Quote

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

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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
Things
Dead
Glasses
Never
Called
Artistic
Like
Small
Considered
People
Thought
Jazz
Become
Meant
Museum
Music
Group
Museums
Ever
Reach
Locked
Thing
Groups
Glass

More quotes by Miles Davis

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The only reason to write a new song is because you're tired of the old ones.
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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 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.
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There are no wrong notes.
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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.
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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 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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I really liked Wynton when I first met him. He's still a nice young man, only confused.
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You have to know 400 notes that you can play, then pick the right four.
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He sounded to me like he's supposed to be the savior of jazz. Sometimes people speak as though someone asked them a question. Well, no one asked him a question.
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[Jazz musicians] feel comfortable with their clichés, you know.
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Do not fear mistakes. There are none.
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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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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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John Lee Hooker is the funkiest man alive
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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.
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In respect for drummers, see, I love drummers.
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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.
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Monk taught me more about music composition than anyone else on 52nd Street.
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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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