Miles Davis Quotes

When people get too precious about Jazz, Miles Davis always has something good to say about it that cuts through all the crap and gets straight to the truth. A lot of his words reflect my state of mind on these topics. I'm gonna let him speak for me, because he says it so much better, and he can take the flack ;-).(the comments after are from me).

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

-Jazz was never about copying, it was always about discovery. I love Jazz, but my aim is just to be me...so I love quote. as he said, it's not always easy.

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

“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 other dead things that were once considered artistic"

"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"

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

"Elevator to the Gallows"

- ? not sure what that was about hehe

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

"After you've learned how to play your instrument
the right way, you can turn around and play it the
way you want to, anyway you hear the
music and sound and want to play it."


"All you've got to do in this country today is
just be on television and you're more known
and respected than anyone who paints a great
painting or creates great music or writes a great
book or is a great dancer. . . . A bad, untalented
person who is on television or in the movies
can be more recognized and respected than a
genius who doesn't appear on the screen."

"I would go to the library and borrow scores
by all those great composers, like Stravinsky,
Alban Berg, Prokofiev. I wanted to see what
was going on in all of music. Knowledge is
freedom and ignorance is slavery, and I just
couldn't believe someone could be that close
to freedom and not take advantage of it."

"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."

“Those songs to me don’t exist, you know? “So What” or Kind of Blue, I’m not going to play that shit, those things are there. They were done in that era, the right hour, the right day, and it happened. It’s over; it’s on the record.”

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

“Always look ahead, but never look back.”

"Bebop was about change, about evolution. It wasn't about standing still and becoming safe. If anybody wants to keep creating they have to be about change."