#jazz

“This is the world you have made yourself, now you have to live in it.”

“What kept me sane was knowing that things would change, and it was a question of keeping myself together until they did.”

“Picket lines, school boycotts/They try to say it's a communist plot/All I want is equality /For my sister, my brother, my people, and me Mississippi Goddam 1964”

“Hound dogs on my trail/School children sitting in jail/Black cat cross my path/I think every day's gonna be my last/Don't tell me, I'll tell you/Me and my people just about due/I've been there so I know/They keep on saying "Go slow!" Mississippi Goddam 1964”

“I wish I could share all the love that's in my heart/Remove all the bars that keep us apart/I wish you could know what it means to be me/Then you'd see and agree/That everyone should be free/But, oh, I'm just a soul whose intentions are good/Oh, Lord, please, don't let me be misunderstood I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free 1967”

“Well I wish I could be like a bird in the sky/How sweet it would be/If I found I could fly/I'd soar to the sun/And look down at the sea/And I sing 'cause I know/How it feels to be free I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free 1967”

“the world is big/Big and bright and round/And it's full of folks like me/Who are black, yellow, beige and brown Backlash Blues 1967”

“Mr. Backlash, Mr. Backlash/Just who do you think I am?/You raise my taxes, freeze my wages/And send my son to Vietnam /You give me second class houses/And second class schools/Do you think that all colored folks/Are just second class fools? Nina Simone , Backlash Blues 1967”

“When the poets rhyme in the summertime/You'll hear melodies in the words Nina Simone , Music for Lovers 1978”

“We never talked about men or clothes or inconsequential things we got together. It was always Marx , Lenin and revolution”

“I love Pops , I love the way he sings, the way he plays”

“Mastersounds Heard Again in New Album; Miles Davis At the Blackhawk”

“On Louis Armstrong in a Playboy magazine interview.”

“You can't play anything on a horn that Louis hasn't played.”

“The music has gotten thick. Guys give me tunes and they're full of chords. I can't play them...I think a movement in jazz is beginning away from the conventional string of chords, and a return to emphasis on melodic rather than harmonic variation. There will be fewer chords but infinite possibilities as to what to do with them. About the new modal style. Interviewed by The Jazz Review (1958); Quotes in Paul Maher, ‎Michael K. Dorr (2009) Miles on Miles: Interviews and Encounters with Miles Davis, p. 18.”

“Quoted in: Jazz Journal International, (1983), p. 12.”

“Is that what you wanted, Alfred? Miles Davis asking Blue Note producer Alfred Lion 's approval of a recorded performance in Rudy Van Gelder 's studio. Miles' was included at the end of "One For Daddy”

“columns, c. 1957, in response to”

“Relaxin' with the Miles Davis Quintet”

“I’ll play it and tell you what it is later. In Szwed, John (2012).  So What: The Life of Miles Davis . Random House. ISBN 9781448106462 . , and in many other books Sometimes rendered as: I'll play it ' first and tell you what it is later.”

“When you're sick [due to drug withdrawal], music is a great help. Once in Texas, I kicked a [heroin] habit on weed, a pint of paregoric, and a few Louis Armstrong records. William S. Burroughs , Junky (1953), Chapter 12”

“When Louis Armstrong, according to a few of his biographies, came to Chicago he was wearing a suit, the pants of which were about three inches too short, his white socks showed, he had these brogans on and he wore a derby hat. He got up on the stage and all the musicians laughed until he started to play. When he finished playing, the next day all the musicians went out and bought some pants three inches too short, some white socks and some brogan shoes and a derby hat, you understand. Louis Armstrong was on J”

“True revolution in music took place, as far as I can see it, took place only a few times, three times in this century. One was the revolution that took place aided and abetted if not instigated by Louis Armstrong. Louis Armstrong did something with the trumpet that had never been done. Things that have become so casual, so common to our ears now, Louis Armstrong introduced. Maya Angelou , 1977 interview in Conversations with Maya Angelou”

“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.”

“Man, if you gotta ask you'll never know.”

“If you still have to ask, shame on you Armstrong's response to the question what jazz is, cited by Max Jones et. al. : "Salute to Satchmo", I.P.C. Specialist & Professional Press Ltd 1970, page 25”

“Making money ain't nothing exciting to me. ... You might be able to buy a little better booze than some wino on the corner. But you get sick just like the next cat, and when you die you're just as graveyard dead as he is. Ebony magazine , November 1964”

“The way they're treating my people in the South, the government can go to hell . As quoted in The New York Times (19 September 1967)]”

“Hey Pops, what you mean 'What a wonderful world '? How about all them wars all over the place? You call them wonderful? And how about hunger and pollution? That aint so wonderful either.”

“The Brick House was one of the toughest joints I ever played in ... Guys would drink and fight one another like circle saws. Bottles would come flying over the bandstand like crazy and there was lots of plain common shooting and cutting. But somehow all that jive didn't faze me at all. I was so happy to have some place to blow my horn. Satchmo: My Life in New Orleans”

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

“My band is my instrument more than the piano. From an interview with Richard O. Boyer , as cited in "The Hot Bach”

“I know what sounds well on a trombone and I know what sounds well on a trumpet and they are not the same. [...] I know what Tricky Sam can play on a trombone and I know what Lawrence Brown can play on a trombone and they are not the same either.”

“[Y]ou've got to write with certain men in mind. You write just for their abilities and natural tendencies and give them places where they do their best”

“You can't write music right [...] until you know how the man that'll play it plays poker.”

“[Expressing a liking for trains] Folks can't rush you until you get off.”

“As Bach says [...] if you ain't got a left hand, you ain't worth a hoot in hell.”

“[Sights enabling musical inspiration] The memory of things gone is important to a jazz musician [...] Things like the old folks singing in the moonlight in the back yard on a hot night, or something someone said long ago. I remember I once wrote a sixty”

“I think of music sometimes in terms of color [...] and [in a furnace] I like to see the flames licking yellow in the dark and then pulsing down to a kind of red glow.”

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