Louis Armstrong Quotes
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The best I can do is stay happy.
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Never play anything the same way twice.
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Red beans and ricely yours.
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[Bebop is] Chinese music.
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Making money ain't nothing exciting to me. You might be able to buy a little better booze than the wino on the corner. But you get sick just like the next cat and when you die you're just as graveyard dead as he is.
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As a youngster in the little orphanage home in New Orleans, I was the bugler of the institution. When I got to be around 13 or 14 years old, they took me off the bugle and put me in the little brass band.
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It's getting almost so bad a colored man hasn't got any country.
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Music is either good or bad, and it's got to be learned. You got to have balance.
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You can't take it for granted. Even if we have two, three days off I still have to blow that horn a few hours to keep up the chops. I mean I've been playing 50 years, and that's what I've been doing in order to keep in that groove there.
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A lot of the musicians asked me if when I hit my high-Cs on the records I had a clarinet take the notes. Some [thought] I had invented some kind of gadget so I could play high register. They weren't satisfied until they handed me a trumpet that they had with them and had me swing it. Then they cheered.
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Some of you young folks been saying to me, "Hey Pops, what you mean 'What a wonderful world'? How about all them wars all over the place? You call them wonderful? And how about hunger and pollution? That aint so wonderful either." Well how about listening to old Pops for a minute. Seems to me, it aint the world that's so bad but what we're doin' to it. And all I'm saying is, see, what a wonderful world it would be if only we'd give it a chance. Love baby, love. That's the secret, yeah. If lots more of us loved each other, we'd solve lots more problems. And then this world would be a gasser.
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I spent nine days in the Downtown Los Angeles City Jail. The judge gave me a suspended sentence and I went to work that night - wailed just like nothing happened. What strucked me funny though - I laughed real loud when several movie stars came up to the bandstand while we played a dance set and told me, when they heard about me getting caught with marijuana, they thought marijuana was a chick. Woo boy - that really fractured me!
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The colors of the rainbow so pretty in the sky Are also on the faces of people goin' by I see friends shaking hands saying, "How do you do" They're really saying "I love you." I hear babies cry, I watch then grow They'll learn much more than I'll ever know; And I think to myself, What a wonderful world; Yes, I think to myself, What a wonderful world. Oh yeah!
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You blows who you is.
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When you're with another tea smoker it makes you feel a special kinship.
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Never play a thing the same way twice.
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If I don’t practice for a day, I know it. If I don’t practice for two days, the critics know it. And if I don’t practice for three days, the public knows it.
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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.
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And I think to myself what a wonderful world. Oh, yeah.
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I had a chance to play with the best musicians that were coming through because I was pretty good myself or else they wouldn't have tolerated with me.
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If you don't understand it, don't mess with it.
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The memory of things gone is important to a jazz musician. Things like old folks singing in the moonlight in the back yard on a hot night or something said long ago.
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If ya ain't got it in ya, ya can't blow it out.
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Don't do nothing halfway, else you find yourself dropping more than can be picked up.
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My life has always been my music, it's always come first, but the music ain't worth nothing if you can't lay it on the public. The main thing is to live for that audience, 'cause what you're there for is to please the people.
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When you're dead, you're done.
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You either have it or you don't. You play your horn just like you sing a song or a hymn. If it's in your heart, you express yourself in the tune.
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All them weird chords which don't mean a thing...you got no melody to remember, and no beat to dance to
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Jazz is what I play for a living.
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Every time I close my eyes blowing that trumpet of mine, I look right into the heart of good old New Orleans. It has given me something to live for.
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