Norman Granz Quotes
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Ellington is a writer and arranger, as well as a musician and leader. He does movie sound tracks.
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In 1958, I decided that I was going to live in Europe permanently. So in 1959 I moved to Lugano, Switzerland.
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The public, hearing pop music, is, without knowing it, also soaking up jazz.
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You’re probably smarter than you present yourself.
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At Verve, my bookkeeper would invariably say, 'Well, why do you want to put out Roy Eldridge?' Or 'Why do you want to put out Ben Webster? They don't sell.' And I'd say, 'Well, whether they sell or not, they're important, they should be recorded and they're what Verve stands for, so we don't have to discuss that any further.
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To play today in London, next week in Madrid and the week after that in Warsaw is a bit better than playing Newark and Baltimore and Philadelphia. I've been doing that for 20 years.
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You will always find a few people in any area that would like things done completely their way.
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I still continue to do at least four concert tours a year, and in many cases, as many as six.
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Sponsors and networks will really go all out and simply evaluate people on the basis of talent.
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I don't say that the supposed Civil Rights development is a myth, but it's a matter of dealing with reality. It's purely peripheral and, in many cases, it's just a facade.
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I'm talking as a professional impresario. I'm not judging anybody at all.
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The record companies are interested in the kind of sales they can get from the rock groups.
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Amsterdam must have more than a million people. But the only area where jazz is really profitable and successful in an economic sense is in Japan. That's because they haven't been exposed enough.
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Germany is probably the richest country in Western Europe. Yet they wouldn't take any television with Duke and Ella, their reaction being that people weren't interested in it.
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I don't think that jazz, as any kind of an art form, has any permanence attached to it, apart from the practitioners of it.
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The history of all big jazz bands shows was, first they played for dancing, and then they played for singing.
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I don't want to sound as if I'm doing something tremendously special. But I am a jazz fan.
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If you look at my audiences, even in Europe, they're hardly teenagers.
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If I were to put on Barbra Streisand and Duke Ellington, one might say the combination isn't good.
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I don't know who's 18 years old today that, 20 years hence, is going to be a jazz fan.
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I don't think I will ever do any tours again in the United States. I rather think that that's over with.
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The whole reason for Jazz at the Philharmonic was to take it to places where I could break down segregation.
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As long as we're in a democracy, I have to give what I think the majority of people will enjoy.
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My juices needed restoring. I needed a sabbatical from the record business.