Louis Armstrong

“What we play is life.”

“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 ungod...”

“I was determined to play my horn against all odds, and I had to sacrifice a whole lot of pleasure to do so.”

“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 fac...”

“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 Sat...”

“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...”

“If you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know.”

“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,...”

“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...”

“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 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...”

“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...”

“We never did try to get together and to show the younger Negroes such as myself, to try and even to show that he has ambitions - and with just a little encouragement, I could have really don...”

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

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

“The first time I heard Jack Teagarden on the trombone, I had goose pimples all over.”

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

“I like kissable lips. A woman's lips must say, 'Come here and kiss me, Pops.'”

“Musicians don't retire; they stop when there's no more music in them.”