“…A musician who defies category, a progressive who never really embraced the avant garde, and a tra­ditionalist who constantly tinkered with the legacies of the past…The miracle of Mingus’ music was that he could develop a coherent and moving personal style out of this hodgepodge of influences. A genera­tion later, such eclecticism – the ‘style without a style’ – would increasingly become the norm in the jazz world.” – The History Of Jazzby Ted Gioia (1997, Oxford University Press)