Versatile, volatile and extraordinarily gifted, Charles Mingus left a musical legacy as compelling and complex as the man himself. Six musicians testify to his life-changing impact.
A transformative figure during his lifetime (April 22, 1922-January 5, 1979), which roughly tracked the history of pre-postmodern jazz, Charles Mingus continues to fascinate us in his centennial year. Some reasons why can be found in the proceedings of
The Lost Album From Ronnie Scott’s (Resonance). The three-disc package, which contains a massive booklet, documents a superb Mingus sextet in 1972. Masters Charles McPherson and Jon Faddis, on alto saxophone and trumpet respectively, contribute mightily to several vertiginous long-form journeys that capture the kaleidoscopic range of reference, emotional complexity and balls-to-the-wall dynamism of the maestro at his most compelling. The same can be said for the four-disc 2020 release
At Bremen 1964 & 1975 (Sunnyside), which captures equally dynamic performances by Mingus’ two most adventurous regular bands — in 1964 with Eric Dolphy, Johnny Coles, Clifford Jordan and Jaki Byard; and in 1975, with Don Pullen, George Adams and Jack Walrath.
Both releases reinforce Mingus’ stature as a sui generis 20th-century American musical voice analogous to demotic 19th-century poet Walt Whitman’s position in American poetry; Whitman’s oft-cited self-descriptive passage from
Song of Myself — “Do I contradict myself?/Very well then I contradict myself,/(I am large, I contain multitudes.)” — suits Mingus to a T.
As a composer, Mingus drew from a capacious historical and cultural matrix, evoking a novelistic array of moods and milieux that mirrored his multifaceted personality. His memorable melodies were the armature for unforgettable portraits of the women in his life, searing commentary on the roiling politics of his era, evocative homages to his musical idols, stomping evocations of African-American church ceremonial, third stream-ish tone poems and threnodies, and an endless array of blues narratives affirmative and sorrowful.
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Photo by Jean-Pierre Leloir.[/caption]
As a bassist, Mingus drew on early classical training to dominate his instrument, deploying a technique — and extended techniques — that elicited Koussevitzkian range, depth and dynamic shadings, while always sustaining a mighty groove at any tempo.
As the founder and owner-operator of Debut Records during the 1950s and JWL Records during the 1960s, Mingus pioneered as a DIY practitioner, foreshadowing the common practice of numerous 21st-century descendants. In his sardonic song titles and in-set commentary, Mingus also foreshadowed — and paralleled — contemporary and next-generation social comedians like Lenny Bruce, Dick Gregory and Richard Pryor.
Mingus was a tragic figure, frequently thwarted in the realization of his grand ambitions. Some wounds were self-inflicted, from behavior perhaps triggered by racial traumas internalized during formative years, as can be inferred from his soliloquy on the soundtrack for the unsettling
verité film,
Mingus: Charlie Mingus (1968): “I am Charles Mingus. Half black man. Yellow man; half-yellow. Not white enough to pass for nothing but black; not light enough to be called white.” For similar reasons, it was problematic for Mingus to create an efficient infrastructure by which to properly present his most venturesome music.
Mingus might well have appreciated the irony of the posthumous resolution of the infrastructure issue. His music is now codified, well-arranged and performed internationally by several units, most notably the 14-piece Mingus Big Band, comprised of a shifting cohort of New York City area bests-and-brightests under the stewardship of artistic director Sue Mingus, who has presented the ensemble almost continuously since 1991.
Following are testimonies from musicians, reached either by phone or Zoom in March, whose lives were deeply impacted by Mingus himself, or by the music he left behind. -
Ted Panken
Boris Kozlov
Since emigrating to the U.S. from Russia in 1991, Boris Kozlov has established himself as one of New York’s busiest and most respected bassists in multiple genres and contexts, including the Mingus Orchestra, which he joined in 1998 and has music-directed since 2004. Now 54, Kozlov has led several albums, most recently First Things First
(Posi-Tone), which includes a read of Mingus’ “Eclipse.” An ardent Mingus devotee, he also participated in the Posi-Tone Mingus tribute Blue Moods: Myth & Wisdom
, released earlier this year. His fifth album with the collective all-star quintet Opus 5 — featuring Alex Sipiagin, Seamus Blake, David Kikoski and Donald Edwards, all of whom met in the Mingus Big Band — is scheduled for a summer release.
After I came to the U.S., I played with a street band that was well-established by 1998. The drummer was a student of Tommy Campbell, who regularly came to hear us and sit in. By then, Tommy was in the Mingus [Big] Band, which was playing Thursday nights at Time Café. One of those Thursdays they needed a bass player who could play and read. Tommy literally dragged me there by the collar. Sue Mingus wasn’t there, but she called me the next day and asked if I’d like to play next Thursday. I said, “You haven’t heard me.” She said, “I didn’t have to hear you. I made 14 phone calls.” The next Thursday, she was there, and I asked if there was an Aebersold [instructional book] of Mingus’ music, so I can get it under my belt better. She says, “No, we don’t have it, but why don’t you make one?” For the next month, I learned five, six versions of every song, trying to find the common threads to put in the charts for the play-along.
One requirement for a Mingus position is not only good preparation on your instrument and a high level of improvisation but also a familiarity with other worlds — you have to be able to perform classical music at a high level to really deal with Mingus’ stuff. Of course, now it’s commonplace in our language, but in the ’50s, he wrote pieces where the tempo changes three or four times during one chorus, and the improviser is required to use the same tempo changes. That was revolutionary.
Mingus got an amazing sound playing with one finger, which acts as forward-and-back, including tremolos, which he was the first to use as a regular way of expression. He was also the first to do hammer-ons and pull-offs, especially with thirds and fourths in thumb position. He used the bow to play on the short string between the bridge and the tailpiece to make literal bird sounds, as in the piece “Bird Calls.” He was probably the first upright bass player to do two-hand tap playing polyphonically, like what Victor Wooten does now on electric. And there is a kind of rock and roll side to him, something very powerful, although the newer styles in electric were not his thing.
But for me, what is really Mingus is the immediacy of delivery — and also to be yourself, not try to sound like something. Although it’s amazing how close he sounded to [Duke Ellington bassist] Jimmy Blanton, who he hung out with in Los Angeles in 1941, right before Blanton died. It’s like all of a sudden, the modern language of jazz bass was developing right there and then.
https://youtu.be/vo3XUVoipn4
Harry Skoler
Professor of Woodwinds at Berklee College of Music since 1997, clarinetist Harry Skoler reaches for the stars on his fifth album, Living in Sound: The Music of Charles Mingus
(Sunnyside). Throughout this strikingly evocative project, the clarinet virtuoso — a Mingus obsessive since his teens — offers efflorescent improvisations through arrangements of nine Mingus compositions by Ambrose Akinmusire, Fabian Almazan and Darcy James Argue, with a to-die-for rhythm section of Kenny Barron, Christian McBride and Johnathan Blake, joined on various tracks by trumpet titan Nicholas Payton, vocalist Jazzmeia Horn and a string quartet.
In 2018, I had a ruptured artery and almost didn’t make it on the operating table. After I pulled through, I went into a dark malaise for quite some time; I didn’t want to listen to music, or play, or practice or think about ever recording again. Then, one day, I felt an overwhelming desire to record, and asked Walter Smith III, who had just been named chair of Berklee’s Woodwind Department, if he would produce a record. He said yes, we started talking about ideas and decided on Mingus. My life growing up was was a holy hell for me. I experienced chronic and complex trauma, both physical and psychological. When I listened to my first Mingus recording —
Mingus Moves — it was the first time I felt like I had a family. I listened to it over and over, with headphones on, next to the turntable. It was so intimate, so all-encompassing.
As we started to put the record together, I got everything by Mingus that I could, looking to find not only pieces that were familiar to me, but other ones that were screaming my name. I feel that Mingus was a victim of trauma, and that some basic structure of being connected me profoundly to Mingus in a way that changed my life — and still changes my life on a daily basis. When I read some things that Mingus wrote, viewed him in the documentary
Triumph of the Underdog or heard about his conflicts and his fights and his activism — to me, it’s very much like the music, whether it’s a very gentle piece or something very different. It’s an appropriate non-filter. It resonates with me.
Mingus didn’t have any magical way of making me feel this way or that way. But what he could do is trigger something within, and I could feel those things myself. With everything that I’ve heard about Mingus, just anecdotally, I would think that perhaps this is not a safe individual to want to have a conversation with — or maybe play in a group with. But at the age of 65, I feel Mingus is one of the few people who gives me a feeling of complete safety, and a place of love, and a place where I can talk to somebody in a different way than I can talk to my family, a different way than I can talk to my peers.
https://open.spotify.com/album/1XpvxdpyiuSTJTApwYjHgG?si=aDcyDYYrR7KS9mGJ9PmlZA
Fabian Almazan
“Fabian is always pushing,” drummer Henry Cole says of pianist Fabian Almazan, his longtime bandstand partner. “He doesn’t think in terms of patterns and never plays it safe.” That description applies to 37-year-old Almazan’s fresh arrangements of “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat,” “Remember Rockefeller at Attica” and “Moves” on Harry Skoler’s Living in Sound: The Music of Charles Mingus
(Sunnyside). Born in Havana, raised in Miami, and now a co-resident of Harlem and Australia — the homeland of his wife, bassist Linda May Han Oh, herself an ardent Mingus admirer — Almazan is the founder and director of Biophilia Records, on which he released his fifth and most recent album, This Land Abounds With Life
.
I distinctly remember being turned on by the raw quality of “Haitian Fight Song” and a few other pieces by Mingus when I was playing in a big band in high school. Then I found the album
Let My Children Hear Music after I saw the track called “The Shoes of the Fisherman’s Wife Are Some Jive Ass Slippers.” At my young age, I felt there must be something going on.
Mingus’ take on “Remember Rockefeller at Attica” has an element of absurdism that I very much relate to — he wasn’t afraid to ridicule things in order to bring attention to them. “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat” feels like it was floating out there in the universe, and Mingus just plucked it out and brought it into existence. From a composer’s perspective, it’s like a poem. Every single note is there for a reason. On top of that, you can feel his admiration and respect for Lester Young. Throughout history, a few people have accepted the responsibility that they have to sacrifice and completely give themselves whole to the art form, which means very volatile. That’s the feeling I get from Mingus as far as the art and the music. He contains this irrefutably raw element. He’s a force of nature.
The time I was arranging the music coincided with the Black Lives Matter movement and assaults on Asian people. My wife [Linda May Han Oh] was pregnant, which meant that I was going to have a half-Chinese son — and I learned that Mingus’ mom was half-Chinese. I imagined how it would have been to be Charles Mingus during that time. He was a cellist and he wanted to pursue that professionally, but because he was mixed race, he had practically no chance. I could relate to the frustration that must come along with resonating so much with art and the universe, and wanting to be a vehicle for that, and society telling you, “No, you can’t do that.” I can relate to the fact that he was interested in everything, not just jazz. I can relate to the fact that he started two record labels out of frustration, because he didn’t want to be pigeonholed. I can relate to the frustrations of being perceived a certain way when you’re just trying to be yourself. He seamlessly combined a lot of different worlds together, and it wasn’t a gimmick. He was genuinely fascinated with sound and music. He didn’t want to be restricted to one world or the other. It all existed in the same universe to him.
https://youtu.be/6OFleiE81-E
John Handy
Born in Dallas in 1933, saxophonist John Handy — best known as an alto saxophonist, but proficient on the entire woodwind family — moved to the Bay Area at 15 and has lived there ever since, with the exception of a 1958-1962 stay in New York City. Handy’s New York sojourn included a five-month run with Charles Mingus that generated three well-known recordings — Jazz Portraits: Mingus in Wonderland, Blues and Roots and Mingus Ah Um —
on which his Charlie Parker-inflected alto voice was prominent, most notably on Mingus’ iconic “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat.” The only surviving Mingus alumnus from that period, Handy has spent the past 60 years as a popular bandleader, recording artist and educator.
I met Charles in 1957 when he did two weeks at the Black Hawk out here in San Francisco. Bunky Green was playing alto in the band, and we talked quite a bit. On the last night of their engagement, Mingus asked me to sit in and then asked me to join his group, but I didn’t want to leave — I was married, with a new son.
By the next year, my wife and I had saved money for the trip to New York. I started going to jam sessions, especially in Brooklyn, and ran into Idrees Sulieman, the trumpet player, who told people about me, got me a few gigs and introduced me to Randy Weston. Soon we were broke, and one Monday I decided to go gig-hunting. I got dressed up and went to the Five Spot, where Frank Foster, who I knew when he was stationed out here in the military, and Thad Jones were featured. They were doing a record with Basie that went over late, so I played two or three tunes with the rhythm section — Phineas Newborn, whom I’d met in San Francisco, George Joyner, who later became Jamil Nasser, and Roy Haynes.
Later, I was standing at the bar, and after they’d played a couple of pieces, Mingus — who’d come in — said from the bar, “Hey, why don’t you all let this guy play?” They let me name the tune, “There Will Never Be Another You.” I did something on the saxophone that most people still don’t know how to do. Mingus started shouting “Bird’s back! Bird’s back!” Sonny Rollins was in the phone booth. He said, “Sonny — Bird’s back!” Sonny said, “Yeah, yeah, Charlie.” I was embarrassed, still on the bandstand. Between tunes, he said, “Hey, baby, are you working anywhere?” I shook my head, no. He said, “Well, you open with me next week.” He had a four-week engagement, within that week, opposite Sonny’s trio. We brought in the new year.
After we left the bandstand one night in January, Mingus said, “Get your instruments; we’re going around the corner.” We put on our coats, walked a few blocks, went up some stairs that you could break your neck, and entered the Nonagon Art Gallery, which was packed. That’s where we recorded the United Artists album [
Jazz Portraits], which included stuff we’d been playing at the Five Spot that he’d written for the John Cassavetes movie,
Shadows. He featured me, especially on the ballads.
Most everything he hummed or played on the piano. I remember asking him for something to take home and work on, and it bugged him. The place was packed. We were about to leave the bandstand, and Charlie had both hands on top of the bass. He looked threatening. I knew he had sucker-punched Jackie McLean in the mouth and bent his front teeth. I got real close to him and said, “Charles, I think I know what you’re thinking, but I want you to know I can hit much faster with this saxophone than you can with that bass. If you ever touch me, the thing is on.” He said, “Heh-heh, you’re crazy” and he walked off the bandstand. We never got into anything after that.
Eventually we did the
Blues and Roots album. We started as supposedly a big band date, and each time we rehearsed, we had different personnel and less people. The music changed every time. I didn’t like it at all. The more I played with him, the more frustrating it was. He wanted his melodies. He never gave anyone but the piano player any chords. It was embarrassing at times when musicians came in, guys that we knew who could play, and many times you could see the looks on their faces. They thought we didn’t know what we were doing. And many times we didn’t know. We were playing what we could hear. He would write things on piano for trombone or saxophone which are next to impossible to play. Some people thought it was funny because they didn’t have to do it.
A few months before the
Mingus Ah Um album, we were at the Half Note. Between one of the songs, someone told Charles that Lester Young had just died. He started playing a minor blues, slow like a ballad. When we were doing the date, he called that blues, but he didn’t give us the changes. That became “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat,” one of his most famous, most recorded pieces. I thought it was nice, but it could have been embarrassing if people had really listened closely to the chords, because at times I had no idea where they were going. I didn’t see them until Sue Mingus started organizing Mingus’ music.
Sometimes he wrote beautiful music. Some of his composing was important because he extended the repertoire. He helped to extend the technique of the bass. Because of Charles — and before him, Jimmy Blanton, whom he knew — bass players started playing like virtuosos. However, I do think that personality is important. He got away with things that he would not have gotten away with had he played in other communities. People let him get away with it because he was big, he was strong, and he knew how to hurt you. There were times he was sweet, like a little kid sweet. Most of the time, he was like a bear that had been awakened — and he didn’t want to be awakened.
https://open.spotify.com/album/7EOQggjtK8JCqeRz9IG33e?si=RkYkWXsjTOK8QmHMWh7dCw
Doug Hammond
Steve Coleman credits drummer-composer-bandleader Doug Hammond (born 1942) as a lodestar figure for his rhythmic and improvisational concepts, noting that “the things that drummers like Marcus Gilmore and Tyshawn Sorey are doing today are an updated version” of what Hammond was doing after he parted ways with Charles Mingus — who titled his 1974 album Mingus Moves
for a Hammond composition — midway through the 1970s. Before moving to Europe 40 years ago (he’s resided in Graz, Austria, since 1989), Hammond spent formative years in Tampa and Miami and was seasoned in Detroit, alternating between pop and creative jazz endeavors prior to moving to New York, where he developed his ideas.
When I was in Tampa, at 19, I decided I wanted to go to New York to play with Mingus, Sonny Rollins and Eric Dolphy. My mentor was Fletcher Davis, who went to school with Jackie McLean. He said, “If you want to play jazz with someone, learn their repertoire; if all you need to do is play one or two songs, and you know the repertoire, you might get the gig.” Mingus was one of my favorites, and I learned his music.
I came to New York years later, and in 1972, I was staying in a place on East 13th Street off of Second Avenue, a few blocks from the Five Spot, where I rehearsed my music with people like Cameron Brown, Sonny Fortune, Marvin Blackman, Eddie Henderson and Ray Anderson. The next summer, Ronald Hampton, who was playing with Mingus at the Five Spot, needed a place to crash. Roy Brooks was bipolar, and going through one of his seizures, so Mingus needed a drummer. Ronald told him about this drummer who was also arranging, and he said, “Well, bring him in; he’s got the gig.” Ronald brought back some music, we ran through a few pieces, and during the first set I played everything. After the set, Mingus took me outside and said, “I never heard anybody play my music the first time like that. Will you consider joining my band?” I swallowed twice and said, ‘Yes, sir.’ We played four nights a week for five months straight at the Five Spot. I was also doing compositions at [Sam Rivers’] Studio Rivbea with eight, nine pieces. One day when we were touring, I was listening to something on a cassette; Mingus knocked on the door, asked about it and said, “Submit some music to me.” I submitted “Moves,” which I’d written in the ’60s in Detroit. He liked it.
Mingus was a person of high taste. He was well-read. He knew a lot of things. To me, he was always supportive. Sometimes I could hang out with him, and the conversations were always about something of a nourishing nature. He told me simple things. Like, when we toured he said, “Whenever you go somewhere, get your cartage; they’ve got to pay for the transport of your instrument.”
When I started playing with him, he was taking Mellaril, which they give you so you don’t hurt yourself or anyone else. It slows you down. So he would lose tempo. But even though he’d get off track, he’d be right there when we reached the next section of the piece. As time went on, when he stopped taking Mellaril, his chops came up, and playing with him was great. His solos were always good. It was not about soloing for him.
https://youtu.be/9wT5RXY4qGA
Jack Walrath
Trumpeter-composer Jack Walrath (born 1946), whose own discography numbers 22 leader dates, was a crucial participant on Mingus’ final albums, not only for his crisp section playing and extravagant improvisations but for his ability to intuit, execute and actualize Mingus’ intentions with idiomatic specificity and abiding soulfulness.
I first heard something from Mingus in high school — Woody Herman’s recording of Bob Hammer’s arrangement of “Better Get It in Your Soul.” It stuck in my mind. When I went to Berklee, I sought out Mingus in the library, and heard
Oh Yeah. Then I went to Los Angeles, where [trombonist] Glenn Ferris and I had a group based on
Mingus Presents Mingus. Then I moved to the Bay Area. I didn’t like California, and in 1971 I jumped in my car, determined to go to New York and play with either Mingus or Joe Henderson — or both. As it happened, that’s when Joe Henderson was moving to Oakland.
A few years later, I was playing with Paul Jeffrey, who was transcribing for Mingus. I mentioned that I’d like to play with him and Paul recommended me. Mingus was at the Village Gate; I went and sat in. Mingus pulled out his hardest stuff. A few days later, he called me to join him for two weeks at the Vanguard. He didn’t say anything for the first few days, but then he wanted me to flavor it up some. I had gotten into the modern jazz trumpet thing of no vibrato, no inflection — but even on the unison parts, we used vibrato and inflections. It was intimidating. Mingus was bipolar. But he was honest. You never had to worry about your money, and it was right up front. Everything was out there. He had no filter.
In our band with Don Pullen and George Adams, Mingus was doing more extended composition than before — “Duke Ellington’s Sound of Love” and “Sue’s Changes.” Then, when Ricky Ford joined the band, he went off the rails with
Cumbia and Jazz Fusion and
Three or Four Shades of Blues, his last records. We went to North Africa, which totally blew his mind, and we did “Three Worlds of Drums.” When we got back, he gave me a tape where he doodled little blips on the piano, and told me to write an arrangement. I put it into a blues form, put in a belly dancing section; he did a shout chorus and an interesting funeral thing. At the end, when he couldn’t do anything [due to ALS] — he had [use of] one finger — he was writing a ballet. He’d sing things into a tape recorder, and I arranged them in what I thought would be a Mingus style — everything but the kitchen sink … and the kitchen sink. There will always be Mingus, because he was so different — and his melodies were so strong. I’m happy to realize I’m on some records that probably will be there forever.
https://open.spotify.com/album/1A8nmVkCixB6meKXWN9Okj?si=MxJUssqnQ32X1VyErS8CkA
Featured photo courtesy of Sue Mingus © Jazz Workshop.
