Some day I'm gonna call me up on the phone, so when I answer, I can tell myself to shut up.
Miles DavisSomebody, my daughter or my wife, gave me a music box for Christmas. It plays "My Funny Valentine" on celeste, you know? So I had Bobby [Irving] just play "Jean Pierre" with the changes on celeste.
Miles DavisCatch Harry Belafonte. He's got a helluva rhythm section.And so have the Pointer Sisters. And that little guy with Sammy Clayton. He plays the whole show with 40 members.
Miles DavisIf you hit a wrong note, it's the next note that you play that determines if it's good or bad.
Miles DavisI keep telling Ron Lorman and them in the control room, "It's my band! The reason I have a band is because I can't stand for somebody to tell me what to do."
Miles DavisIt's like, how did Columbus discover America when the Indians were already here? What kind of s-- is that, but white people's s--?
Miles DavisIt's always been a gift with me, hearing music the way I do. I don't know where it comes from, it's just there and I don't question it.
Miles DavisSo What or Kind of Blue were done in that era, the right hour, the right day. It's over; it's on the record.
Miles DavisSee, if you put a musician in a place where he has to do something different from what he does all the time, then he can do that - but he's got to think differently in order to do it. He's got to play above what he knows - far above it. I've always told the musicians in my band to play what they know and then play above that. Because then anything can happen, and that's where great art and music happens.
Miles DavisBirth of the Cool' became a collector's item, I think, out of a reaction to Bird and Dizzy's music. Bird and Diz played this hip, real fast thing, and if you weren't a fast listener, you couldn't catch the humor or the feeling in their music. Their musical sound wasn't sweet, and it didn't have harmonic lines that you could easily hum out on the street with your girlfriend trying to get over with a kiss.
Miles DavisWhite folks always think that you have to have a label on everything - you know what I mean?
Miles DavisIn Europe, they like everything you do. The mistakes and everything. That's a little bit too much.
Miles DavisMonk was a gentle person, gentle and beautiful, but he was strong as an ox. And if I had ever said something about punching Monk out in front of his face - and I never did - then somebody should have just come and got me and taken me to the madhouse, because Monk could have just picked my little ass up and thrown me through a wall.
Miles DavisSome musicians play with their heart, you know what I mean? I don't know what to tell a person that can't - if you can't tell a person what you're talkin' about when they're rushin' or droppin' the tempo, you get somebody else.
Miles DavisHe sounded to me like he's supposed to be the savior of jazz. Sometimes people speak as though someone asked them a question. Well, no one asked him a question.
Miles DavisI've come close to matching the feeling of that night in 1944 in music, when I first heard Diz and Bird, but I've never got there. . . . I'm always looking for it, listening and feeling for it, though, trying to always feel it in and through the music I play everyday.
Miles DavisIf you have a tone like mine that is recognizable. No matter what I play, when you hear my tone you can tell it's me.
Miles DavisI can tell. I'm gifted with that, you know. When I hear that the tempo is slightly off, it's hard for me.
Miles DavisJapanese people they hear my warmin' up and they start screamin'. They can tell it's me.It's my tone on the trumpet, it sounds like I'm speakin'.
Miles DavisA lot of people ask me where music is going today. I think it's going in short phrases. If you listen, anybody with an ear can hear that. Music is always changing. It changes because of the times and the technology that's available, the material that things are made of, like plastic cars instead of steel. So when you hear an accident today it sounds different, not all the metal colliding like it was in the forties and fifties. Musicians pick up sounds and incorporate that into their playing, so the music that they make will be different.
Miles DavisThe reason [drummers] call things "unison", and they sound unison, is because you actually play two different tempos . . . like you're a little sharp, or a little flat; it's so slight that they call it "unison", but it's not unison.
Miles DavisI don't pay no attention to what critics say about me, the good or the bad. The toughest critic I got is myself...and I'm too vain to play anything I think is bad.
Miles DavisIt's not about standing still and becoming safe. If anybody wants to keep creating they have to be about change.
Miles DavisAudiences - they like colour, you know. I can go out there wearing a red suit, man, and they'll say I'm out of sight ... I think they should be educated; you should always drop something on an audience ... When you get in front of an audience, you should try to give 'em something. After all, they're there looking at you like this. You can't go out and give 'em nothing.
Miles DavisThe music has gotten thick. Guys give me tunes and they're full of chords. I can't play them...I think a movement in jazz is beginning away from the conventional string of chords, and a return to emphasis on melodic rather than harmonic variation. There will be fewer chords but infinite possibilities as to what to do with them.
Miles DavisIf I hear a song like "Time After Time." I'm sittin' there lookin' at video and Cindy Lauper comes on singin' this song. I said, "God damnnnnn!"
Miles DavisIf I have a dynamite bass player - I have Darryl Jones - it's so easy to write for him because he's such a funky kid and he's gifted. He's like a little genius.
Miles DavisI don't like to hear someone put down dixieland. Those people who say there's no music but bop are just stupid; it shows how much they don't know.
Miles DavisDave [Holland] plays the way he wants to play. And it's usually what's needed. You know, Dave is such a deep thinker. You can't tell him too much, else it might spoil his spirit, you know.
Miles DavisAmericans don't like any form of art, man. All they like to do is make money. They don't like me, Sammy Davis, or anybody else. They don't like nothing. They just like Sammy because he can make 'em a lot of money.
Miles Davis