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I like any and all of my associations with music: writing, playing, and listening. We write and play from our perspective, and the audience listens from its perspective. If and when we agree, I am lucky.
Duke Ellington
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Duke Ellington
Age: 75 †
Born: 1899
Born: April 29
Died: 1974
Died: May 24
Autobiographer
Bandleader
Composer
Conductor
Film Score Composer
Jazz Arranger
Jazz Musician
Lyricist
Music Arranger
Musician
Pianist
Washington
District of Columbia
Edward Kennedy Duke Ellington
Edward Kennedy Ellington
Edward K. Ellington
Write
Listens
Music
Association
Play
Agree
Writing
Perspective
Like
Lucky
Listening
Playing
Audience
Associations
More quotes by Duke Ellington
The common root, of course, comes out of Africa. That's the pulse.The African pulse. It's all the way back from . . . the old slave chants and up through the blues, the jazz, and up through rock. And it's all got the African pulse.
Duke Ellington
The Europeans who went to Africa came back with “modern' art. What is more African than a Picasso?
Duke Ellington
If anybody was Mr. Jazz it was Louis Armstrong. He was the epitome of jazz and always will be. He is what I call an American standard, an American original.
Duke Ellington
Dancing is very important to people who play music with a beat. I think that people who don't dance, or who never did dance, don't really understand the beat... I know musicians who don't and never did dance, and they have difficulty communicating.
Duke Ellington
Jazz today, as always in the past, is a matter of thoughtful creation, not mere unaided instinct.
Duke Ellington
What does music mean to you? What would you do without music?
Duke Ellington
Self-discipline, as a virtue or an acquired asset, can be invaluable to anyone.
Duke Ellington
The wise musicians are those who play what they can master.
Duke Ellington
On becoming more acquainted with the word of the Bible, I began to understand so much more of what I had been taught, and of what I had learned about life and about the people in mine.
Duke Ellington
Without a deadline, baby, I wouldn't do nothing.
Duke Ellington
Simplicity is a most complex form
Duke Ellington
Create, and be true to yourself, and depend only on your own good taste.
Duke Ellington
The word [jazz] never lost its association with those New Orleans bordellos. In the 1920s I used to try to convince Fletcher Henderson that we ought to call what we were doing 'Negro music'. But it's too late for that now.
Duke Ellington
People do not retire. They are retired by others.
Duke Ellington
Billy Strayhorn was my right arm, my left arm, all the eyes in the back of my head, my brainwaves in his head, and his in mine.
Duke Ellington
There are two kinds of worries - those you can do something about and those you can't. Don't spend any time on the latter.
Duke Ellington
Music is my mistress and she plays second fiddle to no one.
Duke Ellington
Problems are chances for us to do our best.
Duke Ellington
Somehow I suspect that if Shakespeare were alive today, he might be a jazz fan himself.
Duke Ellington
The problem of expressing the contributions that Benny Carter has made to popular music is so tremendous it completely fazes me, so extraordinary a musician is he.
Duke Ellington
