Mingus Speaks Hardcover - 2013

From the rear cover

"I was privileged to be a close friend of the magnetically original composer, bassist, and leader CharlesMingus, whose deeply energizing music has never left me and many, many others around the world. Mingus was singularly absorbing off the stand and now in this historic book Mingus Speaks, primarily a series of interviews by John Goodman, who as we see is a listener to the music burning to be a soul mate of Charles Mingus as this book proceeds.

The multidimensional inner Mingus who created what he called, not jazz--jazz he said to me once was too limited a description--he created what he called 'Mingus music.' And much of the material here, in the book, has never been available before. For it so reveals and multi-dimensionally explains much of the music, and as long as there is jazz, Mingus speaks for the enthralling listeners around the world and--and I mean this--as they become his music. A book unlike any I've seen on the history of jazz." --Nat Hentoff, author of At the Jazz Band Ball: Sixty Years on the Jazz Scene



"In words as in music, Mingus could erupt like a geyser speaking in tongues. These interviews let you experience his volatile, high-pressure flow of acute insights and outrageous conjectures." --Gene Santoro, author of Myself When I Am Real: The Life and Music of Charles Mingus



"There are many Mingus voices in these interviews: poet, prophet, prolix raconteur, anguished, sometimes angry artist. The early '70s was a dark period in Charles' life and career, a time when he had stopped composing and was trying to find his way--here through the torrents and thickets of language." --Sue Mingus

Media reviews

Citations

• Booklist, 04/15/2013, Page 13
• Foreword, 05/31/2013, Page 0