Scott Joplin Quotes

Learn at least two classic ballroom dances, at least one of them Latin.

I love Viennese waltzes and polkas, and especially ceilidhs and old-fashioned formation dancing.

I thought the Charleston would be a bit like the jive, but it isn't really.

When you're out dancing with your friends, you think you're cool. But then you get in the ballroom, and it's totally different.

Black people have always loved the blues - they basically created the blues.

Hip is the knowledge and Hop is the movement.

This be an empty world without the blues.

Daddy, What's the horizontal tango?

I was exceedingly delighted with the waltz, and also with the polka. These differ in name, but there the difference ceases

They say that Jazz is back, and I don't think it's gone anywhere. But they say it's back.

Dance, v.i. To leap about to the sound of tittering music, preferably with arms about your neighbor's wife or daughter. There are many kinds of dances, but all those requiring the participation of the two sexes have two characteristics in common: they are conspicuously innocent, and warmly loved by the vicious.

Jazz I regard as an American folk music; not the only one, but a very powerful one which is probably in the blood and feeling of the American people more than any other style of folk music.

When I sort of step in my jazz world, it's somewhere between instrumental jazz and vocal jazz.

Jazz was born out of the whiskey bottle, was raised on marijiana, and will expire on cocaine.

An hour before his world exploded like a ripe tomato under a stiletto heel, Myron bit into a fresh pastry that tasted suspiciously like urinal cake.

The aim of jazz is the mechanical reproduction of a regressive moment, a castration symbolism. 'Give up your masculinity, let yourself be castrated,' the eunuchlike sound of the jazz band both mocks and proclaims, 'and you will be rewarded, accepted into a fraternity which shares the mystery of impotence with you, a mystery revealed at the moment of the initiation rite.

It's never hard to sing the blues. Everyone in the world has the blues . . .

Most of the people who came for dancing lessons had Rumba ambitions and minuet bodies

The blues is the roots, the rest is the fruits.

When I pitched headforemost into the world I landed in the crib of Negroism.

I like birthdays. Every time someone is born, that's just like bringing more cake into the world.

Being a blues singer is like being black two times.

A lot of people wonder, what is the blues? Well, I'm gonna tell you what the blues is.

Dance well with a woman, and she's halfway yours.

No matter what happens in the future, rock and roll will save the world.