Ellington Quotes & Sayings

I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues. — Duke Ellington

It doesn't mean a thing if you ain't got that swing — Duke Ellington

Duke Ellington was famous for hs very original harmonic patterns. — Lawrence Welk

To say he had doubts about this excursion, which Wyoming State University hadn't even authorized, would easily qualify for the understatement of the year. But as he pondered his reason for doing this, Ellington bit his lip, swallowed a bolus of raw fear in his throat and continued to descend, allowing the nylon rope to slip through the carabiner underneath his posterior. — Byron Tucker

Selfishness can be a virtue. Selfishness is essential to survival, and without survival we cannot protect those whom we love more than ourselves. — Duke Ellington

Somehow I suspect that if Shakespeare were alive today, he might be a jazz fan himself. — Duke Ellington

If I were to put on Barbra Streisand and Duke Ellington, one might say the combination isn't good. — Norman Granz

So I'm a young boy in the 1940s growing up, seeing Ralph Bunche on a regular basis, seeing Duke Ellington on a regular basis. We know that these people are famous. They're living in the same community as we live in. They go to the same stores and shops. — Ed Smith

I don't believe in categories of any kind, and when you speak of problems between blacks and whites in the U.S.A. you are referring to categories again. — Duke Ellington

Tomorrow is in the wings waiting for you to sound her entrance fanfare. — Duke Ellington

You always come back to Duke Ellington - he's kind of like the thread that holds everything together from the big band descending to lots of jazz, actually. — Herbert

There is no art when one does something without intention. — Duke Ellington

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

I fluffed off the guy who kept requesting tunes all night, then found out he was the King's son. — Duke Ellington

Jazz today, as always in the past, is a matter of thoughtful creation, not mere unaided instinct. — 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 don't need time, I need a deadline. — Duke Ellington

His greatest virtue, I think, was his honesty--not only to others but to himself...He demanded freedom of expression and lived in what we consider the most important of moral freedoms; freedom from hate, unconditionally; freedom from all self-pity (even throughout all the pain and bad news); freedom from fear of possibly doing something that might help another more than it might help himself; and freedom from that kind of pride that could make a man feel he was better than his brother or neighbor — Duke Ellington

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

I don't need time. What I need is a deadline! — 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

San Francisco is one of the great cultural plateaus of the world - one of the really urbane communities in the United States - one of the truly cosmopolitan places and for many, many years, it always has had a warm welcome for human beings from all over the world — 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 York is a place where the rich walk, the poor drive Cadillac's, and the beggars die of malnutrition with thousands of dollars hidden in their mattresses. — Duke Ellington

I remember the night when I was playing at Birdland, and Duke Ellington walked in wearing that cap of his and with all his elegance. The Duke then came backstage, and I was there with my band. That's the one thing I miss. — Maynard Ferguson

You've got to find a way of saying it without saying it. — Duke Ellington

As Duke Ellington put it, Henderson "was liberal in giving away his ideas to people. So liberal, in fact, that it is difficult to recognize the original Fletcher Henderson through his flock of imitators."3 — Jeffrey Magee

Everyone prays in their own language, and there is no language that God does not understand. — Duke Ellington

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

I learned from Ethel Waters, Duke Ellington, Adelaide Hall, the Nicholas Brothers, the whole thing, the whole schmear. [The Cotton Club] was a great place because it hired us, for one thing, at a time when it was really rough [for Black performers]. — Lena Horne

Everybody in Canada seemed to listen to what they enjoyed, and nobody could tell them what to like, or what was the popular, or what was the In thing. Even today, it is very hard to brainwash a Canadian. — 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

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

Jazz is a good barometer of freedom. — Duke Ellington

You know, I always when people ask me, like, what is my most favorite song, I quote Duke Ellington, when they would ask him, what's his favorite composition? And I say, I haven't written it yet. Because, you know, there are different songs for different occasions. — Stevie Wonder

The artist must say it without saying it. — Duke Ellington

How can anyone expect to be understood unless he presents his thoughts with complete honesty? This situation is unfair because it asks too much of the world. In effect, we say, ' I don't dare show you what I am because I don't trust you for a minute but please love me anyway because I so need you to. And, of course, if you don't love me anyway, you're a dirty dog, just as I suspected, so I was right in the first place.' Yet, every time God's children have thrown away fear in pursuit of honesty-trying to communicate themselves, understood or not, miracles have happened. — Duke Ellington

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

The three great moments of my life had to be the concerts of Ellington in 1938, Dizzy in '48, and Ella in '52. — Boris Vian

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

Not to dismiss Gershwin, but Gershwin is the chip; Ellington was the block. — Joni Mitchell

Now I can say loudly and openly what I have been saying to myself on my knees. — Duke Ellington

I fell in love with jazz when I was 12 years old from listening to Duke Ellington and hearing a lot of jazz in New York on the radio. — Steve Lacy

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

It doesn't matter if you never see someone again, I told myself. There are millions of people in the world, and most of them never see each other in the first place. You hoped to know Ellington Feinr forever, but there's no such thing as forever, really. Everything is much shorter than that. — Lemony Snicket

Simplicity is a most complex form — Duke Ellington

If you have a great band with a mediocre drummer, you have a mediocre band. If you have a mediocre band with a great drummer, you have a great band! — Duke Ellington

When I was young, I never bought records because my brother Joseph played saxophone and had a record player. I loved listening to his records: The Dorsey Brothers, Duke Ellington, all the big American jazz bands, and vocalists like Ella Fitzgerald, Ernestine Anderson, and Kitty White, a singer from the US who was a friend of Nina Simone. Nobody in America seems to know about her, but she was quite popular in South Africa. — Miriam Makeba

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

The Europeans who went to Africa came back with modern' art. What is more African than a Picasso? — 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

I think it was Duke Ellington who once said that we're always most pleased with our current record. I mean, you have to assume that you learn from one, and you do something better next time. — George Shearing

Be a number one yourself. And not a number two somebody else. — 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

Create, and be true to yourself, and depend only on your own good taste. — Duke Ellington

Critics have their purposes, and they're supposed to do what they do, but sometimes they get a little carried away with what they think someone should have done, rather than concerning themselves with what they did. — Duke Ellington

Every man prays in his own language. — Duke Ellington

He went into the sitting room, put on a Duke Ellington record he had bought after seeing Gene Hackman sitting on the overnight bus in The Conversation to the sound of some fragile piano notes that were the loneliest Harry had ever heard. — Jo Nesbo

Ellington Feint was a line in my mind running right down the middle of my life, separating the formal training of my childhood and the territory of the rest of my days. She was an axis, and at that moment and for many moments afterward, my entire world revolved around her. — Lemony Snicket

Music is the tonal reflection of beauty. — Duke Ellington

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

My teachers are Duke Ellington and nature. — Toru Takemitsu

The common root, of course, comes out of Africa. That's the pulse.The African pulse. It's all the way back from ... the old slave chants and up through the blues, the jazz, and up through rock. And it's all got the African pulse. — Duke Ellington

FALSE EQUIVALENCY

If you compare the Koch brothers to George Soros and you compare MSNBC to FOX News then why not compare the NAACP to the Ku Klux Klan, George Washington to King George, Abraham Lincoln to Jefferson Davis, Barack Obama to Vladimir Putin;
If you compare the Democratic party to the Republican party then why not compare Citizens United with Brown versus Board of Education, Churchill to Mussolini, Martin Luther King to George Wallace;
If you compare Liberals to Conservatives then why not compare Boxing to Cage Fighting, Mozart to Salieri, Edward Kennedy Ellington to Lawrence Welk, Three Card Monty to Inside Trading, John Birks Gillespie to Cab Callaway;
If you are mentally slothful enough to engage in false equivalency, why not go all the way? Pretend that ignorance equates with knowledge, Science with Mythology and empathy with apathy? — E. Landon Hobgood

Dream a bigger dream to reach uncharted success — S.C. Ellington

It really was truth or consequences, and Billy went with truth. It was just incredible." Forsaking public prominence, Strayhorn found personal freedom in service to the Duke Ellington Orchestra. Now there might not be a Billy Strayhorn Orchestra. But there was a Billy Strayhorn. — David Hajdu

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

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

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

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

As for my band, well, my mentors were Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Jimmie Lunceford, and no one had a band more smartly dressed than Duke. — B.B. King

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

I like to think Duke Ellington would probably embrace a fragrance as well. — Bryan Ferry

If anybody was Mr. Jazz it was Louis Armstrong. He was the epitome of jazz and always will be. He is what I call an American standard, an American original. — 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

Self-discipline, as a virtue or an acquired asset, can be invaluable to anyone. — Duke Ellington

I especially like Duke Ellington jazz, which is a little more ... I lived in New York for a while. I lived in Harlem for a bit, and I just fell in love with the idea of that era of New York, that jazz era, especially jazz in Harlem. — Charlie Day

There are two kinds of worries - those you can do something about and those you can't. Don't spend any time on the latter. — Duke Ellington

I do very few standards. Hardly any. Other people's tunes that I do are usually obscure tunes, for the most part, although I do a couple of Duke Ellington tunes that are well known. — Mose Allison

I listen to tons of hard rock and metal, like Iron Maiden, Motorhead, etc., but I also listen to Beethoven and Mozart, to Discharge and the Bad Brains, and to Charlie Parker and Duke Ellington. So I think there's merit to both the melodic punk and to the hardcore stuff too. — Dave Smalley

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

When I got through, Duke Ellington stood up and started the applause. — Ruth Brown

My mother told me I was blessed, and I have always taken her word for it. Being born of - or reincarnated from - royalty is nothing Like being blessed. Royalty is inherited from another
human being; blessedness comes from God. — Duke Ellington

If it sounds good, it IS good. — Duke Ellington

Ellington is a writer and arranger, as well as a musician and leader. He does movie sound tracks. — Norman Granz

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

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

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

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

Playing 'bop' is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing. — Duke Ellington

Fate is being kind to me. Fate doesn't want me to be too famous too young. — Duke Ellington

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

Hurry, get on board, it's comin', listen to those rails a-thrumming all aboard. Get on the "A" train, soon you will be on Sugar Hill in Harlem. — Duke Ellington

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

By and large, jazz has always been like the kind of a man you wouldn't want your daughter to associate with. — Duke Ellington

You've got to find some way of saying it without saying it. — Duke Ellington

Sing sweet, but put a little dirt in it. — Duke Ellington

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