I can’t stand to sing the same song the same way two nights in succession, let alone two years or ten years. If you can, then it ain’t music, it’s close-order drill or exercise or yodeling or something, not music. Billie Holiday, Lady Sings the Blues
You can be up to your boobies in white satin, with gardenias in your hair and no sugar-cane for miles but you can still be working on a plantation. ibid.
In this country, don’t forget, a habit is no damn private hell. There’s no solitary confinement outside of jail. A habit is hell for those you love. ibid.
Dope never helped anybody sing better or play music better or do anything better. All dope can do for you is kill you – and kill you the long, slow, hard way. Billie Holiday
I knew I’d really licked it one morning when I couldn’t stand television any more. When I was high and wanted to stay that way, I could watch TV by the hour and loved it. Who can tell what detours are ahead? Another trial? Sure. Another jail? Maybe. But if you’ve beat the habit again and kicked TV no jail on earth can worry you too much. Billie Holiday, God Bless the Child
There is no art without intention. Duke Ellington
I am trying to play the natural feelings of a people. Duke Ellington
Playing Bop is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing. Duke Ellington, Look 10th August 1954
By and large, jazz has always been like the kind of a man you wouldn’t want your daughter to associate with. Duke Ellington, cited Nat Hentoff: At the Jazz Band Ball: Sixty Years on the Jazz Scene
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, cited Where is Jazz Going? Music Journal 1962
Jazz is music; Swing is business. Duke Ellington
Negro feelings put to rhythm and tune. Duke Ellington
A young tenor player was complaining to me that Coleman Hawkins made him nervous. Man, I told him Hawkins was supposed to make him nervous. Hawkins has been making sax players nervous for forty years. Cannonball Adderley
If you don’t make mistakes, you aren’t really playing. Coleman Hawkins
There’s nobody plays like me. And I don’t play like anybody else. Coleman Hawkins
One night at Roseland, Armstrong began Shanghai Shuffle. I think they made him play ten choruses. And I stood silent feeling almost bashful, asking myself if I would ever be able to obtain a small part of Armstrong’s greatness. Coleman Hawkins
What we play is life. Louis Armstrong
Jazz is played from the heart. Louis Armstrong
The memory of things gone is important to a jazz musician. Things like old folks singing in the moonlight in the back yard on a hot night or something said long ago. Louis Armstrong
All music is folk music. Louis Armstrong
To jazz or not to jazz: there is no question. Louis Armstrong
If you have to ask what jazz is, you’ll never know. Louis Armstrong
If you still have to ask ... shame on you. Louis Armstrong
Jazz music is to be played sweet, soft, plenty of rhythm. Jelly Roll Morton
Originality’s the thing. You can have tone and technique and a lot of other things but without originality you ain’t really nowhere. Gotta be original. Lester Young
I believe that all people are in possession of what might be called ‘a universal music mind’. Bill Evans
Technique is the ability to translate your ideas into sound through your instrument. This is a comprehensive technique ... a feeling for the keyboard that will allow you to transfer any emotional utterance into it. What has to happen is that you develop a comprehensive technique and then say, Forget that. I’m just going to be expressive through the piano. Bill Evans
Jazz is a very democratic musical form. It comes out of a communal experience. We take our respective instruments and collectively create a thing of beauty. Max Roach
When an art-form is created the question is how do you come to it. Not how does it come to you. Beethoven’s music is not going to come to you. The art of Picasso won’t come to you. Shakespeare. You have to come to it. And when you go to it you get the benefits of it. Wynton Marsalis
You talk about Louis Armstrong, well, you’re talking about the deepest human feeling, and the highest level of musical sophistication. So that’s a rare occurrence in the history of music ... He is the embodiment of jazz music. Wynton Marsalis
The bandstand is a sacred place. Wynton Marsalis
So I believed in studying just because I knew that education was a privilege. And it wasn’t so much necessarily the information that you were studying, but just the discipline of study, to get into the habit of doing something that you don’t want to do, to receive the information. Wynton Marsalis
Invest yourself in everything you do. There’s fun in being serious. Wynton Marsalis
Sustained intensity equals ecstasy. Wynton Marsalis
A beat is a moment in the life of a groove. Wynton Marsalis
Louis Armstrong is jazz. Wynton Marsalis
Everybody plays jazz music. Wynton Marsalis
Louis Armstrong invented a new style of playing. Louis Armstrong created the coherent solo. Louis Armstrong fused the sound of the blues with popular American song. Louis Armstrong extended the range of the trumpet. Louis Armstrong created the melodic and rhythmic vocabulary all of the big bands wrote music out of. Wynton Marsalis
He [Louis Armstrong] invented American singing. Wynton Marsalis
When you hear Billie Holiday sing you hear the spirit of Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong together in a person ... A very profound sensitivity to the human condition. She tells you something about the pain of the blues. Of Life. But inside that pain is the toughness. And that’s what you’re attracted to. Wynton Marsalis
We’ve attempted to achieve harmony through conflict ... You have musicians and they’re all standing on the bandstand, each one has their personality and their agenda. Invariably they are going to play something you don’t want to play. So you have to learn when to say a little something, when to get out of the way. So you have to have a question of the integrity, the intent, the will to play together ... It’s exactly like democracy. Wynton Marsalis
Jazz music objectifies America. Wynton Marsalis
For me, music and life are all about style. 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
Bird and Diz were great. But they weren’t sweet. We shook people’s ears a little softer. Took the music more mainstream. Miles Davis
If they act too hip, you know they can’t play shit. Miles Davis
Always look ahead, but never look back. Miles Davis
People started looking at me another way. Like I was dirty. They looked at me with pity and horror, and they hadn’t looked at me that way before. Miles Davis
Coltrane, you can’t play everything at once. Miles Davis
Don’t play what’s there; play what’s not there. Miles Davis