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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

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Charles Mingus
Age: 56 †
Born: 1922
Born: April 22
Died: 1979
Died: January 5
Bandleader
Bassist
Composer
Conductor
Jazz Musician
Musician
Pianist
Nogales
Arizona
Charlie Mingus
Charles Mingus Jr.
Together
Jazz
Playin
Thing
Bird
Gettin
Like
Guys
Clique
People
Aren
Separated
High
Symbol
Guy
Symbols
Individual
Believed
Used
Individuals

More quotes by Charles Mingus

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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
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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
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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
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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
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I was always doing revolutionary things, things that would alert people, so they would stop being so subservient.
Charles Mingus
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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
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Anybody can make the simple complecated. Creativity is making the complecated simple.
Charles Mingus
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I never heard my music played the way I heard it in my head.
Charles Mingus
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In my music, I'm trying to play the truth of what I am.
Charles Mingus
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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
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If someone has been escaping reality, I don't expect him to dig my music.
Charles Mingus
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They're singing your praises while stealing your phrases.
Charles Mingus
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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
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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
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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
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Making the simple complicated is commonplace making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.
Charles Mingus
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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
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Let my children have music! Let them hear live music.
Charles Mingus
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Everything I do is Mingus.
Charles Mingus
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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