Quotes by Bandleaders

The good old days are neither better nor worse than the ones we're living through right now.
Artie Shaw
Making the simple complicated is commonplace making the complicated simple awesomely simple that's creativity.
Charles Mingus
Jazz came to America 300 years ago in chains.
Paul Whiteman
Jazz came to America 300 years ago in chains.
Paul Whiteman
I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.
Duke Ellington
A problem is a chance for you to do your best.
Duke Ellington
When the audience knows you know better it's satire but when they think you can't do any better it's corn.
Spike Jones
New York is a place where the rich walk, the poor drive Cadillac's, and the beggars die of malnutrition with thousands of dollars hidden in their mattresses.
Duke Ellington
Jazz is democracy in music.
Wynton Marsalis
I noticed that religion gave some people a way to escape dealing with the world: “Things will be better when you die,” the people of my grandma’s generation said as they worked themselves to death. “God wants you to forgive and love those who do you wrong,” some people said to shake off the shame of being unable to respond to the abuse they endured. The holier-than-thou faction found comfort in believing, “The rest of y’all are lost because you don’t have a personal relationship with God—our God.” But art engages you in the world, not just the world around you but the big world, and not just the big world of Tokyo and Sydney and Johannesburg, but the bigger world of ideas and concepts and feelings of history and humanity.
Wynton Marsalis
Today you go into make a modern recording with all this technology. The bass plays first, then the drums come in later, then they track the trumpet and the singer comes in and they ship the tape somewhere. Well, none of the musicians have played together. You can’t play jazz music that way. In order for you to play jazz, you’ve got to listen to them. The music forces you at all times to address what other people are thinking and for you to interact with them with empathy and to deal with the process of working things out. And that’s how our music really could teach what the meaning of American democracy is.
Wynton Marsalis
The thing in jazz that will get Bix Beiderbecke out of his bed at two o’clock in the morning, pick that cornet up and practice into the pillow for another two or three hours, or that would make Louis Armstrong travel around the world for fifty plus years non stop, just get up out of his sick bed, crawl up on the bandstand and play, the thing that would make Duke Ellington, the thing that would make Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Mary Lou Williams, the thing that would make all of these people give their lives for this, and they did give their lives, is that it gives us a glimpse into what America is going to be when it becomes itself. And this music tells you that it will become itself. And when you get a taste of that, there’s just nothing else you’re going to taste that’s as sweet.
Wynton Marsalis
Creativity is more than just being different. Anybody can play weird-- that's easy. What's hard is to be as simple as Bach. Making the simple complicated is commonplace--making the complicated simple, awesomely simple--that's creativity.
Charles Mingus
it ain't as hard as picking cotton
Wynton Marsalis
Jazz is not just 'Well, man, this is what I feel like playing.' It's a very structured thing that comes down from a tradition and requires a lot of thought and study.
Wynton Marsalis
I just wrote a book. But don't go and buy it yet, because I don't think it's finished.
Lawrence Welk
I just wrote a book. But don't go and buy it yet, because I don't think it's finished.
Lawrence Welk
I don't need time, I need a deadline.
Duke Ellington
Anybody can make the simple complecated. Creativity is making the complecated simple.
Charles Mingus