Charles Mingus
Charles Mingus
Charles Mingus Jr.was an American jazz double bassist, composer and bandleader. His compositions retained the hot and soulful feel of hard bop, drawing heavily from black gospel music and blues, while sometimes containing elements of Third Stream, free jazz, and classical music. He once cited Duke Ellington and church as his main influences...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionBassist
Date of Birth22 April 1922
CityNogales, AZ
CountryUnited States of America
Charles Mingus quotes about
I was born swinging and clapped my hands in church as a little boy, but I've grown up and I like to do things other than just swing. But blues can do more than just swing.
That sound in tune to you? Sounds sharp to me. Sounds like I'm playing sharp all the time. My singing teacher told us you should do that. Maybe I got it from her. She said singers when they grow old have a tendency to go flat. So if you sing sharp as a young person, as you get older and go flat, you'll be in tune. In other words, it's never thought good to be flat. It means you can't get to the tone.
What do you think happens to a composer who is sincere and loves to write and has to wait thirty years to have someone play a piece of his music?
If someone has been escaping reality, I don't expect him to dig my music.
Tastes are created by the business interests. How else can you explain the popularity of Al Hirt?
I was always doing revolutionary things, things that would alert people, so they would stop being so subservient.
Let my children have music! Let them hear live music.
It (jazz) isn't like it used to be. The guys aren't together. They're all separated. Individuals now. Bird was a symbol. It was a clique, a clique of people. Who all believed in one thing: gettin' high. And playin'.
Just because I'm playing Jazz I don't forget about me. I play or write me the way I feel through Jazz.
Bach is how buildings got taller. It's how we got to the moon.
I always thought that no matter what kind of work people did, they should involve themselves totally with all the discrimination they ran into.
Thelonius Monk went over to Bird and Bud Powell and said, 'I told you guys to act crazy, but I didn't tell you to fall in love with the act. You're really crazy now.'
In my music, I'm trying to play the truth of what I am.
Since the white man says he came from the evolution of animals, well, maybe the black man didn't. The white man has made so many errors in the handling of people that maybe he did come from a gorilla or a fish and crawl up on the sand and then into the trees. Of course, evolution doesn't take God into consideration. I don't think people learned to do all the things they do through evolution.