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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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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.
People
Ran
Discrimination
Totally
Thought
Matter
Work
Kind
Always
Involve

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