A Quote by Charles Mingus

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.
I went up to his [Hank Jones'] house and there were four guys there: Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, and Max Roach. Not a bad place to be. Scared shitless, but a nice place to be on my second day in New York.
In those days before hearing Charlie Parker and Dizzy, and before learning of the so-called bebop era--by the way, I have some thoughts about that word, "bebop"--my first jazz hero ever, jazz improvisor hero, was Lester Young. I was a big "Lester Young-oholic," and all of my buddies were Lester Young-oholics. We'd get together and dissect, analyze, discuss, and listen to Lester Young's solos for hours and hours and hours. He was our god.
Ornette Coleman is doing the only really new thing in jazz since the innovations in the mid-forties of Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, and those of Thelonious Monk
I believe, from reading biographies, that the great musicians have also been great cooks: Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Max Roach. I think I've worked out why this is - unsociable hours, plus general creativity.
Bop began with Jazz but one afternoon somewhere on a sidewalk maybe 1939, 1940, Dizzy Gillespie or Charlie Parker or Thelonious Monk was walking past a men's clothing store on 42nd Street or South Main in L.A. and from a loudspeaker they suddenly heard a wild impossible mistake in jazz that could only have been heard inside their own imaginary head, and that is a new art. Bop.
Charlie Parker was a genius, as was Lester Young.
I’ve worked with such legendary guitar players as Allan Holdsworth, Ronnie Montrose, Eric Clapton, Lowell George and Steve Vai, but none of them come close to having Ed’s [Eddie Van Halen's] fantastic combination of chops and musicianship. I rank him along with Charlie Parker and Art Tatum as one of the three greatest musicians of my lifetime. Unfortunately, I don’t think Ed puts himself in that class.
As a very small girl, I listened to Charlie Parker and loved him and Max Roach and people like that.
Charlie Parker and Art Tatum to me were genius, and I'm right below that. I did, in my own way, do something different on the instrument, and that's the way I'd like to be remembered.
I can't get very excited about a musician who can do Art Tatum because I've got the Art Tatum records. I want to hear him take that and do something that hasn't been done. And there's enough of that going around that keeps the music very exciting. There's so many great young players coming out. I think we're in some kind of renaissance, especially in the rhythm section. I mean the musicians on drums and bass and guitar are really trying to figure out different ways to bring a rhythm section together.
I was in New York, miserable because I was working supper clubs but I wasn't expressing myself. I was really unhappy with my life. I saw Max Roach again and he told me I didn't have to do things like that. He made me an honest woman on the stage. I have been performing in that tradition since. I feel that I'm a serious performer now whereas then I wanted to be but I didn't know how.
We[ Papa Roach ]'re always trying to get bigger and bigger. It's weird because I wasn't around when they sold millions of records. Now it's just always about "OK what new people can we get to." We're trying to package up with younger bands like Bring Me the Horizon or Of Mice and Men. Those bands always get talked about, because their demographic is so young. But, actually we are seeing a lot of younger people at shows which is awesome.
I always thought it's not that the greatest players in the world come from New York. It's just the guys who shouldn't have made it, they came from New York. That's what makes New York special.
I grew up with all these old jazz guys in the '70s in L.A., and they grew up idolizing Charlie Parker, Charles Mingus, Lester Young - all of these incredible musicians.
The Metropole Orchestra is like Count Basie or Duke Ellington with strings... it's strings that swing. Strings that swing like Dizzy Gillespie... keep swinging, baby. And when you have all of that special excellence of the Metropole Orchestra, then your music just flies - it soars in a way that's really magical.
Sneakers are a new era. Anyone can feel new with a new pair of shoes. They make you feel contemporary. It's fun because I'm not a young designer, and it opens my brain. Hip-hop isn't just for the U.S. Everyone loves it.
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