Louis Armstrong Quotes

Unless you know what it is I ain't never going to be able to explain it to you.

We all do 'do, re, mi,' but you have got to find the other notes yourself.

Red beans and ricely yours.

If you don't understand it, don't mess with it.

When I go to the Gate, I'll play a duet with Gabriel. Yeah, we'll play 'Sleepy Time Down South' and 'Hello, Dolly!.' Then he can blow a couple that he's been playing up there all the time.

There's only two ways to sum up music; either it's good or it's bad. If it's good you don't mess about it, you just enjoy it.

There is no such thing as 'on the way out' as long as you are still doing something interesting and good; you're in the business because you're breathing.

It makes you feel good, man, makes you forget all the bad things that happen to a Negro. It makes you feel wanted, and when you're with another tea smoker, it makes you feel a special kinship.

Jazz is played from the heart. You can even live by it. Always love it.

My whole life, my whole soul, my whole spirit is to blow that horn.

You blows who you is.

What a wonderful world.

There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell them.

A lotta cats copy the Mona Lisa, but people still line up to see the original.

I'll bet right now most of the youngsters and hot club fans who hear the name Storyville hasn't the least idea that it consisted of some of the biggest prostitutes in the world ... Standing in their doorways nightly in their fine and beautiful negligees
faintly calling to the boys as they passed their cribs.

To jazz, or not to jazz, there is no question!

I don't get involved in politics. I just blow my horn.

Man, if you have to ask what it [jazz] is, you'll never know.

Love is talkative passion.

Musicians don't retire; they stop when there's no more music in them.

Never play a thing the same way twice.

What is Jazz? Dude, if you have to ask, you'll never know.

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.

I had a chance to play with the best musicians that were coming through because I was pretty good myself or else they wouldn't have tolerated with me.

If I don't practice for a day, I know it. If I don't practice for two days, the critics know it. And if I don't practice for three days, the public knows it.

Jazz is what I play for a living.

If you have to ask what jazz is you will never know. Louis Armstrong

A lot of the musicians asked me if when I hit my high-Cs on the records I had a clarinet take the notes. Some [thought] I had invented some kind of gadget so I could play high register. They weren't satisfied until they handed me a trumpet that they had with them and had me swing it. Then they cheered.

I spent nine days in the Downtown Los Angeles City Jail. The judge gave me a suspended sentence and I went to work that night - wailed just like nothing happened. What strucked me funny though - I laughed real loud when several movie stars came up to the bandstand while we played a dance set and told me, when they heard about me getting caught with marijuana, they thought marijuana was a chick. Woo boy - that really fractured me!

Some of you young folks been saying to me, '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? They ain't so wonderful either.' But how about listening to old Pops for a minute. It seems to me it ain't the world that's so bad, but what we're doing to it, and all I'm saying is see what a wonderful world it would be if only we'd give it a chance. Love, baby, love. That's the secret. Yeah. If lots more of us loved each other, we'd solve lots more problems. And man, this world would be a gasser.

I don't let my mouth say nothin' my head can't stand ...

You will never know what the meaning of Jazz is if ask what it means.

If you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know.

The best I can do is stay happy.

You've got to be good or as bad as the devil.

You see, pops, that's the kind of talk that's ruining the music. Everyone's trying to do something new, no one trying to learn the fundamentals first. All them young cats playing their wierd chords. And what happens? No one's working.

All music is folk music. I ain't never heard a horse sing a song.

Seems to me it ain't the world that's so bad but what we're doing to it, and all I'm saying is: see what a wonderful world it would be if only we'd give it a chance. Love, baby - love. That's the secret.

We all go Do, Re, Mi, but you've gotta find all the other notes yourself.

It's getting almost so bad a colored man hasn't got any country.

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.

I've Got the World on a String,

When I was young and very green, I worte that tune, Sister Kate, and someone said that's fine, let me publish it for you. I'll give you fifty dollars. I didn't know nothing about papers, and business, and I sold it outright.

Every time I close my eyes blowing that trumpet of mine, I look right into the heart of good old New Orleans. It has given me something to live for.

Music is either good or bad, and it's got to be learned. You got to have balance.

The way they are treating my people in the South, the government can go to hell!

I'm a spade, you're an ofay. Let's play.

If you still have to ask, shame on you

There's a thing I've dreamed of all my life, and I'll be damned if it don't look like it's about to come true-to be King of the Zulu's parade. After that, I'll be ready to die.

Give me a kiss to build a dream on
And my imagination will thrive upon that kiss
Sweetheart, I ask no more than this
A kiss to build a dream on.

You can't take it for granted. Even if we have two, three days off I still have to blow that horn a few hours to keep up the chops. I mean I've been playing 50 years, and that's what I've been doing in order to keep in that groove there.

There is two kinds of music, the good, and the bad. I play the good kind.

The colors of the rainbow so pretty in the sky Are also on the faces of people goin' by I see friends shaking hands saying, "How do you do" They're really saying "I love you." I hear babies cry, I watch then grow They'll learn much more than I'll ever know; And I think to myself, What a wonderful world; Yes, I think to myself, What a wonderful world. Oh yeah!

All them weird chords which don't mean a thing ... you got no melody to remember, and no beat to dance to

We don't play slow and we don't play fast, we play half fast

At first it was just a misdemeanor, but then you lost the "mis-de" and you just got meaner and meaner..

I don't need words. It's all in the phrasing.