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Monk taught me more about music composition than anyone else on 52nd Street.

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
Else
Monk
Music
Composition
Jazz
Street
Musical
Streets
Taught
Anyone

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If you don't know what to play, play nothing.
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It took me twenty years study and practice to work up to what I wanted to play in this performance. How can she expect to listen five minutes and understand it?
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Always look ahead, but never look back.
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All my inspiration comes from Ahmad Jamal.
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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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[Jazz musicians] feel comfortable with their clichés, you know.
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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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Dave [Holland] plays the way he wants to play. And it's usually what's needed. You know, Dave is such a deep thinker. You can't tell him too much, else it might spoil his spirit, you know.
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When kids don't learn about their own heritage in school, they just don't care about school... But you won't see it in the history books unless we get the power to write our own history and tell our story ourselves.
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To keep creating you have to be about change.
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Music is the framework around the silence.
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You can't play anything on a horn that Louis Armstrong hasn't played
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People will go for anything they don't understand if it's got enough hype.
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Japanese people they hear my warmin' up and they start screamin'. They can tell it's me.It's my tone on the trumpet, it sounds like I'm speakin'.
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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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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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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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If you have to ask, you'll never know.
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I'm not messing around with nobody's woman. If I want a woman I go get her - you know what I mean?
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When we edit the music, I always remember, It's my band. Save me a place to play.
Miles Davis