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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
Even
Fantastic
Thing
Jazz
Ellington
Bird
Bebop
Sweet
Recognizable
Challenges
Duke
Humanity
Dukes
Didn
Challenging
Great
Weren
More quotes by Miles Davis
That's the way women do. The frown. They want to give you the attitude to approach them back, by giving you a negative vibe.
Miles Davis
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.
Miles Davis
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
Music is a funny thing when you really come to think about it.
Miles Davis
I gave the album [You're Under Arrest] to Quincy Jones and he loved D Train. We couldn't call it D Train it's called MDI/Something's On Your Mind/MD2. That's on the album.
Miles Davis
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.
Miles Davis
Don't worry about playing a lot of notes. Just find one pretty one.
Miles Davis
Music is the framework around the silence.
Miles Davis
Monk taught me more about music composition than anyone else on 52nd Street.
Miles Davis
I put all those synthesizer sounds behind Decoy and Code M.D. A lot of things we write together. A lot of things are his, but they don't have that thing I want on the bottom. I often tell him, I say, Bobby [Irving], if there's a melody, there's another one somewhere that goes with it.
Miles Davis
The only way a drum machine will get out of beat is for you not to pay your electric bill.
Miles Davis
It's like swimmin' without warmin' up, yuo know what I mean? So [cackles] we use the drum machine, and we take it out.
Miles Davis
When I heard Coleman Hawkins, I learned to play ballads
Miles Davis
If you got up on the bandstand at Minton's and couldn't play, you were not only going to be embarrassed by the people ignoring you or booing you, you might get your ass kicked.
Miles Davis
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.
Miles Davis
Maybe you play a melody twice. You play it once like you like it, and some parts that you don't like you can just switch. An eight-bar motive - you can just take it and put it in the front or back or something like that. It can save you 50 or 60 or 70,000 dollars, a drum machine. That's why everybody uses it.
Miles Davis
If you hit a wrong note, it's the next note that you play that determines if it's good or bad.
Miles Davis
Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself.
Miles Davis
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.
Miles Davis
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!
Miles Davis
