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I've never had a relationship with a record executive. I always went to the record company by someone that liked my playing. Then they would get fired, and I'd be left with the record company. And then - because they got fired - the record company wouldn't do anything for me.

Ornette Coleman

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Ornette Coleman
Age: 85 †
Born: 1930
Born: March 19
Died: 2015
Died: June 11
Composer
Jazz Musician
Recording Artist
Saxophonist
Trumpeter
Fort Worth
Texas
Randolph Denard Ornette Coleman
Never
Relationship
Would
Playing
Fired
Went
Executive
Company
Executives
Left
Liked
Someone
Record
Anything
Wouldn
Always
Records

More quotes by Ornette Coleman

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That's what I was trying to say when we were talking about sound. I think that every person, whether they play music or don't play music, has a sound - their own sound, that thing that you're talking about.
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Jerry Garcia was one of the original American icons. He played naturally and beautifully.
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That's why I haven't been so anxious. But now, lots of people write and say, 'I want to find out what you're doing.' So I know that this book will enlighten them.
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It seems to me that in the western world, culture has something to do with appearance. A person that's out creating good stuff has got to appreciate someone when they take the time to have an appearance that goes with what they're doing.
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You don't have to worry about being a number one, number two, or number three. Numbers don't have anything to do with placement. Numbers only have something to do with repetition.
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Jazz is the only music in which the same note can be played night after night but differently each time.
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The idea is more important than the style you're playing in.
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Music has many uses and I think the most perfected use that music has is one of a healing quality.
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If you decide you want to be treated good, and you treat someone else good, or you want to learn something, it's information. It's getting the right, good information.
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I'm having this conversation with you now. I'm talking, but I'm thinking, feeling, smelling, and moving. Yet I'm concentrating on what you're saying. So that means there's more things going on in the body than just the present thing that the person's got you doing.
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We in the Western world suffer from too many categories and classes we've forgotten that we all still have diapers on. We've separated music from life.
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After I left Texas and went to California, I had a hard time getting anyone to play anything that I was writing, so I had to end up playing them myself. And that's how I ended up just being a saxophone player.
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For me, being an innovator doesn't mean being more intelligent, more rich, it's not a word, it's an action.
Ornette Coleman
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All the things that human beings suffer from are how their environment treats them, and how the elements of their planet affects their mind and body--like radiation, cancer, and all.
Ornette Coleman
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Sound has no parents.
Ornette Coleman
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I have often read critical pieces where the critic said that what the composer was trying to do didn't come off. I have wondered what the critic meant if he didn't know what the composer was trying to do.
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When I have them working together, it's like a beautiful kaleidoscope.
Ornette Coleman
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You've got to realize. In the western world, regardless of what color you are, what title the music is, it's all played by the same notes.
Ornette Coleman
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Harmelody allows everybody to be an individual who does not have to imitate anybody else.
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I would like to play for audiences who are not using my music to stimulate their sex organs.
Ornette Coleman