"I don't like to hear someone put down dixieland. Those people who say there's no music but bop are just stupid; it shows how much they don't know."
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Quote collection
Miles Davis quotes (page 5 of 9)
175 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"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."
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"I still got my Ferrari."
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"If you're trying to be hip, be hip."
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"Coltrane, you cant play everything at once!"
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"If you have to ask, you'll never know."
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"I usually write from the rhythm section...If a drummer got a funky beat on some things - like a half-shuffle or a shuffle or a backbeat that's even - I can write something."
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"Sometimes [playing free] doesn't happen, because maybe a guy's wife'll come in, you know, and his ego will catch him. If everybody's completely just straight-without any old ladies over here, a fourth of whisky over there; if it's balanced right, it'll come off. It has to be. But when you get egos involved with playing free, you can't do it."
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"Sometimes, if you ask people to "go downstairs and get me this or that," they'll say, "It's rainin" or "It might rain," or "There's some bumpy roads on the road," or bla-bla-bla. They give you all those excuses, so when they do something which is easy, you're supposed to say, "Damn, you did that?""
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"I can't write anything for myself. I can write when I hear like [John] Coltrane play something; I used to write chords and stuff for him to play in one bar. I can write for other people, but I don't never write for myself."
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"Music is a funny thing when you really come to think about it."
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"I'm not messing around with nobody's woman. If I want a woman I go get her - you know what I mean?"
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"Play what you know and then play above that"
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"I think every Negro over fifty should get a medal for putting up with all that crap."
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"We're not going to play the blues anymore. Let the white folks play the blues. They got 'em, so they can keep 'em."
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"You can't eat a winner's plaque."
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"There are no wrong notes."
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"I think the greatest sound in the world is the human voice."
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"In Europe, they like everything you do. The mistakes and everything. That's a little bit too much."
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"Tom Jones is funny to me, man. I mean, he really tries to ape Ray Charles and Sammy Davis, you know. He's nice-looking; he looks good doing it. I mean, if I was him, I'd do the same thing. If I was only thinking about making money."
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