The most important thing I look for in a musician is whether he knows how to listen. — 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
You have to stop listening in categories. The music is either good or it's bad. — 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
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
If anybody was Mr. Jazz it was Louis Armstrong. He was the epitome of jazz and always will be. He is what… — Duke Ellington Copy Share Image
I never had much interest in the piano until I realized that every time I played, a girl would appear on the… — 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
If you have a great band with a mediocre drummer, you have a mediocre band. If you have a mediocre band with… — Duke Ellington Copy Share Image
The word [jazz] never lost its association with those New Orleans bordellos. In the 1920s I used to try to convince Fletcher… — Duke Ellington Copy Share Image
Put it this way: Jazz is a good barometer of freedom... In its beginnings, the United States of America spawned certain ideals… — 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… — 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
![“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.” quote by Duke Ellington](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/faf/duke-ellington-7513_association_the-word-jazz-never-lost-its-association_1416186.jpg)
