Louis Armstrong Music Quotes

#1. A good crowd had formed along the sidewalk and the concrete ledge that bordered Louis Armstrong Park. The anticipation was dizzying...New Orleans had the big-boy parades and [Jackson & Billy] couldn't wait to attend a second line...

Hunter Murphy

#2. If you have to ask what jazz is you will never know. Louis Armstrong

Louis Armstrong

#3. You can't play anything on a horn that Louis Armstrong hasn't played

Miles Davis

#4. Louis Armstrong is jazz. He represents what the music is all about.

Wynton Marsalis

#5. Do you think Duke Ellington didn't listen to Debussy? Louis Armstrong loved opera, did you know that? Name me a jazz pianist who wasn't influenced by European music!

Dave Brubeck

#6. It's fair to say that white America wouldn't have elected an African-American president without the integrating effect of black music - from Louis Armstrong to hip-hop - and black drama and fiction, commercial as much as 'serious.'

Joe Haldeman

#7. If you don't like Louis Armstrong, you don't know how to love.

Mahalia Jackson

#8. I am black: I am the incarnation of a complete fusion with the world, an intuitive understanding of the earth, an abandonment of my ego in the heart of the cosmos, and no white man, no matter how intelligent he may be, can ever understand Louis Armstrong and the music of the Congo.

Frantz Fanon

#9. The musicians, Duke Ellington, his thing was not about separating himself from the rest of America. Louis Armstrong - go to the forefathers of our music - Jelly Roll Morton - they're not preaching a separatist agenda. They're not taking their music and saying, "This is for me."

Wynton Marsalis

#10. Louis Armstrong was the primary contributor to jazz music in the 20th century. His improvisational skills served as the principal model for all who came after him, regardless of one's chosen instrument.

Ellis Marsalis Jr.

#11. Louis Armstrong is quite simply the most important person in American music. He is to 20th century music (I did not say jazz) what Einstein is to physics.

Ken Burns

#12. When I was a young man, I shined the shoes of Louis Armstrong and Louis Jordan! Music was just everywhere like that. And in my family, everyone could play something, and if they couldn't play, they could sing.

Chuck Brown

#13. I love Ray Charles. He can still teach everybody a lot about how to make great music. Not necessarily how to make hits, but how to make great music. Of course, part of it is his incredible talent. Who are the greatest jazz singers in the world? Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday and Ray Charles.

Ahmet Ertegun

#14. Intimate singing had a wonderful style in the '30s and '40s. It came out of Broadway and the jazz of Louis Armstrong and Billie Holliday. But Sinatra created the best romantic era that we've ever had.

Tony Bennett