Dizzy Gillespie famous quotes

04-24-2025

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

#Music #Careers #Sound
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.
-- Dizzy Gillespie

#Writing #Thinking #Ideas
Men have died for this music. You can't get more serious than that.
-- Dizzy Gillespie

#Music #Men #Serious
It's taken me all my life to learn what not to play.
-- Dizzy Gillespie

#Music #Taken #Play
One of the reasons we're here is to be a part of this process of exchange.
-- Dizzy Gillespie

#Music #Reason #Process
The sign of a mature musician is knowing what not to play.
-- Dizzy Gillespie

#Play #Knowing #Musician
Learn to play the piano, man, and then you can figure out crazy solos of your own.
-- Dizzy Gillespie

#Crazy #Men #Play
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.
-- Dizzy Gillespie

#Winning #Trying #Sound
There have been two great revelations in my life: The first was bepop, the second was homeopathy.
-- Dizzy Gillespie

#Two #Firsts #Revelations
The idea of life is to give and receive.
-- Dizzy Gillespie

#Ideas #Giving #Life Is
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.
-- Dizzy Gillespie

#Jazz #Miles #Stage
I used to do a lot of apologizing for what the State Department had done.
-- Dizzy Gillespie

#Done #Jazz #Apologizing
Bop is at the end of the road. Now everybody wants dance music.
-- Dizzy Gillespie

#Want #Bops #Jazz
I'd like to play for you one of my compositions, my only composition.
-- Dizzy Gillespie

#Play #Jazz #Composition
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.
-- Dizzy Gillespie

#Thinking #People #Want
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for your magnificent indifference.
-- Dizzy Gillespie

#Gentleman #Jazz #Indifference
Miles got a mystique about him-plus he's at the top of his profession. And he's got way, way, way more money.
-- Dizzy Gillespie

#Music #Way #Jazz
There are a lot of great players... a lot of great players around, but Louie Bellson is really something special.
-- Dizzy Gillespie

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

#Bird #World #Stealing
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.
-- Dizzy Gillespie

#Blue #Eagles #Hands
They're not particular whether you're playing a flat 5th or a ruptured 129th as long as they can dance.
-- Dizzy Gillespie

#Music #Dance #Long
Kenny Burrell is the grand master of jazz guitar.
-- Dizzy Gillespie

#Music #Guitar #Jazz

You may also like:

Art Blakey
Jazz Drummer
Arturo Sandoval
Trumpeter
Benny Goodman
Musician
Billie Holiday
Singer
Charles Mingus
Bassist
Charlie Parker
Saxophonist
Clark Terry
Trumpeter
Coleman Hawkins
Saxophonist
Count Basie
Jazz Pianist
Duke Ellington
Composer
Ella Fitzgerald
Vocalist
Herbie Hancock
Jazz Pianist
John Coltrane
Saxophonist
Louis Armstrong
Trumpeter
Max Roach
Percussionist
Miles Davis
Musician
Sonny Rollins
Saxophonist
Stan Getz
Saxophonist
Thelonious Monk
Pianist
Wynton Marsalis
Trumpeter