Brass Bands Quotes

• It is impossible to capture the essence, tolerance, and spirit of south Louisiana in words.

  Chris Rose

  Essence, Tolerance, Louisiana

  Chris Rose (2015). “1 Dead in Attic: After Katrina”, p.212, Simon and Schuster

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• Mac Rebennack, better known as Dr. John, once told me that when a brass band plays at a small club back up in one of the neighborhoods, it’s as if the audience—dancing, singing to the refrains, laughing—is part of the band.

  Tom Piazza

  Play, Dancing, Laughing

  Tom Piazza (2009). “Why New Orleans Matters”, p.25, Harper Collins

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• As fog moved to the mainland I heard a flock of birds fly over. They sounded like a dress rustling, a dress being unfastened and dropping to the floor. Fog came unpinned like hair. On the beach cliffs, great colonies of datura - jimson weed - with their white trumpet flowers, looked like brass bands.

  Gretel Ehrlich

  Weed, Beach, Flower

  Gretel Ehrlich (1994). “A match to the heart”, Pantheon

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• In 'thinking up' music I usually have some kind of a brass band with wings on it in back of my mind.

  Charles Ives

  Thinking, Wings, Mind

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• I find brass bands have a melancholy sound. All right out of doors, of course - fifty miles away. Like bagpipes, they turn what had been a dream into a public nuisance.

  Thomas Beecham

  Dream, Doors, Sound

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• Brass bands are all very well in their place - outdoors and several miles away.

  Thomas Beecham

  Funny, Music, Miles

  “Readers recommend: best brass songs” by Peter Kimpton, www.theguardian.com. June 26, 2014.

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• As a youngster in the little orphanage home in New Orleans, I was the bugler of the institution. When I got to be around 13 or 14 years old, they took me off the bugle and put me in the little brass band.

  Louis Armstrong

  Home, New Orleans, Years

  Source: blankonblank.org

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• I was brought up on choirs and brass bands. They formed the music of my childhood. When I heard the Treorchy Male Choir at the Royal Variety Performance it brought back such happy memories. You have your own eminent place in the history of British music. You stand for excellence in a great tradition and your work for charity is both an example and an inspiration.

  Michael Parkinson

  Memories, Inspiration, Childhood

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• I'm not going to lay down in words the lure of this place. Every great writer in the land, from Faulkner to Twain to Rice to Ford, has tried to do it and fallen short. It is impossible to capture the essence, tolerance, and spirit of south Louisiana in words and to try is to roll down a road of clichés, bouncing over beignets and beads and brass bands and it just is what it is. It is home.

  Chris Rose

  Home, Land, Essence

  Chris Rose (2015). “1 Dead in Attic: After Katrina”, p.212, Simon and Schuster

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• They tell me that So-and-So, who does not write prefaces, is no charlatan. Well, I am. I first caught the ear of the British public on a cart in Hyde Park, to the blaring of brass bands,and this . . . because . . . I am a natural-born mountebank.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Writing, Doe, Ears

  George Bernard Shaw (2006). “Three Plays for Puritans”, p.36, Penguin UK

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• As you'll never hear the thing again, my boy, why not throw in a couple of brass bands?

  Thomas Beecham

  Couple, Boys, Why Not

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• In people's eyes, in the swing, tramp, and trudge; in the bellow and uproar; the carriages, motor cars, omnibuses, vans, sandwich men shuffling and swinging; brass bands; barrel organs; in the triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane overhead was what she loved; life; London; this moment in June.

  Virginia Woolf

  Eye, Men, June

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.852, Delphi Classics

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• Parents can fail to cheer your successes as wildly as you expected, pointing out that you are sharing your Nobel Prize with a couple of other people, or that your Oscar was for supporting actress, not really for a starring role. More subtly, they can cheer your successes too wildly, forcing you into the awkward realization that your achievement of merely graduating or getting the promotion did not warrant the fireworks and brass band.

  Frank Pittman

  Couple, Cheer, People

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• we Irish don't really need thousands of people surging behind a big brass band to have a parade. One guitar player and a few people whistling will do the job.

  Gene Tierney

  Jobs, Player, Guitar

  Gene Tierney, Mickey Herskowitz (1979). “Self-portrait”, Peter Wyden

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• Damn flowers. Nice kids, the ones who skated out and gave us them. But the flowers, the stem fell off. I stepped right on it and was on my ass in a flash. Must have looked good, huh? A hundred million guys watching all around the world, brass bands playing, the Russian cats in the stands, and here I am dumped on the ice. So I waved to the folks back home inthe Soo, a wave from the dummy with egg on his face.

  Phil Esposito

  Nice, Flower, Home

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• Father was an atheist; he had even joined the Skeleton Army - a club of men who went about in masks or black faces, with ribald placards and a brass band, to make war upon the Salvation Army.

  A. E. Coppard

  Atheist, Father, War

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• As many bands as you heard [in New Orleans], that's how many bands you heard playing right. I thought I was in Heaven playing second trumpet in the Tuxedo Brass Band -- and they had some funeral marches that would just touch your heart, they were so beautiful.

  Louis Armstrong

  Beautiful, Heart, New Orleans

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