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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.

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
Bought
Liked
Playing
Started
Heard
Trumpet
Everybody
Trumpets
Father
Studied
Things
Picked

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I've gotten hernias from drummers when they drop tempo.
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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.
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Jazz musicians are so comfortable. The reason they can't do what we do is because they're so comfortable doin' what they do.
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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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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.
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If you have to ask, you'll never know.
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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.
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You ever hear Buddy Miles play the drums? You know, he doesn't vary the tempo at all.
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Some of [drummers] drop time because they want to hear what you're doin'.
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Some musicians play with their heart, you know what I mean? I don't know what to tell a person that can't - if you can't tell a person what you're talkin' about when they're rushin' or droppin' the tempo, you get somebody else.
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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.
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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.
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I couldn't do What's Love Got To Do With It, Tina Turner because it wasn't the right tempo so I scratched it from the record. I wanted to do it about a year ago, but something happened.
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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.
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I put all those synthesizer sounds behind Decoy and Code M.D. A lot of things we write together. A lot of things are his, but they don't have that thing I want on the bottom. I often tell him, I say, Bobby [Irving], if there's a melody, there's another one somewhere that goes with it.
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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.
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If you don't know what to play, play nothing.
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When I heard Coleman Hawkins, I learned to play ballads
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John Lee Hooker is the funkiest man alive
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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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