Ellington Music Quotes & Sayings

As Duke Ellington once said, "There are simply two kinds of music, good music and the other kind." In that sense, jazz and classical music are fundamentally the same. The pure joy one experiences listening to "good" music transcends questions of genre. — Haruki Murakami

It's like Duke Ellington said, there are only two kinds of music - good and bad. And you can tell when something is good. — Ray Charles

The thing in jazz that will get Bix Beiderbecke out of his bed at two o'clock in the morning, pick that cornet up and practice into the pillow for another two or three hours, or that would make Louis Armstrong travel around the world for fifty plus years non stop, just get up out of his sick bed, crawl up on the bandstand and play, the thing that would make Duke Ellington, the thing that would make Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Mary Lou Williams, the thing that would make all of these people give their lives for this, and they did give their lives, is that it gives us a glimpse into what America is going to be when it becomes itself. And this music tells you that it will become itself. And when you get a taste of that, there's just nothing else you're going to taste that's as sweet. — Wynton Marsalis

Music, of course, is what I hear and something that I more or less live by. It's not an occupation or profession, it's a compulsion. — Duke Ellington

Love is indescribable and unconditional. I could tell you a thousand things that it is not, but not one that it is. Either you have it or you haven't; there's no proof of it. — Duke Ellington

If it sounds good and feels good, then it IS good! — Duke Ellington

I was always moved by all of the music. As a young man, Duke Ellington and Lionel Hampton, Count Basie and all these great musicians would come through our town of Memphis. There wasn't adequate hotels, so these musicians - the lady who ran the theater knew my mother, who had a large house, and many of them would stay with us. So that was another great blessing, so I'm always around these great geniuses, and to realize their humanity is such a touching thing. — Charles Lloyd

A goal is a dream with a finish line. — Duke Ellington

Roaming through the jungle of "Ohs" and "Ahs" searching for a more agreeable noise, I live a life of primitivity with the mind of a child and an unquenchable thirst for sharps and flats. — Duke Ellington

There is nothing to keeping a band together. You simply have to have a gimmick, and the gimmick I use is to pay them money! — Duke Ellington

You have to stop listening in categories. The music is either good or it's bad. — Duke Ellington

There are only two things: love, all sorts of love, with pretty girls, and the music of New Orleans or Duke Ellington. Everything else ought to go, because everything else is ugly. — Boris Vian

New music? Hell, there's been no new music since Stravinsky. — Duke Ellington

The problem of expressing the contributions that Benny Carter has made to popular music is so tremendous it completely fazes me, so extraordinary a musician is he. — Duke Ellington

I like any and all of my associations with music -writing, playing, and listening. We write and play from our perspective, and the audience listens from its perspective. If and when we agree, I am lucky. — Duke Ellington

There is no art without intention. — Duke Ellington

Critics get a little carried away with what someone should have done, rather than what he did. — Duke Ellington

In music, as you develop a theme or musical idea, there are many points at which directions must be decided, and at any time I was in the throes of debate with myself, harmonically or melodically, I would turn to Billy Strayhorn. We would talk, and then the whole world would come into focus. The steady hand of his good judgment pointed to the clear way that was fitting for us. He was not, as he was often referred to by many, my alter ego. Billy Strayhorn was my right arm, my left arm, all the eyes in the back of my head, my brainwaves in his head, and his in mine. — Duke Ellington

Do you think Duke Ellington didn't listen to Debussy? Louis Armstrong loved opera, did you know that? Name me a jazz pianist who wasn't influenced by European music! — Dave Brubeck

I could turn on my radio in the morning when I was getting dressed for school and hear Frank Sinatra and Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman and think this is the music. Now that music is art. Ellington is art. At that time it was just what you heard on the radio. Cole Porter was just a guy who wrote pretty songs and Billie Holliday would sing them. — Woody Allen

It's a wonderful way to get at who someone is through their own love of music and going right at their subconsciousness if you will. You don't play girl singers for girl singers. You know, there's certain things. You do play Ellington for Bobby McFerrin. — Carol Friedman

The Metropole Orchestra is like Count Basie or Duke Ellington with strings ... it's strings that swing. Strings that swing like Dizzy Gillespie ... keep swinging, baby. And when you have all of that special excellence of the Metropole Orchestra, then your music just flies - it soars in a way that's really magical. — Al Jarreau

I never had much interest in the piano until I realized that every time I played, a girl would appear on the piano bench to my left and another to my right. — Duke Ellington

Benny Goodman's band was integrated before baseball. Even before it was physically integrated, music was integrated. Everyone listened to Armstrong and Ellington. The 20s was called the Jazz Age. It's part of being American. — Wynton Marsalis

Make no mistake, this music is for everyone. Jazz is not an exclusive, elite club. Go ahead, listen to your Snoop Doggy Dog, Pearl Jam, Garth Brooks, but add a little Ellington, Basie and Coltrane to your life as well. — Christian McBride

There are simply two kinds of music, good music and the other kind ... the only yardstick by which the result should be judged is simply that of how it sounds. If it sounds good it's successful; if it doesn't it has failed. — Duke Ellington

The word [jazz] never lost its association with those New Orleans bordellos. In the 1920s I used to try to convince Fletcher Henderson that we ought to call what we were doing 'Negro music'. But it's too late for that now. — Duke Ellington

Duke Ellington's career traces the entire history of jazz. The repertoire associated with him contains the most important elements in the music and provides concrete examples of some of the best ways to present the music in the widest variety of settings-radio, TV, recordings, movies, concert halls, festivals, solo, small ensemble, big band, symphony orchestra, opera, Broadway shows ... You name it, he did it! — Billy Taylor

Duke Ellington is my choice for many reasons. Nobody has written so many great pieces of music, which are everlasting, and he has made them available to the world through his orchestrations of his work in a unique way. Lastly, he was himself a fine pianist. He covers the entire musical spectrum with his genius. — Marian McPartland

Quincy Jones' autobiography 'Q' is very good. Because he's a master at music, he's one of our greatest composers, and its good for him to have a book and tell the good ole days when he was with Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Sarah Vaughan and Ray Charles. — Ice Cube

Dancing is very important to people who play music with a beat. I think that people who don't dance, or who never did dance, don't really understand the beat ... I know musicians who don't and never did dance, and they have difficulty communicating. — Duke Ellington

Music is my mistress, and she plays second fiddle to no one. — Duke Ellington

My inspiration comes from the message Duke Ellington gave - you are unique, be yourself, put out that thing that is you, then use your work ethic and produce great music. — Kenny Burrell

It is becoming increasingly difficult to decide where jazz starts or where it stops, where Tin Pan Alley begins and jazz ends, or even where the borderline lies between between classical music and jazz. I feel there is no boundary line — Duke Ellington

There are two kinds of music. Good music, and the other kind. — Duke Ellington

The most important thing I look for in a musician is whether he knows how to listen. — Duke Ellington

My biggest kick in music -playing or writing- is when I have a problem. Without a problem to solve, how much interest do you take in anything? — Duke Ellington

Count Basie was college, but Duke Ellington was graduate school. — Clark Terry

What does music mean to you? What would you do without music? — Duke Ellington

My dad was a jazz fan and he used to have lots of old 78s, so I grew up with big jazz bands and the likes of Duke Ellington and Count Basie - although I really liked show tunes from those big musicals as well. I've always kept my ears open, as it were, when it comes to music. It doesn't matter to me what type of music it is. If I like it, I'll listen to it. — Ric Sanders

It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing. — Duke Ellington

The wise musicians are those who play what they can master. — Duke Ellington

I began by tinkering around with some old tunes I knew. Then, just to try something different, I set to putting some music to the rhythm that I used in jerking ice-cream sodas at the Poodle Dog. I fooled around with the tune more and more until at last, lo and behold, I had completed my first piece of finished music. — Duke Ellington

Put it this way: Jazz is a good barometer of freedom ... In its beginnings, the United States of America spawned certain ideals of freedom and independence through which, eventually, jazz was evolved, and the music is so free that many people say it is the only unhampered, unhindered expression of complete freedom yet produced in this country. — Duke Ellington

You can't write music right unless you know how the man that'll play it plays poker. — Duke Ellington

There's no appreciation for the giants [of jazz]; there's never been a major film on Duke Ellington , never a major film on Louis Armstrong. What they accomplished, we could never accomplish today ... What's happening now is lightweight compared to what happened before. If Louis Armstrong was alive today, he'd be a superstar. If Art Tatum was alive today, my god, all the piano players would get on their knees. So that's what's missing today; we've been cut off from our heritage. — Randy Weston

There is hardly any money interest in art, and music will be there when money is gone. — Duke Ellington

The musicians, Duke Ellington, his thing was not about separating himself from the rest of America. Louis Armstrong - go to the forefathers of our music - Jelly Roll Morton - they're not preaching a separatist agenda. They're not taking their music and saying, "This is for me." — Wynton Marsalis

Music is the tonal reflection of beauty. — Duke Ellington