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
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?
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.
If someone has been escaping reality, I don't expect him to dig my music.
I was always doing revolutionary things, things that would alert people, so they would stop being so subservient.
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.
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.'
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.
I admire anyone who can come up with something original. But not originality alone, because there can be originality in stupidity, with no musical description of any emotion or any beauty the man has seen, or any kind of life he has lived.
They're singing your praises while stealing your phrases.
My son's a painter. All through school his teachers tell him he's a genius. I tell him to paint me an apple that looks like an apple before he paints me one that doesn't. Go where you can go, but start from someplace recognizable.
Jazz music is a language of the emotions.
My music is evidence of my souls will to live.
I am Charles Mingus, half black man, not even white enough to pass for nothing but black. I am Charles Mingus, a famed jazzman, but not famed enough to make a living in this society.