Miles Davis Quotations

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

A legend is an old man with a cane known for what he used to do. I'm still doing it.

I know what I've done for music, but don't call me a legend. Just call me Miles Davis.

For me, music and life are all about style.

I'm always thinking about creating. My future starts when I wake up every morning... Every day I find something creative to do with my life.

You can dominate a game if you dominate on the line... We're just going to have to go out there and work hard and blow people off the ball, and let our runners do what they do best.

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

Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself.

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

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.

If you understood everything I say, you'd be me!

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

Of course, because I was at the beginning of my career. For me, as a musician, to have a chance for an icon like Miles Davis to play on one of my songs was something unique and unbelievable.

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

You can dominate a game if you dominate on the line, ... We're just going to have to go out there and work hard and blow people off the ball, and let our runners do what they do best.

The teams had to use 20 or more steps, but all of them used many more than that. It is fun and exciting, but most people don't realize how much work goes into building a Rube Goldberg machine.

I learned so much from my cousin (Alexander). I think he did things the right way. That's how he made it to the NFL, ... But the biggest thing I got from him was working hard and doing what ever you can to help the team.

The judges will award points based on the creative use of materials and related themes - it is amazing how the teams engineer and construct machines in so many different and imaginative ways to perform the same task.

Music is an addiction.

When you work with great musicians, they are always a part of you . . . their spirits are walking around in me, so they're still here and passing it on to others.

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

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

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.

Keith, how does it feel to be a genius?

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

A legend is an old man with a cane...

Do not be afraid of errors. There are no errors.

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

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

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

You can't compete with Sweets' sound and time feel. It's impossible.

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.

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.

That's the way you judge a car, man, [good or bad], when you start it up. It's just the same thing. I mean, I drive a Ferrari - not to be cute, but because I dig it. I'd rather drive a ten-year-old Ferrari than one of them new things-they don't go.

Jazz is an Uncle Tom word. They should stop using that word for selling. I told George Wein the other day that he should stop using it.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

You have to be born with it. You can't even buy it. If you could buy it, they'd have it at the next Newport Festival.

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

You want to know how I started playing trumpet? My father bought me one, and I studied the trumpet. And everybody I heard that I liked, I picked up things from.

I still got my Ferrari.

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

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.

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.

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.

When I heard Coleman Hawkins, I learned to play ballads

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.

John Lee Hooker is the funkiest man alive

Coltrane, you cant play everything at once!

[Prince] could very well be the Duke Ellington of Rock 'n' Roll.

So What or Kind of Blue were done in that era, the right hour, the right day. It's over; it's on the record.

I mean, it makes me sick when I see a white man sitting there smiling at me being entertaining, man. When I know what he's gonna do after he gets through. You know, when you see that thing on their face - like: "Entertain me." You know what I mean? Even the black guy that's trying to be white - even he can have that crap on his face.

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.

Joao Gilberto on guitar could read a newspaper and sound good.

There are no wrong notes.

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

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.

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

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.

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

You can't eat a winner's plaque.

Monk was a gentle person, gentle and beautiful, but he was strong as an ox. And if I had ever said something about punching Monk out in front of his face - and I never did - then somebody should have just come and got me and taken me to the madhouse, because Monk could have just picked my little ass up and thrown me through a wall.

People will go for anything they don't understand if it's got enough hype....

Play what you know and then play above that

It takes a long time to sound like yourself.

I always listen to what I can leave out.

If you're trying to be hip, be hip.

In improvisation, there are no mistakes.

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.

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.

I'm not messing around with nobody's woman. If I want a woman I go get her - you know what I mean?

If you have to ask, you'll never know.

Jazz is like blues with a shot of heroin!

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.

All my inspiration comes from Ahmad Jamal.

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

Don't worry about playing a lot of notes. Just find one pretty one.

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

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.

Always listen for what you can leave out.

First you imitate, then you innovate.

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

My ego only needs a good rhythm section