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If you don't know what to play, play nothing.

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
Chess
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More quotes by Miles Davis

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People will go for anything they don't understand if it's got enough hype.
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If you understood everything I say, you'd be me!
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In music, silence is more important than sound.
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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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Drummers - sometimes they play and they listen. And that little listen takes a speck away from the right tempo.
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Jazz is the big brother of Revolution. Revolution follows it around.
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What's swinging in words? If a guy makes you pat your foot and if you feel it down your back, you don't have to ask anybody if that's good music or not. You can always feel it.
Miles Davis
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The reason [drummers] call things unison, and they sound unison, is because you actually play two different tempos . . . like you're a little sharp, or a little flat it's so slight that they call it unison, but it's not unison.
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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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You want to know how I started playing trumpet? My father bought me one, and I studied the trumpet. And everybody I heard that I liked, I picked up things from.
Miles Davis
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Always listen for what you can leave out.
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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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I began to realize that some of the things Ornette Coleman had said about things being played three or fours ways, independently of each other, were true because Bach had also composed that way.
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John Lee Hooker is the funkiest man alive
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When we edit the music, I always remember, It's my band. Save me a place to play.
Miles Davis
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Sometimes, if you ask people to go downstairs and get me this or that, they'll say, It's rainin or It might rain, or There's some bumpy roads on the road, or bla-bla-bla. They give you all those excuses, so when they do something which is easy, you're supposed to say, Damn, you did that?
Miles Davis
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In high school I was best in music class on the trumpet, but the prizes went to the boys with blue eyes. I made up my mind to outdo anybody white on my horn.
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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.
Miles Davis
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Americans don't like any form of art, man. All they like to do is make money. They don't like me, Sammy Davis, or anybody else. They don't like nothing. They just like Sammy because he can make 'em a lot of money.
Miles Davis
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The only reason to write a new song is because you're tired of the old ones.
Miles Davis