Actually, I have another record I made with them in 1976, but I've had such a bad experience with record companies, because I keep my head so much in music and not in business.
~Ornette Coleman

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After I left Texas and went to California, I had a hard time getting anyone to play anything that I was writing, so I had to end up playing them myself. And that's how I ended up just being a saxophone player.
~Ornette Coleman

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Even when you write it, someone's got to play it. So if you can play it and bypass all the rest of the things, you're still doing as great as someone that has spent forty years trying to find out how to do that. I'm really pro-human beings, pro-expression of everything.
~Ornette Coleman

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I asked my mother could I have an instrument. She said, 'Well if you go out and save your money.' So I went and got - I made me a shine box. I went out and started shining shoes, and I'd bring whatever I made.
~Ornette Coleman

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I decided, if I'm going to be poor and black and all, the least thing I'm going to do is to try and find out who I am. I created everything about me.
~Ornette Coleman

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I don't know what they're thinking about. Just because someone says, 'I like what you do' or something: They might like it today and tomorrow they might not. I've had that experience with record companies.
~Ornette Coleman

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I don't really live like a musician myself. I think music is just something that I do, but I'd like to be doing lots of other things. I like to cure all kinds of illness.
~Ornette Coleman

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I mean, if you decided to go out today and get you an instrument and do whatever it is that you do, no one can tell you how you're going to do it but when you do it.
~Ornette Coleman

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I remember once, we got an interview, and he said, 'Dad, these people are writing about me like I'm an adult. Don't they know I'm a kid?' I have never tried to encourage him to get a music image like other musicians have.
~Ornette Coleman

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I think that there are lots of people that play music, but, basically, they have other things that are motivating them to play music.
~Ornette Coleman

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I think that those elements - light and sound - are beyond democratic. They're into the creative part of life.
~Ornette Coleman

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I think those things that are in food are all chemically disastrous when they are placed in the wrong contents where human beings are exposed to it.
~Ornette Coleman

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I'm having this conversation with you now. I'm talking, but I'm thinking, feeling, smelling, and moving. Yet I'm concentrating on what you're saying. So that means there's more things going on in the body than just the present thing that the person's got you doing.
~Ornette Coleman

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I've been playing with Blackwell over 20 years. We used to play when I first went to Los Angeles. Blackwell plays the drums as if he's playing a wind instrument. Actually, he sounds more like a talking drum.
~Ornette Coleman

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I've had those people very interested in my writing. Since I think of myself as a composer, I feel really good. I've had lots of guys call me up. I've gotten two or three commissions to write things. I've written lots of movie scores.
~Ornette Coleman

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I've never had a relationship with a record executive. I always went to the record company by someone that liked my playing. Then they would get fired, and I'd be left with the record company. And then - because they got fired - the record company wouldn't do anything for me.
~Ornette Coleman

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If you decide you want to be treated good, and you treat someone else good, or you want to learn something, it's information. It's getting the right, good information.
~Ornette Coleman

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It seems to me that in the western world, culture has something to do with appearance. A person that's out creating good stuff has got to appreciate someone when they take the time to have an appearance that goes with what they're doing.
~Ornette Coleman

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It's just someone has labelled us as having a different label to do what you do. I find that labels are the worst thing in the world for artistic expression.
~Ornette Coleman

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Most of my relationships have been like that - with record companies. I've never had a legitimate business relationship with a company. I've always had a personal relationship with someone in the company.
~Ornette Coleman

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Music is the say way. If you desire to play it or write it, then you have to get more information. But the end result is that you play music.
~Ornette Coleman

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No one has to learn to spell to talk, right? You see a little kid holding a conversation with an adult. He probably doesn't know the words he's saying, but he knows where to fit them to make what he's thinking logical to what you're saying.
~Ornette Coleman

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Originally, I wanted to be a composer. I always tell people, 'I think of myself as a composer.'
~Ornette Coleman

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So, for instance, if you came to me, I'd ask,'Do you want to write? Do you want to improvise? Why do you want to play this instrument? What do you want to do?'
~Ornette Coleman

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That's what I was trying to say when we were talking about sound. I think that every person, whether they play music or don't play music, has a sound - their own sound, that thing that you're talking about.
~Ornette Coleman

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That's why I haven't been so anxious. But now, lots of people write and say, 'I want to find out what you're doing.' So I know that this book will enlighten them.
~Ornette Coleman

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Those things are the results of what people see and hear that you do. But the human beings themselves are living on a multiple level.
~Ornette Coleman

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To me, human existence exists on a multiple level, not just on a two-dimensional level, not just having to be identified with what you do and what you say.
~Ornette Coleman

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