“My entire association with Charles Mingus was an honor and a treat – including all the moods, temperaments, personality clashes, cooperation, and feelings of accomplishment and self–gratification. I can’t find any superlatives strong enough to define what those years meant to me…Jazz, in my language, is a four–letter word spelled L-O-V-E. Charles Mingus was one of the people who taught me how to spell.” – Pianist Jaki Byard, from his liner notes to Prestige LP Portrait by Charles Mingus (1980).