Quotes by Charles Mingus - Page 1

Everything I do is Mingus.
Charles Mingus / Bassist
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Jazz is the language of the emotions.
Charles Mingus / Bassist
Emotion
Jazz
Language
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Jazz music is a language of the emotions.
Charles Mingus / Bassist
Music
Emotion
Jazz
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I always wanted to be a spontaneous composer.
Charles Mingus / Bassist
Music
Composer
Jazz
Spontaneous
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Making the simple complicated is commonplace.
Charles Mingus / Bassist
Creativity
Plain Language
Simple
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My music is evidence of my souls will to live.
Charles Mingus / Bassist
Evidence
Music Is
Soul
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My music is evidence of my soul's will to live.
Charles Mingus / Bassist
Evidence
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Making the complicated simple is true creativity.
Charles Mingus / Bassist
Complicated
Creativity
Simple
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If you think this is weird, just look at yourselves.
Charles Mingus / Bassist
Ifs
Looks
Thinking
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Let my children have music! Let them hear live music.
Charles Mingus / Bassist
Music
Children
My Children
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In my music, I'm trying to play the truth of what I am.
Charles Mingus / Bassist
Jazz And Life
Play
Trying
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They're singing your praises while stealing your phrases.
Charles Mingus / Bassist
Music
Jazz
Phrases
Singing
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I never heard my music played the way I heard it in my head.
Charles Mingus / Bassist
Heard
Way
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Bach is how buildings got taller. It's how we got to the moon.
Charles Mingus / Bassist
Building
Moon
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If someone has been escaping reality, I don't expect him to dig my music.
Charles Mingus / Bassist
Music
Escaping
Reality
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If Charlie Parker were a Gunslinger, There'd be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats
Charles Mingus / Bassist
Charlie
Copycats
Gunslinger
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Anybody can make the simple complecated. Creativity is making the complecated simple.
Charles Mingus / Bassist
Creativity
Simple
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Tastes are created by the business interests. How else can you explain the popularity of Al Hirt?
Charles Mingus / Bassist
Als
Jazz
Taste
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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.
Charles Mingus / Bassist
Music
Jazz
Play
Trying
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Whatever coast he's on, a man should be himself. I don't write in any particular idiom, I write Charles Mingus.
Charles Mingus / Bassist
Men
Style
Writing
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Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.
Charles Mingus / Bassist
Inspirational
Inspiring
Learning
Music
Commonplace
Complicated
Creativity
Simple
Making
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I was always doing revolutionary things, things that would alert people, so they would stop being so subservient.
Charles Mingus / Bassist
People
Revolutionary
Subservient
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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.
Charles Mingus / Bassist
Music
Play
Way
Writing
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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.
Charles Mingus / Bassist
Care
Musician
Play
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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?
Charles Mingus / Bassist
Order
Play
Waiting
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I always thought that no matter what kind of work people did, they should involve themselves totally with all the discrimination they ran into.
Charles Mingus / Bassist
Discrimination
Matter
People
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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?
Charles Mingus / Bassist
Expression
Thinking
Writing
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Life has many changes. Tomorrow it may rain, and it's supposed to be sunshine, 'cause it's summertime. But God's got a funny soul, he plays like Charlie Parker.
Charles Mingus / Bassist
Play
Rain
Sunshine
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In high school I was on the basketball team, but the coach did something I didn't dig and the next day he looked up and saw me practising with the football team.
Charles Mingus / Bassist
Basketball
Basketball Team
Football
Football Team
Team
Football Me Day
Coach
Dig
Practising
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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.'
Charles Mingus / Bassist
Music
Crazy
Falling In Love
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I am Charles Mingus. Half-black man. Yellow man. Half-yellow. Not even yellow, nor white enough to pass for nothing but black and not too light enough to be called white.
Charles Mingus / Bassist
Black
Enough
Light
White
Yellow
Charles
Man Black I Am
Nor
Pass
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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.
Charles Mingus / Bassist
Boys
Hands
Swings
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I'm going to keep on finding out the kind of man I am through my music. That's the one place I can be free. But the reason it's difficult is because I'm changing all the time.
Charles Mingus / Bassist
Time Music Man
Changing
Finding
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I've got a feeling that if it's so easy for you - the struggle and the initiative are not as strong as they are for a person who has to struggle and therefore has more to say.
Charles Mingus / Bassist
Feelings
Strong
Struggle
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Creativity is more than just being different. Anybody can plan weird; that's easy. What's hard is to be as simple as Bach. Making the simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.
Charles Mingus / Bassist
Art
Inspirational
Music
Smile
Being Different
Creativity
Different
Easy
Hard
Simple
Weird
Anybody
Bach
Making
Plan
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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.
Charles Mingus / Bassist
Men
Black
White
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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'.
Charles Mingus / Bassist
Bird
Guy
People
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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.
Charles Mingus / Bassist
Teacher
School
Son
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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.
Charles Mingus / Bassist
Attention
Listening
Symphony
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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.
Charles Mingus / Bassist
Men
Musical
Stupidity
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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.
Charles Mingus / Bassist
Morning
Couple
Night
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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.
Charles Mingus / Bassist
Art
Music
Player
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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.
Charles Mingus / Bassist
God
Men
Thinking
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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.
Charles Mingus / Bassist
Teacher
Mean
Singing
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Charles Mingus Quotes - Page 1

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