Icon: Charles Mingus
Few musicians brought as much passion to jazz as Charles Mingus (1922-1979). You can hear it all over his music in every period: the power, the lyricism, and the sheer propulsion. He loved independent melody lines interwoven in raucous counterpoint and infused with the emotional power of the sanctified church. As bass player he had few peers, in terms of agility, a big sound, and percussive plucking; his tender, singing work with a bow reflected his cello training. Mingus’s bass was more than enough to drive a band, but he hectored (and bullied) his musicians too. He always wanted more from them. He usually got it.
In Chronological Order
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Bassist/composer Mingus came up in Los Angeles in the 1940s, and at age 23 began a series of ambitious recordings for small indie labels. Those rarities are collected here. Many feature singers; most are for big bands, or compact ones he makes sound bigger by keeping everybody busy. (See this discography for particulars.) You can hear how LA music helped shape his own, with its echoes of jump blues ("Texas Hop") and Stan Kenton's overheated orchestrations ("Story of Love"). But the ballads and an exuberant "Make Believe" point to the most profound influence on Mingus's big band writing: the master of jazz elegance, New York's Duke Ellington.
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In the early 1950s, bassist Mingus was fascinated by the intertwined melody lines in Lennie Tristano's contrapuntal cool jazz. Then hard bop came in, celebrating jazz's African American roots, and Mingus heard new possibilities: counterpoint + soul = his 1950s golden age. The composer began singing or playing lines to his musicians, instead of writing them out, the better to convey their spirit. The first flowering of his modern approach was Mingus at the Bohemia, for a jumping, bass-driven quintet including trombonist Eddie Bert, tenor saxist George Barrow and pianist Mal Waldron, who drops elbow-bombs on "Work Song." Drummer Max Roach sits in to duet with Mingus's bass (and overdubbed cello) on "Percussion Discussion."
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With Mingus, it's hard to separate outsize life from outsize art, the passions of the man and the musician a point driven home by his novelistic memoir Beneath the Underdog. The 1957 sextet suite Tijuana Moods re-imagines a debauched border-town trip he took in the company of friend Dannie Richmond, who debuts here as Mingus's perfect, permanent drummer. There are bustling collective improvisations, shifting rhythms and outbreaks of finger-popping swing, as on "Ysabel's Table Dance," a Charles Ivesian amalgam of recreated sound and recollected feeling. Mingus's leaping loping line on "Tijuana Gift Shop" sets him apart from merely mortal bassists who don't lead bands from the rear.
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In 1959, Charles Mingus recorded two masterworks: Blues and Roots for Atlantic, and Columbia's Mingus Ah Um. True, that label wouldn't let him record the corrosive anti-segregationist lyric to "Fables of Faubus." (You'll find that here.) But that was the only thing not to like. The bassist/composer unveiled his instant-classic elegy for saxophonist Lester Young, "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat," and showcases his patented sanctified moaning on "Better Git It in Your Soul." Did any bass player ever steer a band so confidently? The explosive/jovial/tender septet/sextet includes saxophonists John Handy and Booker Ervin, pianist Horace Parlan, and the boss's right hand, drummer Dannie Richmond.
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Jazz folk revere Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus (Candid), the 1960 classic by the bassist's rollicking, pianoless quartet featuring multi-reedist Eric Dolphy, trumpeter Ted Curson and drummer Dannie Richmond. Less known is this parallel, months-earlier live album, with the same players, much the same feel, and even some of the same tunes. The 'talking' dialogue between bass and Dolphy's bass clarinet is already a feature of "What Love," and "Folk Forms" is already a stellar, collectively improvised blues. But this band's further enhanced by blues-drenched Texas tenor saxist Booker Ervin, who fits right in, and a guest shot on "I Remember April" by (ailing) bebop piano god Bud Powell, who never led a group quite like this.
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For all the bassist's intensity, he could be light-hearted, and nowhere more than on 1961's terrific Oh Yeah! Even so, this is an outlier in the Mingus catalog, as he plays jabbing, expressive piano and often sings (or testifies, or scats in mock-Swahili) from the bench. (Doug Watkins has the unenviable job of filling in for him on bass.) Riffs and cross-riffs from three horns make for a fat-sounding sextet, with featured soloist Roland Kirk strutting his over-the-top stuff on saxophones. On "Eat That Chicken" and "Oh Lord Don't Let Them Drop That Atomic Bomb on Me," the band carry on like New Orleans street musicians returning from a funeral the chicken's maybe, or mankind's.
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Mingus concerts could be part psychodrama, owing to his rushed, rambling, political, kvetching announcements. At one point on this audio verit octet recording, he kicks five brass players offstage to rehearse before returning. Howard Johnson's tuba frees Mingus to move between bass and piano, but the horn section's real stars are trumpeters Hobart Dotson, Lonnie Hillyer and Jimmy Owens. This multi-hued music can be a bit shaggy some of it returns, polished up and retitled, on 1971's Let My Children Hear Music but there are moments of sublime lyricism. The long, pulsing "Meditation on Inner Peace" is spare and hypnotic. The dixielandish "Muskrat Ramble" is actually "Twelfth Street Rag," but never mind.
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The last great album of orchestral Mingus, from 1971, was one of his personal favorites, and no wonder. The material spans much of his career, the playing is crisp and committed, and the arrangements/orchestrations, mostly by Sy Johnson, nail the spirit of Mingus's music. The majesty, drama and dark moods, the playfulness and the joyful chaos of horns piling on are all in there and that's just the opening "Shoes of the Fisherman's Wife." The sheer breadth of the elements involved throughout flamenco rhythms, galloping sound effects, Mingus reciting his poetry speak to the scope of his ambitions. The fine soloists include saxophonists Charles McPherson and James Moody.
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In 1975, one of the bassist's last great working groups put out two albums simultaneously, Changes One and Two. The second features a pair of classic Mingus ballads, "Orange Was the Color of Her Dress" (where Don Pullen shows off his rubber-wristed, lightning-glissando piano style) and "Duke Ellington's Sound of Love." The latter with its echoes of Billy Strayhorn's "Lush Life" is also on Changes One, but here gets a vocal by onetime Mingus discovery Jackie Paris. "Free Cell Block F," a chipper midtempo romp with a hint of a rumba, is perfect fodder for drummer Dannie Richmond and George Adams' sometimes brusque, sometimes sweet tenor sax. Jack Walrath's tart and darting trumpet shines on "Black Bats and Poles."
