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Create, and be true to yourself, and depend only on your own good taste.

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
Good
Depend
Depends
Taste
Create
Belief
True

More quotes by Duke Ellington

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Jazz today, as always in the past, is a matter of thoughtful creation, not mere unaided instinct.
Duke Ellington
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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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People do not retire. They are retired by others.
Duke Ellington
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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
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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
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Every man prays in his own language.
Duke Ellington
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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
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If you have a great band with a mediocre drummer, you have a mediocre band. If you have a mediocre band with a great drummer, you have a great band!
Duke Ellington
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Everybody in Canada seemed to listen to what they enjoyed, and nobody could tell them what to like, or what was the popular, or what was the In thing. Even today, it is very hard to brainwash a Canadian.
Duke Ellington
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The wise musicians are those who play what they can master.
Duke Ellington
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A goal is a dream with a finish line.
Duke Ellington
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A musical profit outweighs a financial loss.
Duke Ellington
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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
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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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Love is supreme and unconditional like is nice but limited.
Duke Ellington
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What does music mean to you? What would you do without music?
Duke Ellington
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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
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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
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Self-discipline, as a virtue or an acquired asset, can be invaluable to anyone.
Duke Ellington
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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