A biography for Don Ellishasn’t been written yet.
“I expect the audience to come up to my level. I am not interested in compromising my music to make it palatable to an assumed sub-standard mass.”
“I got bored with the old way - it came too easy. I worked until I could play and chord changes at any tempo in any key, and then said 'What else is there?' Now I'm finding out.”
“Because when we are right there is not a band in the world that can touch us!”
“If one takes all the styles in jazz harmonically from the earliest beginnings to the latest experiments, he still has a rather limited scope when compared to the rest of music in the world.”
“To be a true artist you have to play the way you feel - not the way others think you should feel.”
“On those long notes behind the trumpet solo, if anyone lets his mind wander for a minute he is dead.”