Dizzy Gillespie Quotations

It's taken me all my life to learn what not to play.

I don't care much about music. What I like is sounds.

Men have died for this music. You can't get more serious than that.

I always try to teach by example and not force my ideas on a young musician. One of the reasons we're here is to be a part of this process of exchange.

How do I know why Miles walks off the stage? Why don't you ask him? And besides, maybe we'd all like to be like Miles, and just haven't got the guts.

They're not particular about whether you're playing a flatted fifth or a ruptured 129th as long as they can dance to it.

I'd like to play for you one of my compositions, my only composition.

I think the idea is now for blacks to write about the history of our music. It's time for that, because whites have been doing it all the time. It's time for us to do it ourselves and tell it like it is.

Miles got a mystique about him-plus he's at the top of his profession. And he's got way, way, way more money.

Kenny Burrell is the grand master of jazz guitar.

I was blessed that I got married early and had a good wife. That sort of kept me straight. Probably I would have been like Charlie Parker, you know, involved in drugs or alcohol or something like that if I hadn't had this stability.

Nothing surpasses my performances with small bands, especially with Charlie Parker. A small band doesn't forestall creativity.

Everyone wants to put people on, I think. And get away with it! That's the thing: put people on and get away with it! That's a science in itself.

There are a lot of great players... a lot of great players around, but Louie Bellson is really something special.

Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace, Where never the lark, nor even eagle flew- And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod The high, untrespassed sanctity of space, Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

I used to do a lot of apologizing for what the State Department had done.

I know all the Latin-American rhythms quite well, but I don't play them exactly like they do in their own country - I add my personal touch.

We loved one another, man. I mean all those stories about the rift ... there was no question of a rift between Charlie Parker and me.

Mutual respect is so important because as soon as it disappears in relations between you and the next person, there's trouble.

Bop is at the end of the road. Now everybody wants dance music.

Jazz will be the classical music of the future.

When I grow up I want to be just like Benny Carter!

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for your magnificent indifference.

Learn to play the piano, man, and then you can figure out crazy solos of your own.

The idea of life is to give and receive.

The sign of a mature musician is knowing what not to play.

Where there's no mutual respect, there's trouble!

Many critics always saw and heard that my style comes from Roy Eldridge, which is true. But for many things, not only how to play the trumpet but the way to choose the notes, how to play them and how to phrase all of them, I took that from Sweets [Edison]. He really brought something new to the trumpet.

They're not particular whether you're playing a flat 5th or a ruptured 129th as long as they can dance.

One of the reasons we're here is to be a part of this process of exchange.

There have been two great revelations in my life: The first was bepop, the second was homeopathy.

You can't steal a gift. Bird [Charlie Parker] gave the world his music, and if you can hear it you can have it.

I try to play the bare essence, to let everything be just what it's supposed to be.

As a musician you have to keep one foot back in the past and have one foot forward into the future.

Some days you get up and put the horn to your chops and it sounds pretty good and you win. Some days you try and nothing works and the horn wins. This goes on and on and then you die and the horn wins.

I don't care too much about music. What I like is sounds.

Ideas, ideas, backward and forward. His influence is layers and layers of spirit.

. . .I always try to teach by example and not force my ideas on a young musician. One of the reasons we're here is to be a part of this process of exchange.