Louis Armstrong Quotes

Louis Armstrong playing trumpet on the Judgment Day.

I didn't plan on rock-n-roll. I wanted to learn jazz; I got to know some people doing rock-n-roll with jazz, and I thought I could make some money playing music.

I'm a pianist - I studied jazz piano in college.

I've been invited to do a trio with a fantastic jazz guitarist and a harmonica player.

I love Ray Charles. He can still teach everybody a lot about how to make great music. Not necessarily how to make hits, but how to make great music. Of course, part of it is his incredible talent. Who are the greatest jazz singers in the world? Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday and Ray Charles.

If you listen to Louis Armstrong from 1929, you will never hear anything better than that really, and you will never hear anything more free than that.

I find early jazz to be the most revolutionary music of its time.

I can play the trumpet. Before I became an actor, I wanted to be the next Louis Armstrong. I started young and got to grade seven. When I turned 13, everyone started whipping out guitars, looking cool and joining rock bands, so I stopped playing.

I went to Juilliard in New York and used to do cabarets just for fun. Occasionally, I would get together with a jazz musician and play at a restaurant for cash. And I've done some background vocals for recording artists.

One performer whose band played my music better than I could myself was Art Farmer. He recorded 'Sing Me Softly of the Blues' and 'Ad Infinitum'.

I'm a trumpet player, and I sing jazz.

We grew up with musicians coming over jamming. We had tons of instruments. So holidays were always like, 50 people would come over, and there would be a jam session with everyone playing jazz.

I really enjoy going out with my jazz group. That's something that I don't ever want to stop doing.

I fell in love with playing the trumpet because of what we call 'hot jazz' of the 1920s and 1930s, music that has a higher energy to it.

You can't play anything on a horn that Louis Armstrong hasn't played

I want to be the jazz singer.

As jazz fans, it was amusing for us to play jazz harmonies on these big, ugly electric guitars.

What will happen when my heart stops beating?" Momo asked. When that moment comes," said the professor, "time will stop for you as well. Or rather, you will retrace your steps through time, through all the days and nights, myths and years of your life, until you go out through the great, round, silver gate you entered by." What will I find on the other side?" The home of the music you've sometimes faintly heard in the distance, but by then you'll be part of it. You yourself will be a note in its mighty harmonies.

I actually wanted to be a jazz musician first. My grandparents introduced me to Louis Armstrong. I loved Louis Armstrong so I took up the trumpet and just did that every day and practiced that.

It takes an intelligent ear to listen to Jazz.

Jazz music is the power of now.

Dear Mama, don't cry, your baby boy's doin' good, Tell the homies I'm in heaven, and they ain't got hoods. Seen a show with Marvin Gaye last night, it had me shook, Drippin' peppermint Schnapps, with Jackie Wilson, and Sam Cooke.

I had been to São Paulo the year before and became pretty well acquainted with the music of composer Antonio Carlos Jobim, I had already started playing that music, and the audience response had been pretty good because those songs are so melodic. I knew it would be something that would be appealing; I wasn't thinking that it would make the top of the pop charts or anything like that.

Intimate singing had a wonderful style in the '30s and '40s. It came out of Broadway and the jazz of Louis Armstrong and Billie Holliday. But Sinatra created the best romantic era that we've ever had.

If you don't like Louis Armstrong, you don't know how to love.