Quote

You can't play anything on a horn that Louis Armstrong hasn't played

Miles Davis

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Anything
Music
Play
Horn
Armstrong
Louis
Horns
Hasn
Played

More quotes by Miles Davis

Image
Jazz is like blues with a shot of heroin!
Miles Davis
Image
Tom Jones is funny to me, man. I mean, he really tries to ape Ray Charles and Sammy Davis, you know. He's nice-looking he looks good doing it. I mean, if I was him, I'd do the same thing. If I was only thinking about making money.
Miles Davis
Image
Jazz is the big brother of Revolution. Revolution follows it around.
Miles Davis
Image
My ego only needs a good rhythm section
Miles Davis
Image
Anybody can play. The note is only 20 percent. The attitude of the motherfucker who plays it is 80 percent.
Miles Davis
Image
Monk taught me more about music composition than anyone else on 52nd Street.
Miles Davis
Image
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
Image
I usually write from the rhythm section...If a drummer got a funky beat on some things - like a half-shuffle or a shuffle or a backbeat that's even - I can write something.
Miles Davis
Image
Lionel [Richie] said, Yeah, I learned chords and stuff playin' against your albums.
Miles Davis
Image
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
Image
I really liked Wynton when I first met him. He's still a nice young man, only confused.
Miles Davis
Image
You have to know 400 notes that you can play, then pick the right four.
Miles Davis
Image
I never thought Jazz was meant to be a museum piece like other dead things once considered artistic.
Miles Davis
Image
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
Image
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.
Miles Davis
Image
Music is the framework around the silence.
Miles Davis
Image
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.
Miles Davis
Image
To keep creating you have to be about change.
Miles Davis
Image
There are no wrong notes.
Miles Davis
Image
I don't wanna talk about Teo [Macero]. He's a helluva musician, a brilliant musician, but he's just not for me, that's all. I can elaborate on it, but I don't want to do that.
Miles Davis