Charles Mingus famous quotes

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

#Creativity #Simple #Carpe Diem

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

#Way #Heard

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

#Music #Jazz #Emotion

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

#Music #Art #Player

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

#Music #Play #Trying

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

#Inspirational #Inspiring #Music

Everything I do is Mingus.
-- Charles Mingus

#Jazz

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

#Music #Singing #Phrases

Making the simple complicated is commonplace; ...
-- Charles Mingus

#Simple #Complicated

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

#Music #Children #My Children

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

#Music #Falling In Love #Crazy

My music is evidence of my souls will to live.
-- Charles Mingus

#Soul #Music Is #Evidence

If you think this is weird, just look at yourselves.
-- Charles Mingus

#Thinking #Looks

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

#Boys #Swings #Hands

Jazz is the language of the emotions.
-- Charles Mingus

#Jazz #Emotion #Language

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

#Strong #Struggle #Feelings

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

#Als #Taste #Jazz

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

#Music #Reality #Escaping

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

#Moon #Building

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

#Teacher #Mean #Singing

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

#Symphony #Listening #Attention

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

#Copycats #Gunslinger #Charlie

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

#Music #Spontaneous #Composer

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

#Men #Stupidity #Musical

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

#Writing #Thinking #Expression

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

#Teacher #School #Son

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

#Basketball #Football #Team

Making the complicated simple is true creativity.
-- Charles Mingus

#Creativity #Simple #Complicated

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

#Music #Writing #Play

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

#People #Guy #Bird

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

#Order #Play #Waiting

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

#Play #Musician #Care

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

#Creativity #Simple

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

#Men #White #Black