Duke Ellington Quotations

Edward Kennedy Ellington (April 29, 1899–May 24, 1974) was an African American jazz composer, pianist, and band leader who has been one of the most influential figures in jazz, if not in all American music.

Sourced

It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing).
- Song title (1932)

Playing "Bop" is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing.
- Look (10 August 1954)

It's like an act of murder; you play with intent to commit something.
- On jazz ew York Herald Tribune (9 July 1961)

Every man prays in his own language.
- Section title and eponymous song of A Concert of Sacred Music (1965)

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.
- Program notes for A Concert of Sacred Music (1965) http://earshot.org/Events/sacred.html

Fate is being kind to me. Fate doesn’t want me to be too famous too young.
- At age 66, on being passed over for an award (Pulitzer Prize for music) in 1965, as quoted in The Christian Science Monitor (24 December 1986)

Roaming through the jungle of "oohs" 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.
- Music Is My Mistress (1973)

If it sounds good, it IS good.
- J.D. Moore's Ten Commandments for The Studio

Attributed

There's two kinds of music: good and bad. I like both.

A problem is a chance for you to do your best.

Art is dangerous. It is one of the attractions: when it ceases to be dangerous you don't want it.

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

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.

Gray skies are just clouds passing over.

I am a bandleader and I am a composer. I am not a teacher.

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.

I don’t pursue anything. The only thing I always answer is my own impulse.

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.

I live with music.

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

I’m a telephone freak, the greatest invention since peanut brittle.

I’m the world’s worst disciplinarian. There’s too much responsibility in being a leader! You have to have the dignity and authority of a leader, and that’s all so heavy!

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.

Love is supreme and unconditional; like is nice but limited.

My attitude is never to be satisfied, never enough, never.

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?

Now I can say loudly and openly what I have been saying to myself on my knees.
- On being asked to compose sacred music, recalled on his death.

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

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

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

There is no art when one does something without intention.

You've got to find some way of saying it without saying it.
Jazz is music-Swing is business.

Quoternity