149 Quotes by Louis Armstrong

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

'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 a cat.

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 done something worthwhile. But instead, we did nothing but let the young upstarts know that they were young and simple, and that was that.

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

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.

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 and memory. That was the way it was with the great Dixieland Five.

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 face and told him these words: 'I think that Louis Armstrong is the world's greatest, and this is my place, and I defy anybody to take his name down from there.'

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

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 ungodly treatment that the white folks were handing the poor Jewish family whom I worked for.