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When the band plays fast, you play slow when the band plays slow, you play fast.

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
Guitar
Band
Play
Plays
Slow
Fast

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Anybody can play. The note is only 20 percent. The attitude of the motherfucker who plays it is 80 percent.
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If you have to ask, you'll never know.
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Food makes my mind sluggish.
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Bebop didn't have the humanity of Duke Ellington. It didn't even have that recognizable thing. Bird and Diz were great, fantastic, challenging — but they weren't sweet.
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Everybody ought to listen to Benny [Carter]. He's a whole musical education.
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In improvisation, there are no mistakes.
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I said to [Lionel] Richie, Man, my wife says you must really respect women because you write such beautiful love songs.
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You want to know how I started playing trumpet? My father bought me one, and I studied the trumpet. And everybody I heard that I liked, I picked up things from.
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I've gotten hernias from drummers when they drop tempo.
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[Jazz musicians] feel comfortable with their clichés, you know.
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It's like swimmin' without warmin' up, yuo know what I mean? So [cackles] we use the drum machine, and we take it out.
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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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Do not fear mistakes. There are none.
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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.
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Coltrane, you cant play everything at once!
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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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Some of [drummers] drop time because they want to hear what you're doin'.
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In respect for drummers, see, I love drummers.
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Music is a funny thing when you really come to think about it.
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