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My biggest kick in music -playing or writing- is when I have a problem. Without a problem to solve, how much interest do you take in anything?
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
Writing
Biggest
Much
Playing
Interest
Problem
Anything
Music
Kick
Without
Kicks
Take
Solve
More quotes by 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
Music is my mistress and she plays second fiddle to no one.
Duke Ellington
I don't need time. What I need is a deadline!
Duke Ellington
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
A goal is a dream with a finish line.
Duke Ellington
Without a deadline, baby, I wouldn't do nothing.
Duke Ellington
What does music mean to you? What would you do without music?
Duke Ellington
If it sounds good and feels good, then it IS good!
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
Self-discipline, as a virtue or an acquired asset, can be invaluable to anyone.
Duke Ellington
My mother told me I was blessed, and I have always taken her word for it. Being born of - or reincarnated from - royalty is nothing Like being blessed. Royalty is inherited from another human being blessedness comes from God.
Duke Ellington
There are simply two kinds of music, good music and the other kind ... the only yardstick by which the result should be judged is simply that of how it sounds. If it sounds good it's successful if it doesn't it has failed.
Duke Ellington
Every man prays in his own language.
Duke Ellington
Somehow I suspect that if Shakespeare were alive today, he might be a jazz fan himself.
Duke Ellington
Roaming through the jungle of Ohs and Ahs, searching for a more agreeable noise, I live a life of primitivity with the mind of a child and an unquenchable thirst for sharps and flats.
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
The Europeans who went to Africa came back with “modern' art. What is more African than a Picasso?
Duke Ellington
The wise musicians are those who play what they can master.
Duke Ellington
I don’t believe in categories of any kind, and when you speak of problems between blacks and whites in the U.S.A. you are referring to categories again.
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
