Top 100 Quotes About Louis Armstrong
#1. Mrs. Nixon and I share the sorrow of millions of Americans at the death of Louis Armstrong. One of the architects of an American art form, a free and individual spirit, and an artist of worldwide fame, his great talents and magnificent spirit added richness and pleasure to all our lives.
Richard M. Nixon
#2. Back home, he sleeps in Clarence's bed. Then he moves across and arranges the pillows beside the ghost of his wife. All three of them lie down together. The pulse of Louis Armstrong sounds out from the record player, the notes moving tenderly through his torment.
Colum McCann
#3. I can play the trumpet. Before I became an actor, I wanted to be the next Louis Armstrong. I started young and got to grade seven. When I turned 13, everyone started whipping out guitars, looking cool and joining rock bands, so I stopped playing.
Douglas Booth
#4. If it weren't for greed, intolerance, hate, passion and murder, you would have no works of art, no great buildings, no medical science, no Mozart, no Van Gough, no Muppets and no Louis Armstrong.
Jasper Fforde
#5. 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
#6. I think we've all had enough of Coltrane saxophonists. There's a case of someone ruining a generation of saxophonists, as Louis Armstrong may have ruined a generation of trumpeters.
Paul Bley
#7. Louis Armstrong on Mondays, Frank Sinatra on Wednesdays, Glenn Miller on Fridays, and Mozart on Sundays. Unless it was raining. If it's raining, it's always Billie Holiday.
Clare Vanderpool
#8. I remember when I first rocked in it was a great big dance hall and Tommy Young was blowing trombone and Louis [Armstrong] was singing a tune and it was just Satchmo and you could hear it resounding through the dance hall and people were dancing. It was a highlight.
Gordon Lightfoot
#9. If you have to ask what jazz is you will never know. Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong
#10. Louis Armstrong said you have to live a life. And that's right. If you don't live a life, you don't got nothin' to come out your horn.
Sally Field
#11. The bottom line of any country is: what did we contribute to the world? We contributed Louis Armstrong.
Tony Bennett
#12. My uncle gave me a trumpet, but I loved the Louis Armstrong sound and the Harry James sound and I played by ear and I played always soulful or very direct from the gut.
Dick Dale
#13. You can't play anything on a horn that Louis Armstrong hasn't played
Miles Davis
#14. Benny Goodman, Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Billy Eckstine, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Paul Whiteman, Tommy Dorsey and his Orchestra, Lionel Hampton, the Mills Brothers, Woody Herman, and Nat King Cole. "Mona Lisa, men have named you,
George Hodgman
#15. I didn't grow up during the time that Louis Armstrong or Miles Davis and all those people were playing. So it's not really my responsibility to keep it up, what they were doing.
Trombone Shorty
#16. My main influences have always been the classic jazz players who sang, like Louis Armstrong and Nat King Cole and Jack Teagarden.
Mose Allison
#17. You ask: What is it that philosophers have called qualitative states? I answer, only half in jest: As Louis Armstrong said when asked what jazz is, 'If you got to ask, you ain't never gonna get to know.'
Ned Block
#18. If you listen to Louis Armstrong from 1929, you will never hear anything better than that really, and you will never hear anything more free than that.
Steve Lacy
#19. I listen to jazz about three hours a day. I love Louis Armstrong.
Philip Levine
#20. Louis Armstrong is jazz. He represents what the music is all about.
Wynton Marsalis
#21. Few of us boggle - though we should - at the fact that Louis Armstrong sang and played trumpet with similar panache, or that Leonard Bernstein and Benjamin Britten were equally adept as composers, conductors and pianists.
Terry Teachout
#22. 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
#23. I listened to King Oliver and I listened to Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, John Coltrane, Archie Shepp ... I listened to everything I could that came from that place that they call the blues but, in formality, isn't necessarily the blues.
Eric Clapton
#24. The New York that Frank Sinatra sang about, people will never know that place. The New Orleans that Louis Armstrong sang about is the New Orleans that's still there - it's preserved.
Blake Lively
#25. 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
#26. I saw Louis Armstrong perform at Albany State College on Radio Springs Road. He was probably the first famous individual I saw in concert. Unfortunately, I never did get to meet him.
Ray Stevens
#27. If you don't like Louis Armstrong, you don't know how to love.
Mahalia Jackson
#28. [Louis Armstrong is] the father of us all, regardless of style or how modern we get. His influence is inescapable. Some of the things he was doing in the 20's and 30's, people still haven't dealt with.
Nicholas Payton
#29. 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
#30. Louis Armstrong changed all the brass players around, but after Bird, all of the instruments had to change - drums, piano, bass, trombones, trumpets, saxophones, everything.
Cootie Williams
#31. 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
#32. I try to improvise like Les Young, Louis Armstrong or someone else I admire. What comes out is what I feel.
Billie Holiday
#33. English banjo players really were a law unto themselves - you don't find that kind of brisk banjo playing on the original Louis Armstrong or Bix Beiderbecke records.
Pete Townshend
#34. If anybody was Mr. Jazz it was Louis Armstrong. He was the epitome of jazz and always will be. He is what I call an American standard, an American original.
Duke Ellington
#35. A very few musicians passed across all decades. In terms of trumpet playing, Louis Armstrong does it of course but Sweets [Edison] is right up there too. He is unique, in every sense of the term.
Freddie Hubbard
#36. It's a spirit that was given me and the relationships and meeting all these great people, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong; through Max I met a lot of people too. My first album was with Benny Carter.
Abbey Lincoln
#37. [Louis Armstrong] could play a trumpet like nobody else, then put it down and sing a song like no one else could.
Eddie Condon
#38. 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.
#39. And my dad wanted me to play the trumpet because that's what he liked. His idol was Louis Armstrong. My dad thought my teeth came together in a way that was perfect for playing the trumpet.
Jackson Browne
#40. I actually wanted to be a jazz musician first. My grandparents introduced me to Louis Armstrong. I loved Louis Armstrong so I took up the trumpet and just did that every day and practiced that.
Douglas Booth
#41. In my opinion, Louis Armstrong is the greatest trumpet stylist of all time and has influenced every trumpet player of his time and long after
Al Hirt
#42. In 1965, as Ralph Gleason has reported, when Martin Luther King's march on Selma, Alabama, was brutally attacked by local and state constabulary, Louis Armstrong, then in Copenhagen, said after watching the carnage on television, "They would beat Jesus if he was black and marched.
Nat Hentoff
#43. Louis Armstrong could only happen once - for ever and ever. I, for one, appreciate the ride.
Bobby Hackett
#44. Louis Armstrong is the master of the jazz solo. He became the beacon, the light in the tower, that helped the rest of us navigate the tricky waters of jazz improvisation.
Ellis Marsalis Jr.
#45. Louis Armstrong playing trumpet on the Judgment Day.
Al Stewart
#46. The greatness of America is that it produces exuberant geniuses like Louis Armstrong and Fred Astaire and Leonard Bernstein. We are meant to be a jazzy people who talk big and jump on the table and dance; we aren't supposed to be dopey and glum and brood over old injuries.
Garrison Keillor
#47. 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
#48. Louis Armstrong, who learned to be in exquisite dress, came from the bottom, and he's not a trash can.
Stanley Crouch
#49. 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
#50. The whole point of Louis Armstrong is that no one can really figure him out. There was a while where I thought you could try.
Sarah Vowell
#51. I lay my body down in another city, another hotel room. Once Louis Armstrong and his band stayed here. Later the hotel fell to trash. New money resurrected it. Under the red moon of justice, I dream with the king of jazz.
Joy Harjo
#52. Louis Armstrong's 'What a Wonderful World' is my ultimate karaoke song. It is a wonderful world. People forget we only have a certain amount of time, and it can all end at any moment. Armstrong and Frank Sinatra's 'My Way' are the ultimate one-two punch.
Dhani Jones
#53. What [Louis Armstrong] does is real, and true, and honest, and simple, and even noble. Every time this man puts his trumpet to his lips, even if only to practice three notes, he does it with his whole soul.
Leonard Bernstein
#54. 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
#55. [Louis Armstrong] was the only musician who ever lived, who can't be replaced by someone.
Bing Crosby
#56. 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
#57. And when she told us her wedding song - of course, they've already picked their wedding song, and of course, it's "What a Wonderful World" by Louis Armstrong - I said that choosing that song is the sonic equivalent of buying picture frames and never replacing the photos of the models.
Rainbow Rowell
#58. I didn't even respect singers until I heard Ray Charles, Frank Sinatra and Louis Armstrong.
J. D. Souther
#61. I got a simple rule about everybody. If you don't treat me right - shame on you.
Louis Armstrong
#62. It's getting almost so bad a colored man hasn't got any country.
Louis Armstrong
#63. As many bands as you heard [in New Orleans], that's how many bands you heard playing right. I thought I was in Heaven playing second trumpet in the Tuxedo Brass Band
and they had some funeral marches that would just touch your heart, they were so beautiful.
Louis Armstrong
#64. There's some folks, that, if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
Louis Armstrong
#65. Even If I have two three days off, you still have to blow that horn. You have to keep up those chops ... I have to warm up everyday for at least an hour.
Louis Armstrong
#67. There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell them.
Louis Armstrong
#68. 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.
Louis Armstrong
#69. Seems to me it ain't the world that's so bad but what we're doing 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.
Louis Armstrong
#70. A lotta cats copy the Mona Lisa, but people still line up to see the original.
Louis Armstrong
#74. 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.
Louis Armstrong
#75. Musicians don't retire; they stop when there's no more music in them.
Louis Armstrong
#76. 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.
Louis Armstrong
#77. 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.
Louis Armstrong
#78. Jazz is played from the heart. You can even live by it. Always love it.
Louis Armstrong
#79. 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.
Louis Armstrong
#81. We all do 'do, re, mi,' but you have got to find the other notes yourself.
Louis Armstrong
#84. All music is folk music. I ain't never heard a horse sing a song.
Louis Armstrong
#86. 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.
Louis Armstrong
#87. There is two kinds of music, the good, and the bad. I play the good kind.
Louis Armstrong
#88. When I was young and very green, I worte that tune, Sister Kate, and someone said that's fine, let me publish it for you. I'll give you fifty dollars. I didn't know nothing about papers, and business, and I sold it outright.
Louis Armstrong
#89. All them weird chords which don't mean a thing ... you got no melody to remember, and no beat to dance to
Louis Armstrong
#90. It makes you feel good, man, makes you forget all the bad things that happen to a Negro. It makes you feel wanted, and when you're with another tea smoker, it makes you feel a special kinship.
Louis Armstrong
#91. There is no such thing as 'on the way out' as long as you are still doing something interesting and good; you're in the business because you're breathing.
Louis Armstrong
#92. At first it was just a misdemeanor, but then you lost the "mis-de" and you just got meaner and meaner..
Louis Armstrong
#94. I see trees of green, red roses too. I see them bloom for me and you. And I think to myself what a wonderful world. I see skies of blue and clouds of white. The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night. And I think to myself what a wonderful world
Louis Armstrong
#96. 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.
Louis Armstrong
#97. My whole life, my whole soul, my whole spirit is to blow that horn.
Louis Armstrong
#98. We don't play slow and we don't play fast, we play half fast
Louis Armstrong
#99. There's only two ways to sum up music; either it's good or it's bad. If it's good you don't mess about it, you just enjoy it.
Louis Armstrong
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