Miles Davis Quotes

Birth of the Cool' became a collector's item, I think, out of a reaction to Bird and Dizzy's music. Bird and Diz played this hip, real fast thing, and if you weren't a fast listener, you couldn't catch the humor or the feeling in their music. Their musical sound wasn't sweet, and it didn't have harmonic lines that you could easily hum out on the street with your girlfriend trying to get over with a kiss.

I'm out there doing the best that I can, My lip is cut and I'm still playing.

You can't eat a winner's plaque.

You know why I quit playing ballads? Cause I love playing ballads.

To keep creating you have to be about change.

If you sacrifice your art because of some woman, or some man, or for some color, or for some wealth, you can't be trusted.

I think every Negro over fifty should get a medal for putting up with all that crap.

The way you change and help music is by tryin' to invent new ways to play

When you're creating your own shit, man, even the sky ain't the limit.

It's like, how did Columbus discover America when the Indians were already here? What kind of shit is that, but white people's shit?

People will go for anything they don't understand if it's got enough hype. They want to be hip, want always to be in on the new thing so they don't look unhip. White people are especially like that, particularly when a black person is doing something they don't understand ... That's what I thought was happening when Ornette hit town.

Everybody ought to listen to Benny [Carter]. He's a whole musical education.

It's not the note you play that's the wrong note - it's the note you play afterwards that makes it right or wrong.

When I got into music I went all the way into music; I didn't have no time after that for nothing else.

You should never be comfortable, man. Being comfortable fouled up a lot of musicians.

As long as I've been playing, they never say I done anything. They always say that some white guy did it.

In music, silence is more important than sound.

I'll play it first and tell you what it is later.

What's swinging in words? If a guy makes you pat your foot and if you feel it down your back, you don't have to ask anybody if that's good music or not. You can always feel it.

If you understood everything I said, you'd be me

Don't play what's there; play what's not there.

Bebop didn't have the humanity of Duke Ellington. It didn't have that recognizable thing. Bird and Diz were great, fantastic, challenging
but that weren't sweet.

I was minding my own business when something says to me, "you ought to blow trumpet." I have just been trying ever since.

Music is a funny thing when you really come to think about it.

You have to practice for a long time before you can learn to sound like yourself

The only reason to write a new song is because you're tired of the old ones.

The very first thing I remember in my early childhood is a flame, a blue flame jumping off a gas stove somebody lit... I remember being shocked by the whoosh of the blue flame jumping off the burner, the suddenness of it... I saw that flame and felt that hotness of it close to my face. I felt fear, real fear, for the first time in my life. But I remember it also like some kind of adventure, some kind of weird joy, too. I guess that experience took me someplace in my head I hadn't been before... The fear I had was almost like an invitation, a challenge to go forward into something I knew nothing about. That's where I think my personal philosophy of life and my commitment to everything I believe in started... In my mind I have always believed and thought since then that my motion had to be forward, away from the heat of that flame.

In Europe, they like everything you do. The mistakes and everything. That's a little bit too much.

I can tell whether a person can play just by the way he stands.

If you hit a wrong note, it's the next note that you play that determines if it's good or bad.

I'll play it and tell you what it is later.

White folks always think that you have to have a label on everything - you know what I mean?

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.

A painting is music you can see and music is a painting you can hear.

It takes you years to learn how to play like yourself.

I would never try and play like Harry James, because I don't like his tone - for me. It's just white. You know what I mean? He has what we black trumpet players call a white sound. But it's for white music ... I can tell a white trumpet player, just listening to a record. There'll be something he'll do that'll let me know that he's white.

Don't be afraid of mistakes - There are none.

If somebody told me I only had an hour to live, I'd spend it choking a white man. I'd do it nice and slow.

I know what I've done for music, but don't call me "a legend".( ... ) A legend is an old man with a cane known for what he used to do. I'm still doing it.

There are no wrong notes in jazz: only notes in the wrong places.

It's not about standing still and becoming safe. If anybody wants to keep creating they have to be about change.

It's not the notes you play, it's the notes you don't play.

But you've got to have style in whatever you do -- writing, music, painting, fashion, boxing, anything.

Food makes my mind sluggish.

When the band plays fast, you play slow; when the band plays slow, you play fast.

Trane was the perfect saxophonist for Monk's music because of the space that Monk always used. Trane could fill up all that space with all them chords and sounds he was playing then.

I used to enjoy all the white bands when I was a kid listening to the radio. But the record companies, they take music and label it - like, they say "rock". Because the white singers can't sound like James Brown, they call him "soul". They've been doing that for years. That's the prejudice crap.

If you love them in the morning with their eyes full of crust; if you love them at night with their hair full of rollers, chances are, you're in love.

At least one day out of the year all musicans should just put their instruments down, and give thanks to Duke Ellington.

I'll play it first and figure out what it's called later.

Monk taught me more about music composition than anyone else on 52nd Street.

You can't play anything on a horn that Louis Armstrong hasn't played

I never thought that the music called "jazz" was ever meant to reach just a small group of people, or become a museum thing locked under glass like all the other dead things that were once considered artistic.

I'm a fiend when it comes to good pastry, and the French make the best as far as I'm concerned.

For me, music and life are all about style.

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.

My father's rich, my momma's good looking. Right? And I can play the Blues. I've never suffered and don't intend to suffer.

We're not going to play the blues anymore. Let the white folks play the blues. They got 'em, so they can keep 'em.

My ego only needs a good rhythm section

I don't care if a dude is purple with green breath as long as he can swing.

In high school I was best in music class on the trumpet, but the prizes went to the boys with blue eyes. I made up my mind to outdo anybody white on my horn.

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.

If you're not nervous then you're not paying attention.

Always listen for what you can leave out.

It takes a long time to sound like yourself.

I remember one time - it might have been a couple times - at the Fillmore East in 1970, I was opening for this sorry-ass cat named Steve Miller. Steve Miller didn't have his shit going for him, so I'm pissed because I got to open for this non-playing motherfucker just because he had one or two sorry-ass records out. So I would come late and he would have to go on first and then we got there we smoked the motherfucking place, everybody dug it.

It's always been a gift with me, hearing music the way I do. I don't know where it comes from, it's just there and I don't question it.

There are no wrong notes.

I began to realize that some of the things Ornette Coleman had said about things being played three or fours ways, independently of each other, were true because Bach had also composed that way.

I never thought Jazz was meant to be a museum piece like other dead things once considered artistic.

If you don't know what to play, play nothing.

Dave [Holland] plays the way he wants to play. And it's usually what's needed. You know, Dave is such a deep thinker. You can't tell him too much, else it might spoil his spirit, you know.

Music is the framework around the silence.

Always look ahead, but never look back.

The thing to judge in any jazz artist is, does the man project and does he have ideas.

Bad music is what will ruin music, not the instruments musicians choose to play.

Anybody can play. The note is only 20 percent. The attitude of the motherfucker who plays it is 80 percent.

If you got up on the bandstand at Minton's and couldn't play, you were not only going to be embarrassed by the people ignoring you or booing you, you might get your ass kicked.

My future starts when I wake up every morning. Every day I find something creative to do with my life.

Jazz is the big brother of Revolution. Revolution follows it around.

Good music is good no matter what kind of music it is.

Being rebellious and black, a nonconformist, being cool and hip and angry and sophisticated and ultra clean, whatever else you want to call it -- I was all those things and more. But I was playing the fuck out of my horn and had a great group, so I didn't get recognition based only on a rebel image.

That was my gift ... having the ability to put certain guys together that would create a chemistry and then letting them go; letting them play what they knew, and above it.

Coltrane, you cant play everything at once!

You can tell whether a person plays well or not by the way he carries the instrument, whether it means something to him or not.

It took me twenty years study and practice to work up to what I wanted to play in this performance. How can she expect to listen five minutes and understand it?

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.

I don't hold it against Dizzy [Gillespie], you know, but if a guy wants to play a certain way, you work towards that. If he stops - he's full of crap, you know. I mean, I wouldn't do it, for no money, or for no place in the white man's world. Not just to make money, because then you don't have anything. You don't have as much money as whoever you're trying to ape; that's making money by being commercial. Then you don't have anything to give the world; so you're not important. You might as well be dead.

Look, man, all I am is a trumpet player.

I'm always thinking about creating. My future starts when I wake up in the morning and see the light.

I really liked Wynton when I first met him. He's still a nice young man, only confused.

He sounded to me like he's supposed to be the savior of jazz. Sometimes people speak as though someone asked them a question. Well, no one asked him a question.

I've come close to matching the feeling of that night in 1944 in music, when I first heard Diz and Bird, but I've never got there ... I'm always looking for it, listening and feeling for it, though, trying to always feel it in and through the music I play everyday.

You have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself.

Time isn't the main thing. It's the only thing.

Man, sometimes it takes you a long time to sound like yourself.

See, music is about style.

I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am one thing, a musician.

Audiences - they like colour, you know. I can go out there wearing a red suit, man, and they'll say I'm out of sight ... I think they should be educated; you should always drop something on an audience ... When you get in front of an audience, you should try to give 'em something. After all, they're there looking at you like this. You can't go out and give 'em nothing.

When kids don't learn about their own heritage in school, they just don't care about school ... But you won't see it in the history books unless we get the power to write our own history and tell our story ourselves.