Mingus

You're complete right, Jo, the quote was from Charles Mingus.
I found it on a double CD made by Proper in the series Dejavu Retro Jazz Charles Mingus Works 1951-1977.

Charles Mingus is a colourfull figure like Monk. I remember I had an LP or a tape with Mingus music I played all day when I was in my 20s, although I don't remember which one. The music, like Monk's, seemed to be addictive.

I remember to have seen a documentary, called Mingus, about a certain period in his life. In the autumn of 1966 he had rent an apartement ( as a studio for music, painting, sculpture, and other art purposes ) and he had to leave the place, as the owner of the apartement wanted to move into the place himself. The films shows an outcast addicted to drugs and alcohol, living in the middle of unpacked boxes, rubbish and other mess all indications of a licentious life filled with mental problems. It has been some times ago that I saw this documentary, but I remember how he demonstrates his gun by shooting in the ceiling before removed by the police. In the biography Myself When I'm Real Gene Santoro writes about this incident.

He felt discriminated by the color of his skin and was a member or sympathizer of the Black Power movement. He had written a letter to the governor Nelson Rockefeller and the president of the US, Lyndon B. Johnson reading: I'm Charles Mingus. Half black man, yellow man, half yellow, not even yellow, not even white enough to pass for nothing but black, and not too light to be called white. I claim that I am a Negro. Charles Mingus is a musician, mongrel musician who plays beautiful, who plays ugly, who plays lovely, who plays masculine, who plays feminine, who plays music, who plays off sounds, sounds, solid sounds, sounds, sounds, sounds ... a musician who loves to play with sound.

To hear and see Mingus playng please click on the title bar.

MINGUS - USA 1968 – f dir Thomas Reichman
Songs: "All the things you are" by Oscar HammersteinII, Jerome Kern; "Secret love" by Paul Francis Webster, Sammy Fain; "Take the ‘A’ train" by Billy Strayhorn; "Freedom", "Don’t let it happen here", "Portrait", "Peggy’s blueskylight", "Half mast inhibition" by CharlesMingus.With: Charles Mingus, b, pno, in interview andin performance, with Lonnie Hillyer, tpt;Charles McPherson, as; John Gilmore, ts; WalterBishop, pno; Dannie Richmond, drs.Filmed in November 1966. (Source: Jazz in the Movies- David Meeker)