CHARLES MINGUS
1922 - 1979

Mingus, Charles, Jr. (b. April 22, 1922, Nogales, Ariz.; d. January 5, 1979, Cuernavaca, Mexico), African American jazz influential bassist, bandleader, and composer who foreshadowed free jazz but grounded his music in the black gospel and blues tradition.

Charles Mingus was a temperamental iconoclast, a virtuoso bassist, and a man who protested racial injustice through his music. Mingus's compositions reveal his deep involvement in the musical experimentation of the 1940s known as bop, in which young black musicians significantly expanded the harmonic boundaries of jazz. He also drew upon the legacy of older jazz styles and the rich African American traditions of blues and gospel music, but he created a jazz world uniquely his own. Few jazz musicians gain renown for their compositions. Apart from Mingus, critics identify only three great jazz composers: Jelly Roll Morton, Duke Ellington, and Thelonious Monk. Of these, Mingus is the most contemporary and the least appreciated. His intensely personal music seemed to look both backward and forward. He invoked the origin of jazz by grounding his compositions in the blues — the music from which jazz emerged. He also made extensive use of collective improvisation, a playing style that was characteristic of New Orleans jazz of the early 1900s but that had virtually disappeared from mid-twentieth century jazz. On the other hand, Mingus looked forward to the dissonance and openness of the free jazz that appeared in the 1960s.

The titles of Mingus's compositions are some of the most striking in jazz. He repeatedly addressed issues of racial injustice, as in "Haitian Fight Song" (1955), "Prayer for Passive Resistance" (1960), and "Remember Rockefeller at Attica" (1974) (see Attica Uprising). He also revealed a lively humor — as in his take on Oscar Hammerstein II and Jerome Kern's "All the Things You Are," which he titled "All the Things You Could Be By Now If Sigmund Freud's Wife Were Your Mother" (1960).

Mingus's family moved shortly after his birth to Watts, the principal black neighborhood of Los Angeles. His mother died when he was six months old, and his father remarried. His stepmother introduced him to the fervent gospel music of the Holiness church. Such Mingus compositions as "Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting" (1959) and "Better Git It in Your Soul"(1959) reveal the continuing influence of the religious music that he had heard as a child, not only in the titles, but also in their ecstatic, bluesy quality.

In grade school Mingus began playing the trombone, then the cello, and finally the bass. Hearing Duke Ellington in a late-night radio broadcast was what inspired his interest in jazz. In 1939 he began taking lessons from jazz bassist Red Callender (1916-1992), and later he studied with ex-New York Philharmonic bassist Herman Rheinshagen. As a teenager, Mingus was part of the jazz scene that flourished along Los Angeles's Central Avenue, along with such aspiring musicians as tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon (b. 1923) and drummer Chico Hamilton (b. 1921). But like other young musicians of the 1940s, Mingus found it difficult to gain a foothold in jazz.

In 1942 Mingus played with clarinetist Barney Bigard (1906-1980), and in 1943 he toured with trumpeter Louis Armstrong's big-band. But the changing musical tastes of the latter half of the 1940s put an end to the big-bands that had provided work for many young musicians. In 1946 Mingus made his recording debut with an octet playing several of his early, Ellington-influenced compositions. But that year he took a more secure job with the U.S. post office. In 1947 he toured with Lionel Hampton's big-band, but during 1948-1950 he returned to post office work, playing jazz and rhythm and blues (R&B) gigs freelance.

Despite that unpleasant racial incident, Mingus decided to relocate to New York City in 1951. There he played with such jazz musicians as alto saxophonist and bop innovator Charlie Parker, swing piano master Art Tatum, and white pianist Lennie Tristano, a cool jazz pioneer. But in 1952 Mingus returned to working at the post office. In that year, with drummer Max Roach, he founded Debut Records (1952-1957), his first of many attempts to exert greater control over the business side of music. The label's crowning achievement lay in recording a 1953 concert at Toronto's Massey Hall that featured the finest bop group ever assembled: Parker, trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, pianist Bud Powell, Roach, and Mingus.

During 1955-1960 Mingus perfected a unique approach to composition. In the interest of spontaneity, he largely abandoned standard musical notation. He introduced new compositions by playing them at the piano and then singing the various parts to his sidemen. He preferred emotional immediacy to precision ensemble playing, and he introduced a degree of dissonance that foreshadowed the free jazz of alto saxophonist Ornette Coleman, pianist Cecil Taylor (b. 1929), and, after 1965, tenor saxophonist John Coltrane. An important early example of his new style is found in Weary Blues (1957), a collaboration with poet Langston Hughes.

James Clyde Sellman