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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
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Songwriter
Television Actor
Alton
Illinois
Miles Dewey Davis III
Miles Dewey Davis
III Davis
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More quotes by Miles Davis
Don't worry about playing a lot of notes. Just find one pretty one.
Miles Davis
You can't play anything on a horn that Louis Armstrong hasn't played
Miles Davis
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
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.
Miles Davis
To keep creating you have to be about change.
Miles Davis
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
All my inspiration comes from Ahmad Jamal.
Miles Davis
Music is a funny thing when you really come to think about it.
Miles Davis
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
Always look ahead, but never look back.
Miles Davis
In high school I was best in music class on the trumpet, but the prizes went to the boys with blue eyes. I made up my mind to outdo anybody white on my horn.
Miles Davis
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
Japanese people they hear my warmin' up and they start screamin'. They can tell it's me.It's my tone on the trumpet, it sounds like I'm speakin'.
Miles Davis
Dave [Holland] plays the way he wants to play. And it's usually what's needed. You know, Dave is such a deep thinker. You can't tell him too much, else it might spoil his spirit, you know.
Miles Davis
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
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
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.
Miles Davis
When the band plays fast, you play slow when the band plays slow, you play fast.
Miles Davis
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
I've gotten hernias from drummers when they drop tempo.
Miles Davis