Mingus
the evening star
stared
&
&
stared
at him
rage of hope mingus
at him
rage of hope mingus
the evening star
sang
&
sang
the blues to him
rage of hope mingus
sang
&
sang
the blues to him
rage of hope mingus
Charles Mingus -- Debra Hurd
Mingus Down in Mexico -- Joni Mitchell
Mingus Down in Mexico -- Joni Mitchell
Charles Mingus was an American bassist, pianist, composer, and bandleader who espoused collective improvisation, paying particular attention to how each band member interacted with the group as a whole. He was also a pioneer in double bass technique, influenced by his early cello playing. Over a 10-year period in the 1950s and 1960s he recorded some 30 records. One of his compositions, “Epitaph” is one of the world’s longest jazz compositions; 4,235 measures long, it takes two hours to perform. His often fearsome temperament earned him the nickname "The Angry Man of Jazz.” In 1953 he played for four days in the band led by his musical hero Duke Ellington but, after getting in an onstage fight with trombonist Juan Tizol, he was one of the few band members whom Ellington personally fired. Even so, after insisting that Max Roach play the drums, in 1962 he recorded “Money Jungle” with Ellington. The trio met the day before the recording but declined to rehearse together. Ellington gave Mingus and Roach a lead sheet with the basic melody and harmony, and a visual image, for each piece; according to Roach, one of the pictures was of “serpents who have their heads up; these are agents and people who have exploited artists. Play that along with the music.” Mingus was critical of Roach’s playing and unhappy that none of his own compositions were selected -- they were all by Ellington with one exception (Juan Tizol’s “Caravan”). Thomas Cunniffe has noted that if someone listens to the tracks in the order in which they were recorded, "one can easily hear the tension building during the uptempo numbers;" the album’s titular number "represents the apex of the group's inner tension, with Mingus plucking the strings with his fingernails, Roach firing up the music with polyrhythms and Ellington laying down highly dissonant chords.” Probably after that tune Mingus abruptly left, and Ellington had to pursue him and persuade him to finish the session. On another occasion that year when Jimmy Knepper was rehearsing in Mingus’ apartment, Mingus hit the trombonist in the mouth, breaking off a crowned tooth and its underlying stub, ruining his embouchure, and resulting in the permanent loss of the top octave of his range on the trombone. Mingus was charged with assault but given a suspended sentence; however, despite this incident, Knepper worked with Mingus again in 1977. In 1963 he released “The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady,” which included notes by his psychotherapist. Facing financial hardship, Mingus was evicted from his New York home in 1966, the same year he was married by the poet Allen Ginsburg. In 1971 he published his stream-of-consciousness autobiography, “Beneath the Underdog: His World as Composed by Mingus,” in which he claimed that his father was the son “of a black farm worker and a Swedish woman" and his mother "the daughter of an Englishman and a Chinese woman;" that he had worked as a pimp for a while and had had more than 31 affairs (including 26 prostitutes at one time), not counting his five wives, two of whom he was married to simultaneously. However, by the mid-1970s he was suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and could no longer play the bass, though he continued to compose. He died at 56 in Cuernavaca, Mexico, where he had traveled for treatment and convalescence. His ashes were scattered in the Ganges River. At the time of his death, he was working with Joni Mitchell on an album eventually titled “Mingus,” which featured Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, and bassist-composer Jaco Pastorius. Mitchell wrote lyrics for his compositions, including his elegy to saxophonist Lester Young, "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat."
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