"You got Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and my man, the Earl of Hines, right? Well, Benny's right up there with all them cats. Everybody that knows who he is calls him 'King.' He is a king! -- Louis Armstrong (on Benny Carter)
source: 'A Call to Assembly' by Willie Ruff, Viking, 1991.
Showing posts with label Louis Armstrong Quotes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Louis Armstrong Quotes. Show all posts
Louis Armstrong Quotes
"If you decide to walk into the schools with the little colored kids, take me along, Daddy." - Louis Armstrong (wired message to President Eisenhower, regarding Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, 1957)
source: NY Times (published: September 23, 2007)
source: NY Times (published: September 23, 2007)
Louis Armstrong Quotes
"It's getting almost so bad a colored man hasn't got any country." - Louis Armstrong
source: NY Times (published: September 23, 2007)
source: NY Times (published: September 23, 2007)
Louis Armstrong Quotes
"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." - Louis Armstrong
source: 'Hear Me Talkin' to Ya: The Story of Jazz As Told by the Men Who Made It' (Nat Shapiro, First published 1966)
source: 'Hear Me Talkin' to Ya: The Story of Jazz As Told by the Men Who Made It' (Nat Shapiro, First published 1966)
Louis Armstrong Quotes
"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." - Louis Armstrong
source: 'Hear Me Talkin' to Ya: The Story of Jazz As Told by the Men Who Made It' (Nat Shapiro, First published 1966)
source: 'Hear Me Talkin' to Ya: The Story of Jazz As Told by the Men Who Made It' (Nat Shapiro, First published 1966)
Louis Armstrong Quotes
"It really puzzles me to see marijuana connected with narcotics dope and all of that stuff. It is a thousand times better than whiskey. It is an assistant and a friend." - Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong Quotes
"At first it was just a misdemeanor, but then you lost the "mis-de" and you just got meaner and meaner.." - Louis Armstrong (A reference to the anti-marijuana laws of the 1930s)
Louis Armstrong Quotes
"Some of you young folks been saying to me, "Hey Pops, what you mean 'What a wonderful world'? How about all them wars all over the place? You call them wonderful? And how about hunger and pollution? That aint so wonderful either." Well how about listening to old Pops for a minute. Seems to me, it aint the world that's so bad but what we're doin' to it. And all I'm saying is, see, what a wonderful world it would be if only we'd give it a chance. Love baby, love. That's the secret, yeah. If lots more of us loved each other, we'd solve lots more problems. And then this world would be better. That's wha' ol' Pops keeps saying." - Louis Armstrong
source: Spoken intro to "What a Wonderful World" (1970 version)
source: Spoken intro to "What a Wonderful World" (1970 version)
Louis Armstrong Quotes
"The Brick House was one of the toughest joints I ever played in ... Guys would drink and fight one another like circle saws. Bottles would come flying over the bandstand like crazy and there was lots of plain common shooting and cutting. But somehow all that jive didn't faze me at all. I was so happy to have some place to blow my horn." - Louis Armstrong
source: Satchmo: My Life in New Orleans (1954)
source: Satchmo: My Life in New Orleans (1954)
Louis Armstrong Quotes
"It makes you feel good, man, makes you forget all the bad things that happen to a Negro. It makes you feel wanted, and when you're with another tea smoker, it makes you feel a special kinship." - Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong Quotes
"The way they're treating my people in the South, the government can go to hell." - Louis Armstrong
source: New York Times, September 19, 1957
source: New York Times, September 19, 1957
Louis Armstrong Quotes
"I spent nine days in the Downtown Los Angeles City Jail. The judge gave me a suspended sentence and I went to work that night - wailed just like nothing happened. What strucked me funny though - I laughed real loud when several movie stars came up to the bandstand while we played a dance set and told me, when they heard about me getting caught with marijuana, they thought marijuana was a chick. Woo boy - that really fractured me!" - Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong Quotes
"We did call ourselves vipers, which could have been anybody from all walks of life that smoked and respected gage. That was our cute little name for marijuana, and it was a misdemeanor in those days. Much different from the pressure and charges the law lays on a guy who smokes pot - a later name for the same thing. We always looked at pot as a sort of medicine, a cheap drunk and with much better thoughts than one that's full of liquor." - Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong Quotes
"The people are waiting for me. I got to do it, Doc, I got to do it." - Louis Armstrong (sick, 1971, speaking to his doctor, regarding a show at the Waldorf-Astoria)
Louis Armstrong Quotes
"Hot can be cool, and cool can be hot, and each can be both. But hot or cool, man, jazz is jazz." - Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong Quotes
"If I don't practice for a day, I know it. If I don't practice for two days, the critics know it. And if I don’t practice for three days, the public knows it." - Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong Quotes
"Making money ain't nothing exciting to me. You might be able to buy a little better booze than the wino on the corner. But you get sick just like the next cat and when you die you're just as graveyard dead as he is." - Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong Quotes
"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." - Louis Armstrong
