"I never tried to prove nothing, just wanted to give a good show. My life has always been my music, it's always come first, but the music ain't worth nothing if you can't lay it on the public. The main thing is to live for that audience, 'cause what you're there for is to please the people."

-- Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong

"What we play is life."

-- Louis Armstrong

"When I go to the Gate, I'll play a duet with Gabriel. Yeah, we'll play 'Sleepy Time Down South' and 'Hello, Dolly!.' Then he can blow a couple that he's been playing up there all the time"

-- Louis Armstrong, on his 70th birthday

"My whole life, my whole soul, my whole spirit is to blow that horn," Louis Armstrong told a doctor a few months before he died in 1971. No, he wouldn't cancel an upcoming date at the Waldorf-Astoria. "The people are waiting for me," he said. "I got to do it, Doc, I got to do it."

Never play a thing the same way twice”

There is no such thing as 'on the way out' as long as you are still doing something interesting and good; you're in the business because you're breathing”

There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell them.”

We all do 'do, re, mi,' but you have got to find the other notes yourself.”

I never tried to prove nothing, just wanted to give a good show. My life has always been my music, it's always come first, but the music ain't worth nothing if you can't lay it on the public. The main thing is to live for that audience, 'cause what you're there for is to please the people.”

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

“I got a simple rule about everybody. If you don't treat me right / shame on you!”

“There is two kinds of music the good and bad. I play the good kind.”

The memory of things gone is important to a jazz musician. Things like old folks singing in the moonlight in the back yard on a hot night or something said long ago.”

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