician can do is to get closer to the source.

Risk is at the heart of Jazz. Every note we play is a risk.

A Jazz Diet will make you hipper, thinner, taller, smarter, richer, happier and more attractive to members of both sexes.

I don’t care if a dude is purple with green breath as long as he can swing.

One can be very happy without demanding that others agree with them.

Find the best teachers, listen to the finest playing and try to emulate that. Be true to the music.

I worked hard learning harmony and theory when I was growing up in Chicago in the 1920s.

You only go around once and this ain’t no rehearsal.