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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.

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
Anymore
Jazz
White
Keep
Play
Going
Ems
Blues
Folks

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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!
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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.
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I can tell. I'm gifted with that, you know. When I hear that the tempo is slightly off, it's hard for me.
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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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If you had to call it unison, it ain't unison. It ain't the same as somebody else. If you can hear that it's unison, and you have to name it something other than unison, it ain't unison, you know what I mean? It's two guys playin', but one guy is playin' slightly out of tune, one is playin' slightly off meter.
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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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You can't play anything on a horn that Louis Armstrong hasn't played
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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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When you work with great musicians, they are always a part of you . . . their spirits are walking around in me, so they're still here and passing it on to others.
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I've gotten hernias from drummers when they drop tempo.
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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.
Miles Davis
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I know what I've done for music, but don't call me a legend. Just call me Miles Davis.
Miles Davis
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There are no wrong notes.
Miles Davis
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As long as I've been playing, they never say I done anything. They always say that some white guy did it.
Miles Davis
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A painting is music you can see and music is a painting you can hear.
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Knowledge is freedom and ignorance is slavery
Miles Davis
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Always look ahead, but never look back.
Miles Davis
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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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When I heard Coleman Hawkins, I learned to play ballads
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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?
Miles Davis