Music with Ease > Jazz Quotes > Louis Armstrong Quotes

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"If you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know."
-- Louis Armstrong

"We all do 'do, re, mi', but you have to find the other notes yourself."
-- Louis Armstrong

"Not too slow, not too fast. Kind of half-fast."
-- Louis Armstrong

"Because of [the early jazz critics'] lack of understanding of the mechanics of music, they thought there weren't any mechanics. It was the 'they can all sing, they all have rhythm' syndrome. If that was the case, why was there only one Louis Armstrong?"
-- Wynton Marsalis

"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."
-- Louis Armstrong

"I think we've all had enough of Coltrane saxophonists. There's a case of someone ruining a generation of saxophonists, as Louis Armstrong may have ruined a generation of trumpeters."
-- Paul Bley

"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."
-- Louis Armstrong

"Armstrong: a high note or series of high notes played on a trumpet, especially in jazz."
-- Dictionary of American Slang





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Author: David Paul Wagner
(David Paul Wagner on Google+)