Charles Mingus Quotes & Sayings

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

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

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

They're singing your praises while stealing your phrases. — Charles Mingus

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

Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creative. — Charles Mingus

I never heard my music played the way I heard it in my head. — Charles Mingus

Just because I'm playing Jazz I don't forget about me. I play or write me the way I feel through Jazz. — Charles Mingus

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

Making the complicated simple is true creativity. — Charles Mingus

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

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

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

Anybody can make the simple complecated. Creativity is making the complecated simple. — Charles Mingus

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

Bach is how buildings got taller. It's how we got to the moon. — Charles Mingus

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

If Charlie Parker were a Gunslinger, There'd be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats — Charles Mingus

If someone has been escaping reality, I don't expect him to dig my music. — Charles Mingus

I always wanted to be a spontaneous composer. — Charles Mingus

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

Anyone can make the simple complicated. Creativity is making the complicated simple. — Charles Mingus

In my music, I'm trying to play the truth of what I am. — Charles Mingus

Whatever coast he's on, a man should be himself. I don't write in any particular idiom, I write Charles Mingus. — Charles Mingus

I was always doing revolutionary things, things that would alert people, so they would stop being so subservient. — Charles Mingus

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

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

Let my children have music! Let them hear live music. — Charles Mingus

Jazz music is a language of the emotions. — Charles Mingus

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

Everything I do is Mingus. — Charles Mingus

Jazz is the language of the emotions. — Charles Mingus

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

Tastes are created by the business interests. How else can you explain the popularity of Al Hirt? — Charles Mingus

My music is evidence of my soul's will to live. — Charles Mingus

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