Bebop didn't have the humanity of Duke Ellington. It didn't even have that recognizable thing. Bird and Diz were great, fantastic, challenging — but they weren't sweet. — Miles Davis
There are only two things: love, all sorts of love, with pretty girls, and the music of New Orleans or Duke Ellington. Everything else ought to go, because everything else is ugly. — Boris Vian
Esquire, in a July, 1957 issue, has a photograph of me playing the French horn at the Five Spot. — David Amram
There are four qualities essential to a great jazzman. they are taste, courage, individuality, and irreverence. — Stan Getz
Louis Armstrong is jazz. He represents what the music is all about. — Wynton Marsalis
To jazz, or not to jazz, there is no question! — Louis Armstrong
Ragtime was a fanfare for the 20th century. — Russell Lynes
Jazz, like leadership, combines the unpredictability of the future with the gifts of individuals. — Max De Pree
Jazz is the only music in which the same note can be played night after night but differently each time. — Ornette Coleman
It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing. — Duke Ellington
I went through the whole number, you know. The swing era, the boogie woogie era, the bebop era. Thelonious Monk is still one of my favorites. So a lot of these people had their effect on me. — Mose Allison
No baritone player should be afraid of the noise it makes. Harry Carney isn't! — Pepper Adams
Jazz music is to be played sweet, soft, plenty rhythm. — Jelly Roll Morton
Jazz will be the classical music of the future. — Dizzy Gillespie
Elegance is good taste plus a dash of daring. — Carmel Snow
Short Ellington Quotes
I heard Sidney Bechet play a Duke Ellington piece and fell in love with the soprano saxophone. — Steve Lacy
Count Basie was college, but Duke Ellington was graduate school. — Clark Terry
When I got through, Duke Ellington stood up and started the applause. — Ruth Brown
If I were to put on Barbra Streisand and Duke Ellington, one might say the combination isn't good. — Norman Granz
Not to dismiss Gershwin, but Gershwin is the chip; Ellington was the block. — Joni Mitchell
Duke Ellington was famous for hs very original harmonic patterns. — Lawrence Welk
A few years later, my Uncle David took me to the Earle Theatre to hear Duke Ellington. — David Amram
Ellington is a writer and arranger, as well as a musician and leader. He does movie sound tracks. — Norman Granz
Duke Ellington had a song, "What Am I Here For?" - this is what being pro-life is. — Nat Hentoff
I like to think Duke Ellington would probably embrace a fragrance as well. — Bryan Ferry
Ellington Image Quotes
Ellison Quotes
So, what you can do in Microsoft Word is what Bill Gates has decided. What you can do in Oracle Database is what Larry Ellison and his crew have decided. — Ted Nelson
Keith Ellison is the future of the Democratic Party, the future of the progressive movement. — Van Jones
Why I supported Keith Ellison for chairing the DNC because I know Keith. And I know he`s not going to take a lot of stuff. He`s going to be in the halls of Congress arguing. But he is going to go out to the protests and talk to people. — Lawrence O'Donnell
Hillary Clinton does represent the establishment. I represent, I hope, ordinary Americans, and by the way, who are not all that enamored with the establishment, but I am very proud to have people like Keith Ellison and Raul Grijalva in the House, the co-chairmen of the House Progressive Caucus. — Bernie Sanders
My name's Jennifer Ellison and one day I'm going to be famous! — Jennifer Ellison
And [Asimov]'ll sign anything, hardbacks, softbacks, other people's books, scraps of paper. Inevitably someone handed him a blank check on the occasion when I was there, and he signed that without as much as a waver to his smile — except that he signed: 'Harlan Ellison. — Isaac Asimov
If you don't care about science enough to be interested in it on its own, you shouldn't try to write hard science fiction. You can write like Ray Bradbury and Harlan Ellison as much as you want. — Frederik Pohl
No one inspired me to write, but writer Harlan Ellison terrified me into getting published. — Dan Simmons
I will commend the Democrats for one thing. If they name Keith Ellison as the head of the DNC, then I'll commend them for truth in advertising. — Ted Cruz
As chairman of the DNC, [Keith ] Ellison says he would replicate that kind of turnout on a national scale. But we spoke yesterday about some history that could stand in the way. — Keith Ellison
I learned from Ethel Waters, Duke Ellington, Adelaide Hall, the Nicholas Brothers, the whole thing, the whole schmear. [The Cotton Club] was a great place because it hired us, for one thing, at a time when it was really rough [for Black performers]. — Lena Horne
You know, I always when people ask me, like, what is my most favorite song, I quote Duke Ellington, when they would ask him, what's his favorite composition? And I say, I haven't written it yet. Because, you know, there are different songs for different occasions. — Stevie Wonder
I could turn on my radio in the morning when I was getting dressed for school and hear Frank Sinatra and Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman and think this is the music. Now that music is art. Ellington is art. At that time it was just what you heard on the radio. Cole Porter was just a guy who wrote pretty songs and Billie Holliday would sing them. — Woody Allen
Benny Goodman's band was integrated before baseball. Even before it was physically integrated, music was integrated. Everyone listened to Armstrong and Ellington. The 20s was called the Jazz Age. It's part of being American. — Wynton Marsalis
You hear about the Duke Ellingtons, the Jimmie Luncefords, and the Fletcher Hendersons, but people sometimes forget that jazz was not only built in the minds of the great ones, but on the backs of the ordinary ones. — Cab Calloway
Make no mistake, this music is for everyone. Jazz is not an exclusive, elite club. Go ahead, listen to your Snoop Doggy Dog, Pearl Jam, Garth Brooks, but add a little Ellington, Basie and Coltrane to your life as well. — Christian McBride
It's a spirit that was given me and the relationships and meeting all these great people, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong; through Max I met a lot of people too. My first album was with Benny Carter. — Abbey Lincoln
I do very few standards. Hardly any. Other people's tunes that I do are usually obscure tunes, for the most part, although I do a couple of Duke Ellington tunes that are well known. — Mose Allison
The musicians, Duke Ellington, his thing was not about separating himself from the rest of America. Louis Armstrong - go to the forefathers of our music - Jelly Roll Morton - they're not preaching a separatist agenda. They're not taking their music and saying, "This is for me." — Wynton Marsalis
So I'm a young boy in the 1940s growing up, seeing Ralph Bunche on a regular basis, seeing Duke Ellington on a regular basis. We know that these people are famous. They're living in the same community as we live in. They go to the same stores and shops. — Ed Smith
I fell in love with jazz when I was 12 years old from listening to Duke Ellington and hearing a lot of jazz in New York on the radio. — Steve Lacy
Duke Ellington, Art Tatum, and many other great jazz musicians objected to their music being called jazz. While the outside world may want to put a label on it, those who create it think of it just as music, and tend not to classify it. — Dave Brubeck
[I wanted] to play the clarinet well so I could be in Duke Ellington's band, but that's now impossible. — Nat Hentoff
It's a wonderful way to get at who someone is through their own love of music and going right at their subconsciousness if you will. You don't play girl singers for girl singers. You know, there's certain things. You do play Ellington for Bobby McFerrin. — Carol Friedman
So Bach, Beethoven, Duke Ellington, Thelonius Monk, these are all people who would sort of rearrange or take riffs from people. Same thing with rock, if you look at the Rolling Stones doing a cover of Otis Redding or you know if you look at literature James Joyce is pulling fragments of text from other people. — DJ Spooky
My dad was a jazz fan and he used to have lots of old 78s, so I grew up with big jazz bands and the likes of Duke Ellington and Count Basie - although I really liked show tunes from those big musicals as well. I've always kept my ears open, as it were, when it comes to music. It doesn't matter to me what type of music it is. If I like it, I'll listen to it. — Ric Sanders
[Prince] could very well be the Duke Ellington of Rock 'n' Roll. — Miles Davis
I remember the night when I was playing at Birdland, and Duke Ellington walked in wearing that cap of his and with all his elegance. The Duke then came backstage, and I was there with my band. That's the one thing I miss. — Maynard Ferguson
It's like Duke Ellington said, there are only two kinds of music - good and bad. And you can tell when something is good. — Ray Charles
Duke Ellington is my choice for many reasons. Nobody has written so many great pieces of music, which are everlasting, and he has made them available to the world through his orchestrations of his work in a unique way. Lastly, he was himself a fine pianist. He covers the entire musical spectrum with his genius. — Marian McPartland
Duke Ellington's career traces the entire history of jazz. The repertoire associated with him contains the most important elements in the music and provides concrete examples of some of the best ways to present the music in the widest variety of settings-radio, TV, recordings, movies, concert halls, festivals, solo, small ensemble, big band, symphony orchestra, opera, Broadway shows.... You name it, he did it! — Billy Taylor
I listen to tons of hard rock and metal, like Iron Maiden, Motorhead, etc., but I also listen to Beethoven and Mozart, to Discharge and the Bad Brains, and to Charlie Parker and Duke Ellington. So I think there's merit to both the melodic punk and to the hardcore stuff too. — Dave Smalley
You always come back to Duke Ellington - he's kind of like the thread that holds everything together from the big band descending to lots of jazz, actually. — Herbert
I keep reverting (to Duke Ellington), he to me is the greatest ever and my favorite jazz philosopher, as such. — Cannonball Adderley
When I was young, I never bought records because my brother Joseph played saxophone and had a record player. I loved listening to his records: The Dorsey Brothers, Duke Ellington, all the big American jazz bands, and vocalists like Ella Fitzgerald, Ernestine Anderson, and Kitty White, a singer from the US who was a friend of Nina Simone. Nobody in America seems to know about her, but she was quite popular in South Africa. — Miriam Makeba
I especially like Duke Ellington jazz, which is a little more... I lived in New York for a while. I lived in Harlem for a bit, and I just fell in love with the idea of that era of New York, that jazz era, especially jazz in Harlem. — Charlie Day
My teachers are Duke Ellington and nature. — Toru Takemitsu
...he went into the sitting room, put on a Duke Ellington record he had bought after seeing Gene Hackman sitting on the overnight bus in The Conversation to the sound of some fragile piano notes that were the loneliest Harry had ever heard. — Jo Nesbo
At least one day out of the year all musicans should just put their instruments down, and give thanks to Duke Ellington. — Miles Davis
My inspiration comes from the message Duke Ellington gave - you are unique, be yourself, put out that thing that is you, then use your work ethic and produce great music. — Kenny Burrell
In Conclusion
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