Charles Mingus Quotes About Jazz
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Just because I'm playing jazz I don't forget about me. I play or write me, the way I feel, through jazz, or whatever.
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I'm trying to play the truth of what I am. The reason it's difficult is because I'm changing all the time.
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I always wanted to be a spontaneous composer.
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Jazz music is a language of the emotions.
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Most customers, by the time the musicians reach the second set, are to some extent inebriated. They don't care what you play anyway.
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Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.
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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.
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Jazz is the language of the emotions.
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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.'
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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.
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They're singing your praises while stealing your phrases.
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Tastes are created by the business interests. How else can you explain the popularity of Al Hirt?
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Everything I do is Mingus.
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Making the simple complicated is commonplace.
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I, myself, came to enjoy the players who didn't only just swing but who invented new rhythmic patterns, along with new melodic concepts. And those people are: Art Tatum, Bud Powell, Max Roach, Sonny Rollins, Lester Young, Dizzy Gillespie and Charles Parker, who is the greatest genius of all to me because he changed the whole era around.
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In my music, I'm trying to play the truth of what I am.
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Most of the soloists at Birdland had to wait for Parker's next record in order to find out what to play next. What will they do now?
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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'.
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If someone has been escaping reality, I don't expect him to dig my music.
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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.
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