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
Our nights didn't begin until after noon. Because in the old days, you'd start Birdland at 8:30 or 9 pm and play until 4 in the morning. Then you'd go out to the corner and talk to a couple of musicians - I used to talk to Oscar Pettiford a whole lot - you'd stand there till 7, 8 or 9, or else go down to the jam session at Minton's.
If you think this is weird, just look at yourselves.
Making the simple complicated is commonplace; ...
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.
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.
Most customers, by the time the musicians reach the second set, are to some extent inebriated. They don't care what you play anyway.
I'm too busy playing. When I'm playing I don't pay attention to who's listening. When I was listening I listened to symphony orchestras, Beethoven, Bach, Brahms, Stravinsky. You don't listen to one instrument; you listen to music.