Miles Davis Quotes & Sayings

I always listen to what I can leave out. — Miles Davis

I mean, it makes me sick when I see a white man sitting there smiling at me being entertaining, man. When I know what he's gonna do after he gets through. You know, when you see that thing on their face - like: "Entertain me." You know what I mean? Even the black guy that's trying to be white - even he can have that crap on his face. — Miles Davis

If you love them in the morning with their eyes full of crust; if you love them at night with their hair full of rollers, chances are, you're in love. — Miles Davis

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

I'll play it first and figure out what it's called later. — Miles Davis

Music is an addiction. — Miles Davis

WE WERE ALL UP IN THAT SHIT LIKE A MUTHAFUCKA. IT'S CLEANER THAN A BROKE DICK DOG. — Miles Davis

If you don't know what to play, play nothing. — Miles Davis

The music has gotten thick. Guys give me tunes and they're full of chords. I can't play them ... I think a movement in jazz is beginning away from the conventional string of chords, and a return to emphasis on melodic rather than harmonic variation. There will be fewer chords but infinite possibilities as to what to do with them. — Miles Davis

Do not fear mistakes - there are none. — Miles Davis

That's the way you judge a car, man, [good or bad], when you start it up. It's just the same thing. I mean, I drive a Ferrari - not to be cute, but because I dig it. I'd rather drive a ten-year-old Ferrari than one of them new things-they don't go. — Miles Davis

I'm not messing around with nobody's woman. If I want a woman I go get her - you know what I mean? — Miles Davis

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

I still got my Ferrari. — Miles Davis

What's swinging in words? If a guy makes you pat your foot and if you feel it down your back, you don't have to ask anybody if that's good music or not. You can always feel it. — Miles Davis

You have to practice for a long time before you can learn to sound like yourself — Miles Davis

You have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself. — Miles Davis

The very first thing I remember in my early childhood is a flame, a blue flame jumping off a gas stove somebody lit... I remember being shocked by the whoosh of the blue flame jumping off the burner, the suddenness of it... I saw that flame and felt that hotness of it close to my face. I felt fear, real fear, for the first time in my life. But I remember it also like some kind of adventure, some kind of weird joy, too. I guess that experience took me someplace in my head I hadn't been before... The fear I had was almost like an invitation, a challenge to go forward into something I knew nothing about. That's where I think my personal philosophy of life and my commitment to everything I believe in started... In my mind I have always believed and thought since then that my motion had to be forward, away from the heat of that flame. — Miles Davis

Birth of the Cool' became a collector's item, I think, out of a reaction to Bird and Dizzy's music. Bird and Diz played this hip, real fast thing, and if you weren't a fast listener, you couldn't catch the humor or the feeling in their music. Their musical sound wasn't sweet, and it didn't have harmonic lines that you could easily hum out on the street with your girlfriend trying to get over with a kiss. — Miles Davis

In music, silence is more important than sound. — Miles Davis

To keep creating you have to be about change. — Miles Davis

At least one day out of the year all musicans should just put their instruments down, and give thanks to Duke Ellington. — Miles Davis

I used to enjoy all the white bands when I was a kid listening to the radio. But the record companies, they take music and label it - like, they say "rock". Because the white singers can't sound like James Brown, they call him "soul". They've been doing that for years. That's the prejudice crap. — Miles Davis

You have to know 400 notes that you can play, then pick the right four. — Miles Davis

I think every Negro over fifty should get a medal for putting up with all that crap. — Miles Davis

You can't eat a winner's plaque. — Miles Davis

I don't care if a dude is purple with green breath as long as he can swing. — Miles Davis

Look, man, all I am is a trumpet player. — Miles Davis

Monk was a gentle person, gentle and beautiful, but he was strong as an ox. And if I had ever said something about punching Monk out in front of his face - and I never did - then somebody should have just come and got me and taken me to the madhouse, because Monk could have just picked my little ass up and thrown me through a wall. — Miles Davis

I don't hold it against Dizzy [Gillespie], you know, but if a guy wants to play a certain way, you work towards that. If he stops - he's full of crap, you know. I mean, I wouldn't do it, for no money, or for no place in the white man's world. Not just to make money, because then you don't have anything. You don't have as much money as whoever you're trying to ape; that's making money by being commercial. Then you don't have anything to give the world; so you're not important. You might as well be dead. — Miles Davis

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. — Miles Davis

It's always been a gift with me, hearing music the way I do. I don't know where it comes from, it's just there and I don't question it. — Miles Davis

Coltrane, you cant play everything at once! — Miles Davis

Always look ahead, but never look back. — Miles Davis

The thing to judge in any jazz artist is, does the man project and does he have ideas. — Miles Davis

Don't play what's there; play what's not there. — Miles Davis

That was my gift ... having the ability to put certain guys together that would create a chemistry and then letting them go; letting them play what they knew, and above it. — Miles Davis

A lot of people ask me where music is going today. I think it's going in short phrases. If you listen, anybody with an ear can hear that. Music is always changing. It changes because of the times and the technology that's available, the material that things are made of, like plastic cars instead of steel. So when you hear an accident today it sounds different, not all the metal colliding like it was in the forties and fifties. Musicians pick up sounds and incorporate that into their playing, so the music that they make will be different. — 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

I'm a fiend when it comes to good pastry, and the French make the best as far as I'm concerned. — Miles Davis

I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am one thing, a musician. — Miles Davis

The way you change and help music is by tryin' to invent new ways to play — Miles Davis

I'm out there doing the best that I can, My lip is cut and I'm still playing. — Miles Davis

[Prince] could very well be the Duke Ellington of Rock 'n' Roll. — Miles Davis

Food makes my mind sluggish. — Miles Davis

All my inspiration comes from Ahmad Jamal. — Miles Davis

It takes a long time to sound like yourself. — Miles Davis

It's not the note you play that's the wrong note - it's the note you play afterwards that makes it right or wrong. — Miles Davis

If you're trying to be hip, be hip. — Miles Davis

If you hit a wrong note, it's the next note that you play that determines if it's good or bad. — Miles Davis

If you understood everything I say, you'd be me! — Miles Davis

Bebop didn't have the humanity of Duke Ellington. It didn't have that recognizable thing. Bird and Diz were great, fantastic, challenging
but that weren't sweet. — 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

Don't be afraid of mistakes - There are none. — Miles Davis

Always listen for what you can leave out. — Miles Davis

I don't pay no attention to what critics say about me, the good or the bad. The toughest critic I got is myself ... and I'm too vain to play anything I think is bad. — Miles Davis

As long as I've been playing, they never say I done anything. They always say that some white guy did it. — Miles Davis

Some day I'm gonna call me up on the phone, so when I answer, I can tell myself to shut up. — Miles Davis

You can't play anything on a horn that Louis Armstrong hasn't played — Miles Davis

It takes you years to learn how to play like yourself. — Miles Davis

It's not about standing still and becoming safe. If anybody wants to keep creating they have to be about change. — Miles Davis

Naw, I wasn't going to sell my principles for them. I wanted to be accepted as a good musician and that didn't call for no grinning, but just being able to play the horn good. And that's what I did then and now. Critics can take that or leave it. — Miles Davis

I hate how white people always try to take credit for something after they discover it. Like it wasn't happening before they found out about it
which most times is always late, and they didn't have nothing to do with it happening. — Miles Davis

I'll play it first and tell you what it is later. — Miles Davis

Knowledge is freedom and ignorance is slavery — Miles Davis

In Europe, they like everything you do. The mistakes and everything. That's a little bit too much. — Miles Davis

People will go for anything they don't understand if it's got enough hype. They want to be hip, want always to be in on the new thing so they don't look unhip. White people are especially like that, particularly when a black person is doing something they don't understand ... That's what I thought was happening when Ornette hit town. — Miles Davis

Good music is good no matter what kind of music it is. — Miles Davis

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

Audiences - they like colour, you know. I can go out there wearing a red suit, man, and they'll say I'm out of sight ... I think they should be educated; you should always drop something on an audience ... When you get in front of an audience, you should try to give 'em something. After all, they're there looking at you like this. You can't go out and give 'em nothing. — Miles Davis

I'm always thinking about creating. My future starts when I wake up in the morning and see the light. — Miles Davis

My ego only needs a good rhythm section — Miles Davis

It's not the notes you play, it's the notes you don't play. — Miles Davis

When I got into music I went all the way into music; I didn't have no time after that for nothing else. — 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

The only reason to write a new song is because you're tired of the old ones. — Miles Davis

For me, music and life are all about style. — Miles Davis

If you're not nervous then you're not paying attention. — Miles Davis

I really liked Wynton when I first met him. He's still a nice young man, only confused. — Miles Davis

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. — Miles Davis

See, music is about style. — Miles Davis

Keith, how does it feel to be a genius? — Miles Davis

But you've got to have style in whatever you do -- writing, music, painting, fashion, boxing, anything. — 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

First you imitate, then you innovate. — 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

White folks always think that you have to have a label on everything - you know what I mean? — 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

You can't compete with Sweets' sound and time feel. It's impossible. — Miles Davis

We don't play to be seen. I'm addicted to music, not audiences. — Miles Davis

Monk taught me more about music composition than anyone else on 52nd Street. — Miles Davis

Play what you know and then play above that — Miles Davis

When you're creating your own shit, man, even the sky ain't the limit. — Miles Davis

Tom Jones is funny to me, man. I mean, he really tries to ape Ray Charles and Sammy Davis, you know. He's nice-looking; he looks good doing it. I mean, if I was him, I'd do the same thing. If I was only thinking about making money. — Miles Davis

Jazz is the big brother of Revolution. Revolution follows it around. — Miles Davis

See, if you put a musician in a place where he has to do something different from what he does all the time, then he can do that - but he's got to think differently in order to do it. He's got to play above what he knows - far above it. I've always told the musicians in my band to play what they know and then play above that. Because then anything can happen, and that's where great art and music happens. — 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

I don't like to hear someone put down dixieland. Those people who say there's no music but bop are just stupid; it shows how much they don't know. — Miles Davis

Jazz is like blues with a shot of heroin! — Miles Davis