Quote

Simplicity is a most complex form

Duke Ellington

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Complexes
Complex
Simplicity
Form

More quotes by Duke Ellington

Image
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
Image
What does music mean to you? What would you do without music?
Duke Ellington
Image
Music is my mistress and she plays second fiddle to no one.
Duke Ellington
Image
I don't need time. What I need is a deadline!
Duke Ellington
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
The Europeans who went to Africa came back with “modern' art. What is more African than a Picasso?
Duke Ellington
Image
If it sounds good and feels good, then it IS good!
Duke Ellington
Image
Problems are chances for us to do our best.
Duke Ellington
Image
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
Image
Love is indescribable and unconditional. I could tell you a thousand things that it is not, but not one that it is. Either you have it or you haven't there's no proof of it.
Duke Ellington
Image
Without a deadline, baby, I wouldn't do nothing.
Duke Ellington
Image
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
Image
Self-discipline, as a virtue or an acquired asset, can be invaluable to anyone.
Duke Ellington
Image
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
Image
Love is supreme and unconditional like is nice but limited.
Duke Ellington
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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