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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.

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
Didn
Challenging
Great
Weren
Even
Fantastic
Thing
Jazz
Ellington
Bird
Bebop
Sweet
Recognizable
Challenges
Duke
Humanity
Dukes

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Music is a funny thing when you really come to think about it.
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Music is the framework around the silence.
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Always listen for what you can leave out.
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When the band plays fast, you play slow when the band plays slow, you play fast.
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If you have a tone like mine that is recognizable. No matter what I play, when you hear my tone you can tell it's me.
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You can tell whether a person plays well or not by the way he carries the instrument, whether it means something to him or not.
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We're not going to play the blues anymore. Let the white folks play the blues. They got 'em, so they can keep 'em.
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I never thought that the music called jazz was ever meant to reach just a small group of people, or become a museum thing locked under glass like all the other dead things that were once considered artistic.
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I can hear what I want [people] to play. If you don't hear what you want someone to play, then you can't tell 'em.
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If you hit a wrong note, it's the next note that you play that determines if it's good or bad.
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I've come close to matching the feeling of that night in 1944 in music, when I first heard Diz and Bird, but I've never got there. . . . I'm always looking for it, listening and feeling for it, though, trying to always feel it in and through the music I play everyday.
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In other words, an instrument should be an extension of you it's supposed to sound like you - the way you walk, the way you dress, you know.
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I would never try and play like Harry James, because I don't like his tone - for me. It's just white. You know what I mean? He has what we black trumpet players call a white sound. But it's for white music ... I can tell a white trumpet player, just listening to a record. There'll be something he'll do that'll let me know that he's white.
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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?
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In improvisation, there are no mistakes.
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If I hear a song like Time After Time. I'm sittin' there lookin' at video and Cindy Lauper comes on singin' this song. I said, God damnnnnn!
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You should never be comfortable, man. Being comfortable fouled up a lot of musicians.
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I said to [Lionel] Richie, Man, my wife says you must really respect women because you write such beautiful love songs.
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There are no wrong notes.
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I keep telling Ron Lorman and them in the control room, It's my band! The reason I have a band is because I can't stand for somebody to tell me what to do.
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