Quote

Everybody ought to listen to Benny [Carter]. He's a whole musical education.

Miles Davis

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Everybody
Whole
Benny
Carter
Musical
Listen
Ought
Education

More quotes by Miles Davis

Image
I really liked Wynton when I first met him. He's still a nice young man, only confused.
Miles Davis
Image
I don't wanna talk about Teo [Macero]. He's a helluva musician, a brilliant musician, but he's just not for me, that's all. I can elaborate on it, but I don't want to do that.
Miles Davis
Image
When kids don't learn about their own heritage in school, they just don't care about school... But you won't see it in the history books unless we get the power to write our own history and tell our story ourselves.
Miles Davis
Image
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
Image
You have to know 400 notes that you can play, then pick the right four.
Miles Davis
Image
When I heard Coleman Hawkins, I learned to play ballads
Miles Davis
Image
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.
Miles Davis
Image
If you don't know what to play, play nothing.
Miles Davis
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Drummers - sometimes they play and they listen. And that little listen takes a speck away from the right tempo.
Miles Davis
Image
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
Image
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.
Miles Davis
Image
My ego only needs a good rhythm section
Miles Davis
Image
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
Image
I keep telling Ron Lorman and them in the control room, It's my band! The reason I have a band is because I can't stand for somebody to tell me what to do.
Miles Davis
Image
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
Image
In respect for drummers, see, I love drummers.
Miles Davis
Image
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.
Miles Davis
Image
You can't play anything on a horn that Louis Armstrong hasn't played
Miles Davis