Louis Armstrong Quotes - Page 3

It ain't whatcha say, it's the way howcha say it.

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.

I'm a spade, you're an ofay. Let's play.

I'll bet right now most of the youngsters and hot club fans who hear the name Storyville hasn't the least idea that it consisted of some of the biggest prostitutes in the world ... Standing in their doorways nightly in their fine and beautiful negligees -- faintly calling to the boys as they passed their cribs.

When I go to the Gate, I'll play a duet with Gabriel. Yeah, we'll play 'Sleepy Time Down South' and 'Hello, Dolly!.' Then he can blow a couple that he's been playing up there all the time.

Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans. When that's where you left your heart. The moonlight on the bayou a creole tune that fills the air. I dream about magnolias in bloom and I'm wishin' I was there.

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.

Red beans and ricely yours.

Music is either good or bad, and it's got to be learned. You got to have balance.

Never play a thing the same way twice.

[Bebop is] Chinese music.

It's America's classical music ... this becomes our tradition ... the bottom line of any country in the world is what did we contribute to the world? ... we contributed Louis Armstrong

I've Got the World on a String.

Not too slow, not too fast. Kind of like half-fast.

There's a thing I've dreamed of all my life, and I'll be damned if it don't look like it's about to come true-to be King of the Zulu's parade. After that, I'll be ready to die.

Jazz is what I play for a living.

You will never know what the meaning of Jazz is if ask what it means.

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.

White folks still in the lead.

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.

Unless you know what it is I ain't never going to be able to explain it to you.

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.

It's getting almost so bad a colored man hasn't got any country.

We don't play slow and we don't play fast, we play half fast

If you still have to ask, shame on you