Charles Mingus

"That sound in tune to you? ... Sounds sharp to me. Sounds like Im 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, youll be in tune. In other words, its never thought good to be flat. It means you cant get to the tone."

"Let my children have music! Let them hear live music. Not noise. My children! You do what you want with your own!"

"Good jazz is when the leader jumps on the piano, waves his arms, and yells. Fine jazz is when a tenorman lifts his foot in the air. Great jazz is when he heaves a piercing note for 32 bars and collapses on his hands and knees. A pure genius of jazz is manifested when he and the rest of the orchestra run around the room while the rhythm section grimaces and dances around their instruments."

"My sons a painter. All through school his teachers tell him hes a genius. I tell him to paint me an apple that looks like an apple before he paints me one that doesnt. Go where you can go, but start from someplace recognizable. Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, thats creativity."

"In my music, Im trying to play the truth of what I am. The reason its difficult is because Im changing all the time."

"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? Had I been born in a different country or had I been born white, I am sure I would have expressed my ideas long ago. Maybe they wouldnt have been as good because when people are born free — I cant imagine it, but Ive got a feeling that if its 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."

"Ladies and gentlemen, please dont associate me with any of this. This is not jazz. These are sick people."

"Each jazz musician when he takes a horn in his hand — trumpet, bass, saxophone, drums — whatever instrument he plays — each soloist, that is, when he begins to ad lib on a given composition with a title and improvise a new creative melody, this man is taking the place of a composer."

"I think my own way. I dont think like you and my music isnt meant just for the patting of feet and going down backs. When and if I feel gay and carefree, I write or play that way. When I feel angry I write or play that way — or when Im happy, or depressed, even. Just because Im playing jazz I dont forget about me. I play or write me, the way I feel, through jazz, or whatever. Music is, or was, a language of the emotions. If someone has been escaping reality, I dont expect him to dig my music, and I would begin to worry about my writing if such a person began to really like it. My music is alive and its about the living and the dead, about good and evil. Its angry, yet its real because it knows its angry."

"Since the white man says he came from the evolution of animals, well, maybe the black man didnt. 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 doesnt take God into consideration. I dont think people learned to do all the things they do through evolution."

"It seems so hard for some of us to grow up mentally just enough to realize that there are other persons of flesh and bone, just like us, on this great, big earth. And if they dont ever stand still, move, or "swing," they are as right as we are, even if they are as wrong as hell by our standards. Yes, Miles, I am apologizing for my stupid "Blindfold Test." I can do it gladly because Im learning a little something. No matter how much they try to say that Brubeck doesnt swing — or whatever else theyre stewing or whoever else theyre brewing — its factually unimportant. Not because Dave made Time magazine — and a dollar — but mainly because Dave honestly thinks hes swinging. He feels a certain pulse and plays a certain pulse which gives him pleasure and a sense of exaltation because hes sincerely doing something the way he, Dave Brubeck, feels like doing it. And as you said in your story, Miles, "if a guy makes you pat your foot, and if you feel it down your back, etc.," then Dave is the swingingest by your own definition, Miles, because at Newport and elsewhere Dave had the whole house patting its feet and even clapping its hands...."

"Mingus was always a disaster to have around. I loved him, but he was worse than a child. He didnt know how to clean up behind himself. He could cook, but there would be eggs on the floor and the ceiling. Couldnt find his shoes when he had to go to work, didnt have a white shirt, couldnt write a check. All he could really do was play the bass and write."