A Quote by Wynton Marsalis
Duke Ellington always had a style: original, clean with interesting color combinations. He had an artist's eye.
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As for my band, well, my mentors were Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Jimmie Lunceford, and no one had a band more smartly dressed than Duke.
Duke Ellington was famous for hs very original harmonic patterns.
Duke Ellington had a song, "What Am I Here For?" - this is what being pro-life is.
I think I just had it by osmosis: an appreciation of Duke Ellington before I really even knew who he was.
...he went into the sitting room, put on a Duke Ellington record he had bought after seeing Gene Hackman sitting on the overnight bus in The Conversation to the sound of some fragile piano notes that were the loneliest Harry had ever heard.
I remember the night when I was playing at Birdland, and Duke Ellington walked in wearing that cap of his and with all his elegance. The Duke then came backstage, and I was there with my band. That's the one thing I miss.
As an artist I would like to eliminate the symbolic pretty much, for black is interesting not as a color but as a non-color and as the absence of color.
I was always moved by all of the music. As a young man, Duke Ellington and Lionel Hampton, Count Basie and all these great musicians would come through our town of Memphis. There wasn't adequate hotels, so these musicians - the lady who ran the theater knew my mother, who had a large house, and many of them would stay with us. So that was another great blessing, so I'm always around these great geniuses, and to realize their humanity is such a touching thing.
You always come back to Duke Ellington - he's kind of like the thread that holds everything together from the big band descending to lots of jazz, actually.
My teachers are Duke Ellington and nature.
It's, 'Honey, where's the peacock outfit? What about my leather pants?' You have to swat them clean with a brush. And when the makeup artist passed out, I had to finish. That's why Todd would have two different kinds of eye makeup on.
I think it was Duke Ellington who once said that we're always most pleased with our current record. I mean, you have to assume that you learn from one, and you do something better next time.
When I wear makeup, it's never intense; I don't do drag. My style has always been naturalistic and then a pop of color for the eye.
You need to do some work even if you have the talent. So I just went the way that was easier, the way I knew what to do, but I have always had the pleasure of the eye. I've always enjoyed color. I'm a knitter.
I want people to feel what it was like in the '40s. That's when popular music in the United States was so beautiful. Frank Sinatra, the Pied Pipers, Duke Ellington, Fletcher Henderson, Tommy Dorsey, Billie Holiday. That's when popular music had deeper values, to me. This was music that was selling millions of records.
Count Basie was college, but Duke Ellington was graduate school.
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