Charles Mingus discusses live performances.

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Charles Mingus discusses the blues.

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Charles Mingus discusses musical inspiration.

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Q: “Where do you think your music comes from? From your head, or is it something that you just write down, or what?”

A: “Well, I think that everybody is born to like sound, some sounds of beauty. If they can find themselves in it, you know, they’re very fortunate people. The way I would say it is that Duke woke me up, you know, to the deepest thing in myself. Duke, I don't say Duke alone because I listen to Sibinski [ph]. I listen to Ravelle [ph] I listen to Debussy and I listen to Ricard Strauss, not Richard, Ricard. That’s one of the dance and jazz configurations. You see, when I was a kid, there was hardly any ... there was no rhythm and blues records in Watts where I live. You have classical and a few jazz records that you got around, but there was no black market for records, you know, like in later in ’38, ’39 and ’40, they didn’t have a store where the Black people ... for Black people to buy music. Because in the old days, black people had their own music. They don't have it anymore. It's been taken from them. It’s been integrated by the White man, so they don’t have their own, they don’t even know their own music, which is jazz, basically. But still even the blues is Black, is a Black man’s music. I mean, when I say that I’m saying the same as the Jewish have their chance, Greek music, Greek musicians. Spanish people have their Flamenco. They have their own sound that people, the minute you do it, recognize it while the American Black man doesn’t have that music. And in the olden days, they did. And it was Duke, it was T-Bone Walker. The first was T-Bone Walker, the first with that kind of blues, a man who can play all the emotions of the people.”