Quotes About Ellington

Do you think Duke Ellington didn't listen to Debussy? Louis Armstrong loved opera, did you know that? Name me a jazz pianist who wasn't influenced by European music!

There are only two things: love, all sorts of love, with pretty girls, and the music of New Orleans or Duke Ellington. Everything else ought to go, because everything else is ugly.

It's like Duke Ellington said, there are only two kinds of music - good and bad. And you can tell when something is good.

Bechet even briefly played with Duke, and Ellington would take the counterpoint, romance, and beats of New Orleans music and build a compositional cathedral.

Ellington is a writer and arranger, as well as a musician and leader. He does movie sound tracks.

I do very few standards. Hardly any. Other people's tunes that I do are usually obscure tunes, for the most part, although I do a couple of Duke Ellington tunes that are well known.

There are only two things: love, all sorts of love, with pretty girls, and the music of New Orleans or Duke Ellington. Everything else ought to go, because everything else is ugly.

In Ellington, we hear the story of the Negro, maybe the most American of Americans.

Musical recording history is full of multi-racial collaborations and it is this cross-pollination that has created the magic of Ellington, Sinatra and the Beatles. I am merely a part of that tradition.

Bonj… êtes-vous arrangée par Duke Ellington ? demanda Colin…

As for my band, well, my mentors were Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Jimmie Lunceford, and no one had a band more smartly dressed than Duke.

The three great moments of my life had to be the concerts of Ellington in 1938, Dizzy in '48, and Ella in '52.

Basically, I bring the truth and the light through the written word. For in such a way am I utilized as a creative human vessel.

It was on the 1958 tour that Ellington met Queen Elizabeth II in London. 'Struck speechless' by her grace, he responded with one of his most elegant gestures, writing with Strayhorn a piece called 'The Queen's Suite', then recording it and having a single copy of the album pressed for her alone.

When I got through, Duke Ellington stood up and started the applause.