Jazz bassist, composer, and bandleader, born in Nogales, Arizona, USA. He played the cello with the Los Angeles Junior Philharmonic Orchestra before becoming a bassist with traditional-style bands. As a child, he had sung Gospel music, and his later work as a leader and composer brought elements of this background together with modern and avant-garde ideas. During the 1940s, he worked with big bands, and from 1953 led groups called the Jazz Workshop, which experimented with atonality and other devices of European symphonic music. His most powerful and individualistic music came later, such as Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting (1959) and Fables of Faubus (1960).
| Charles Mingus | ||
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| Background information | ||
| Also known as | Charlie Mingus | |
| Born | April 22, 1922 | |
| Origin | Nogales, Arizona, USA | |
| Died | January 5, 1979 | |
| Genre(s) | Jazz | |
| Instrument(s) | Double bass, piano | |
| Years active | 1943–1979 | |
| Label(s) | Debut, Impulse!, Candid, Atlantic, Blue Note, Mercury, Columbia | |
Charles Mingus (April 22, 1922 – January 5, 1979), also known as Charlie Mingus, was an American jazz bassist, composer, bandleader, and occasional pianist.
Mingus is highly ranked among the composers and performers of jazz, and he recorded many highly regarded albums.
Mingus was prone to depression.
Most of Mingus's music retained the hot and soulful feel of hard bop and drew heavily from black gospel music while sometimes drawing on elements of Third Stream Jazz and free jazz. Yet Mingus avoided categorization, forging his own brand of music that fused tradition with unique and unexplored realms of jazz. Mingus focused on collective improvisation, similar to the old New Orleans Jazz parades, paying particular attention to how each band member interacted with the group as a whole. In creating his bands, Mingus looked not only at the skills of the available musicians, but also their personalities.
Due to his brilliant writing for mid-size ensembles — and his catering to and emphasizing the strengths of the musicians in his groups — Mingus is often considered the heir apparent to Duke Ellington, for whom he expressed unqualified admiration.
Biography
Early life and career
Mingus was born in Nogales, Arizona, but was raised largely in the Watts area of Los Angeles, California.
His mother allowed only church-related music in their home, but Mingus developed an early love for jazz, especially Ellington's music.
Even in his teen years, Mingus was writing a considerable number of rather advanced pieces;
Mingus gained a reputation as something of a bass prodigy. Hampton performed and recorded a few of Mingus's pieces. Mingus was briefly a member of Ellington's band in the early 1950s, and Mingus's notorious temper reportedly led to his being the only musician personally fired by Ellington.
Also in the early 1950s, before attaining commercial recognition as a bandleader, he played a number of live bookings with Charlie Parker, whose compositions and improvisations greatly inspired and influenced Mingus. Mingus considered Parker the greatest genius and innovator in jazz history, but he had a love-hate relationship with Parker's legacy. Mingus blamed the Parker mythology for a derivative crop of pretenders to Parker's throne. In response to the many sax players who imitated Parker, Mingus titled a song, "If Charlie Parker were a Gunslinger, There'd be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats."
In 1952 Mingus co-founded Debut Records with Max Roach, in order to conduct his recording career as he saw fit. After bassist Oscar Pettiford broke his arm playing baseball, Mingus stepped in to replace him at the famed May 15, 1953 concert at Massey Hall. The two 10" albums of the Massey Hall concert (one featured the trio of Powell, Mingus and Roach) were among Debut Records' earliest releases. Mingus may have objected to the way the major record companies treated musicians, but Gillespie once commented that he did not receive any royalties "for years and years" for his Massey Hall appearance.
In 1955, Mingus was involved in a notorious incident while playing a club date billed as a "reunion" with Parker, Powell, and Roach.
Pithecanthropus Erectus
Mingus had already recorded about ten albums as a bandleader, but 1956 was a breakthrough year, with the release of Pithecanthropus Erectus, arguably his first major work as both a bandleader and composer. Like Ellington, Mingus wrote songs with specific musicians in mind, and his band for Erectus included adventurous, though distinctly blues-oriented musicians, especially saxophonist Jackie McLean and piano player Mal Waldron.
The following decade is widely regarded as Mingus's most productive and fertile period.
Mingus often worked with a mid-sized ensemble (around 8–10 members) of rotating musicians known as the Jazz Workshop. Mingus broke new ground, constantly demanding that his musicians be able to explore and develop their perceptions on the spot. Mingus shaped these promising novices into a cohesive improvisational machine that in many ways anticipated free jazz.
Jazz Workshop members included:
Pepper Adams Jaki Byard Eric Dolphy Booker Ervin Roland Kirk Jimmy Knepper John Handy Jackie McLean Charles McPherson Horace ParlanOnly one misstep occurred in this era: 1962's Town Hall Concert. Mingus's vision was finally realized in 1989, see Epitaph (Mingus).
Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus
Mingus witnessed Ornette Coleman's legendary—and controversial—1960 appearances at New York City's Five Spot jazz club. Mingus was in fact a prime influence of the early free jazz era. This ensemble featured the same instruments as Coleman's quartet, and is often regarded as Mingus rising to the challenging new standard established by Coleman. Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus, the quartet's sole album, is frequently included among the finest in Mingus's catalogue.
The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady
In 1963, Mingus released The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady, a sprawling, multi-section masterpiece, described as "one of the greatest achievements in orchestration by any composer in jazz history." The album was also unique in that Mingus asked his psychotherapist to provide notes for the record.
In 1964 Mingus put together one of his best-known groups, a sextet including Dannie Richmond, Jaki Byard, Eric Dolphy, trumpeter Johnny Coles, and tenor saxophonist Clifford Jordan.
Changes
Mingus's pace slowed somewhat in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Cumbia and Jazz Fusion in 1976 sought to blend Colombian music (the "Cumbia" of the title) with more traditional jazz forms.
Later career and death
By the mid-1970s, Mingus was suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (popularly known as Lou Gehrig's disease), a wastage of the musculature.
Mingus died aged 56 in Cuernavaca, Mexico, where he had traveled for treatment and convalescence.
At the time of his death, Mingus had been recording an album with singer Joni Mitchell, which included vocal versions of some of his songs (including "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat") among Mitchell originals and short, spoken word duets and home recordings of Mitchell and Mingus.
Epitaph
Epitaph is considered by many to be the masterwork of Charles Mingus. This concert was produced by Mingus's widow, Sue Graham Mingus, at Alice Tully Hall on June 3, 1989, ten years after his death.
The music after his death
The Mingus Big Band
The music of Charles Mingus is currently being performed and reinterpreted by the Mingus Big Band, which plays every Tuesday and Thursday in New York City, and often tours the rest of the United States and Europe. Elvis Costello has written lyrics for a few Mingus pieces and has sung them in performances with the Mingus Big Band.
Cover versions
Considering the number of compositions that Charles Mingus has written, his works have not been recorded as often as comparable jazz composers. Elvis Costello has recorded "Hora Decubitus" (from Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus) on 'My Flame Burns Blue' (2006).
Personality and temper
As respected as Mingus was for his musical talents, he was often feared for his sometimes violent onstage temper, which was at times directed at members of his band, and other times aimed at the audience.
When confronted with a nightclub audience talking and clinking ice in their glasses while he performed, Mingus stopped his band and loudly chastised the audience, stating "Isaac Stern doesn't have to put up with this shit."
Guitarist and singer Jackie Paris was a first-hand witness to Mingus's irascibility. On October 12, 1962, Mingus reportedly punched Knepper while the two men were working together at Mingus's apartment on a score for his upcoming concert at New York Town Hall and Knepper refused to take on more work. In another incident, saxophonist Jackie McLean once stabbed Mingus after Mingus punched him, fearing the bassist was about to kill him.
Mingus's onstage destruction of an $800 bass prompted British rockers The Animals—avid fans who witnessed Mingus's characteristic explosion at a London show—to emulate the outburst, starting a trend of rampant onstage destruction of musical equipment in "rock theater" popularized by Jimi Hendrix and The Who, continuing to this day. Roots (1959, Atlantic) Mingus Ah Um (1959, Columbia) Mingus Dynasty (1959, Columbia) Pre Bird (1960, Mercury) Mingus at Antibes (1960, Atlantic) Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus (1960, Candid) Oh Yeah (1962, Atlantic) The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady (1963, Impulse) Mingus Plays Piano (1963, Impulse) Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus (1963, Impulse) Revenge! (live 1964 performance with Eric Dolphy, 32 Jazz; Jazz Fusion (1976, Atlantic) Epitaph (1990, Columbia, posthumous)
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