Quote

Americans don't like any form of art, man. All they like to do is make money. They don't like me, Sammy Davis, or anybody else. They don't like nothing. They just like Sammy because he can make 'em a lot of money.

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
Americans
Make
Anybody
Men
Art
Like
Money
Else
Form
Sammy
Davis
America
Ems
Nothing

More quotes by Miles Davis

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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.
Miles Davis
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Everybody ought to listen to Benny [Carter]. He's a whole musical education.
Miles Davis
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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
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You can tell whether a person plays well or not by the way he carries the instrument, whether it means something to him or not.
Miles Davis
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Trane was the perfect saxophonist for Monk's music because of the space that Monk always used. Trane could fill up all that space with all them chords and sounds he was playing then.
Miles Davis
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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.
Miles Davis
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My father's rich, my momma's good looking. Right? And I can play the Blues. I've never suffered and don't intend to suffer.
Miles Davis
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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.
Miles Davis
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They [police] do me like that all the time! What you work for?.
Miles Davis
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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.
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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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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Knowledge is freedom and ignorance is slavery
Miles Davis
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The thing to judge in any jazz artist is, does the man project and does he have ideas.
Miles Davis
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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
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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
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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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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.
Miles Davis
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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.
Miles Davis
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People will go for anything they don't understand if it's got enough hype.
Miles Davis