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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.

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

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If you understood everything I say, you'd be me!
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Drummers - sometimes they play and they listen. And that little listen takes a speck away from the right tempo.
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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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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 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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In music, silence is more important than sound.
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Monk taught me more about music composition than anyone else on 52nd Street.
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Always look ahead, but never look back.
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Lionel [Richie] said, Yeah, I learned chords and stuff playin' against your albums.
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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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My ego only needs a good rhythm section
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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.
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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 [playing free] doesn't happen, because maybe a guy's wife'll come in, you know, and his ego will catch him. If everybody's completely just straight-without any old ladies over here, a fourth of whisky over there if it's balanced right, it'll come off. It has to be. But when you get egos involved with playing free, you can't do it.
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Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself.
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Everybody ought to listen to Benny [Carter]. He's a whole musical education.
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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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Jazz is the big brother of Revolution. Revolution follows it around.
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