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I never thought Jazz was meant to be a museum piece like other dead things once considered artistic.

Miles Davis

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Miles Davis
Age: 65 †
Born: 1926
Born: May 26
Died: 1991
Died: September 28
Actor
Autobiographer
Bandleader
Composer
Conductor
Film Score Composer
Jazz Musician
Musician
Recording Artist
Songwriter
Television Actor
Alton
Illinois
Miles Dewey Davis III
Miles Dewey Davis
III Davis
Things
Considered
Never
Jazz
Like
Piece
Meant
Pieces
Dead
Museum
Thought
Museums
Music
Artistic

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I can't write anything for myself. I can write when I hear like [John] Coltrane play something I used to write chords and stuff for him to play in one bar. I can write for other people, but I don't never write for myself.
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You have to know 400 notes that you can play, then pick the right four.
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Somebody, my daughter or my wife, gave me a music box for Christmas. It plays My Funny Valentine on celeste, you know? So I had Bobby [Irving] just play Jean Pierre with the changes on celeste.
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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.
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They [police] do me like that all the time! What you work for?.
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The only way a drum machine will get out of beat is for you not to pay your electric bill.
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In improvisation, there are no mistakes.
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The thing to judge in any jazz artist is, does the man project and does he have ideas.
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Catch Harry Belafonte. He's got a helluva rhythm section.And so have the Pointer Sisters. And that little guy with Sammy Clayton. He plays the whole show with 40 members.
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I know what I've done for music, but don't call me a legend. Just call me Miles Davis.
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Keith, how does it feel to be a genius?
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Monk taught me more about music composition than anyone else on 52nd Street.
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My ego only needs a good rhythm section
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That's the way you judge a car, man, [good or bad], when you start it up. It's just the same thing. I mean, I drive a Ferrari - not to be cute, but because I dig it. I'd rather drive a ten-year-old Ferrari than one of them new things-they don't go.
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Everybody ought to listen to Benny [Carter]. He's a whole musical education.
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When the band plays fast, you play slow when the band plays slow, you play fast.
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Trane was the perfect saxophonist for Monk's music because of the space that Monk always used. Trane could fill up all that space with all them chords and sounds he was playing then.
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Music is the framework around the silence.
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I couldn't do What's Love Got To Do With It, Tina Turner because it wasn't the right tempo so I scratched it from the record. I wanted to do it about a year ago, but something happened.
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I used to enjoy all the white bands when I was a kid listening to the radio. But the record companies, they take music and label it - like, they say rock. Because the white singers can't sound like James Brown, they call him soul. They've been doing that for years. That's the prejudice crap.
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