Louis Armstrong

“Well, I tell you... the first chorus, I plays the melody. The second chorus, I plays the melody round the melody, and the third chorus, I routines.”

“All music is folk music. I ain't never heard a horse sing a song.”

“The memory of things gone is important to a jazz musician.”

“There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell them.”

“When this ugly gangster told Joe Glaser that he must take the name of Armstrong down, off of the marquee, and it was an 'order from Al Capone,' Mr. Glaser looked this cat straight in the face and told him these words: 'I think that Louis Armstrong is the world's greatest, and this is my place, and I defy anybody to take his name down from there.'”

“הוא נולד עני, מת עשיר, ולא פגע באף אחד לאורך הדרך.”

“אתה לא יכול לנגן בחצוצרה משהו שלואי לא ניגן קודם.”

“הוא היה המוזיקאי היחיד שאינו בר תחליף.”

“בית הלבנים היה אחד המקומות הקשוחים ביותר שניגנתי בהם... בחורים היו שותים ואז מכים אחד את השני כמו מסורים חשמליים. בקבוקים עפו מעל הבמה ולא היה נדיר לראות יריות ודקירות. אבל איכשהו, כל ההמולה הזו לא פגעה בי כלל. אני הייתי כל כך שמח שהיה לי מקום בו יכולתי לנשוף בחצוצרה.”

“מוזיקאים אף-פעם לא פורשים. הם מפסיקים רק כשאין בהם עוד מוזיקה.”

“כל מוזיקה היא מוזיקה עממית, מעולם לא שמעתי סוס שר שיר.”

“אם אתה חייב לשאול, לעולם לא תדע.”

“מה שאנו מנגנים אלו החיים עצמם.”

“Very few of the men whose names have become great in the early pioneering of jazz and of swing were trained in music at all. They were born musicians: they felt their music and played by ear and memory. That was the way it was with the great Dixieland Five.”

“'Cat?' 'Cat' can be anybody from the guy in the gutter to a lawyer, doctor, the biggest man to the lowest man, but if he's in there with a good heart and enjoy the same music together, he's a cat.”

“Man, if you have to ask what it [jazz] is, you’ll never know.”

“If you have to ask what jazz is you will never know." Louis Armstrong”

“When I play, maybe 'Back o' Town Blues,' I'm thinking about one of the old, low-down moments - when maybe your woman didn't treat you right. That's a hell of a moment when a woman tell you, 'I got another mule in my stall.'”

“I gathered that those two Big-shot Boys, Joe + Fletcher, just was afraid to let me sing, thinking maybe I'd sort of ruin their reputations with their musical public. They not knowing that I had been singing all of my life. In churches, etc. I had one of the finest All Boys Quartets that ever walked the streets of New Orleans.”

“Music is life itself. What would this world be without good music? No matter what kind it is.”