Words matter. These are the best Louis Armstrong Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
Music is life itself. What would this world be without good music? No matter what kind it is.
I warm up at home. I hit the stage, I’m ready, whether it’s rehearsal or anything.
If you have to ask what jazz is, you’ll never know.
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.
I had a long time admiration for the Jewish people. Especially with their long time of courage, taking so much abuse for so long. I was only seven years old, but I could easily see the ungodly treatment that the white folks were handing the poor Jewish family whom I worked for.
When the other kids started calling me nicknames, I knew everything was all right. I have a pretty big mouth, so they hit on that and began calling me Gatemouth or Satchelmouth, and that Satchelmouth has stuck to me all my life, except that now it’s been made into ‘Satchmo’ – ‘Satchmo’ Armstrong.
You blows who you is.
‘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.
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.’
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.
I do believe that my whole success goes back to that time I was arrested as a wayward boy at the age of thirteen. Because then I had to quit running around and began to learn something. Most of all, I began to learn music.
We all do ‘do, re, mi,’ but you have got to find the other notes yourself.
What we play is life.
I was determined to play my horn against all odds, and I had to sacrifice a whole lot of pleasure to do so.
There is two kinds of music, the good, and the bad. I play the good kind.
I like kissable lips. A woman’s lips must say, ‘Come here and kiss me, Pops.’
The memory of things gone is important to a jazz musician.
Musicians don’t retire; they stop when there’s no more music in them.
I never want to be anything more than I am; what I don’t have, I don’t need.
All music is folk music. I ain’t never heard a horse sing a song.
