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If you have to ask, you'll never know.
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
Asks
Never
More quotes by Miles Davis
I can tell. I'm gifted with that, you know. When I hear that the tempo is slightly off, it's hard for me.
Miles Davis
Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself.
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
Keith, how does it feel to be a genius?
Miles Davis
When you work with great musicians, they are always a part of you . . . their spirits are walking around in me, so they're still here and passing it on to others.
Miles Davis
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
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
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
He sounded to me like he's supposed to be the savior of jazz. Sometimes people speak as though someone asked them a question. Well, no one asked him a question.
Miles Davis
People will go for anything they don't understand if it's got enough hype.
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
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
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
A painting is music you can see and music is a painting you can hear.
Miles Davis
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?
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 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
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
I can't write anything for myself. I can write when I hear like [John] Coltrane play something I used to write chords and stuff for him to play in one bar. I can write for other people, but I don't never write for myself.
Miles Davis
If you had to call it unison, it ain't unison. It ain't the same as somebody else. If you can hear that it's unison, and you have to name it something other than unison, it ain't unison, you know what I mean? It's two guys playin', but one guy is playin' slightly out of tune, one is playin' slightly off meter.
Miles Davis
