Playing 'bop' is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing. — Duke Ellington Copy Share Image
“You can’t write music right unless you know how the man that’ll play it plays poker.” — Duke Ellington Copy Share Image
It is becoming increasingly difficult to decide where jazz starts or where it stops, where Tin Pan Alley begins and jazz ends,… — Duke Ellington Copy Share Image
My biggest kick in music -playing or writing- is when I have a problem. Without a problem to solve, how much interest… — Duke Ellington Copy Share Image
There are simply two kinds of music, good music and the other kind ... the only yardstick by which the result should… — Duke Ellington Copy Share Image
There is nothing to keeping a band together. You simply have to have a gimmick, and the gimmick I use is to… — Duke Ellington Copy Share Image
Music, of course, is what I hear and something that I more or less live by. It's not an occupation or profession,… — Duke Ellington Copy Share Image
Jazz today, as always in the past, is a matter of thoughtful creation, not mere unaided instinct. — Duke Ellington Copy Share Image
The most important thing I look for in a musician is whether he knows how to listen. — Duke Ellington Copy Share Image
The common root, of course, comes out of Africa. That's the pulse.The African pulse. It's all the way back from . . . the… — Duke Ellington Copy Share Image
The problem of expressing the contributions that Benny Carter has made to popular music is so tremendous it completely fazes me, so extraordinary a… — Duke Ellington Copy Share Image
If anybody was Mr. Jazz it was Louis Armstrong. He was the epitome of jazz and always will be. He is what I call… — Duke Ellington Copy Share Image
