There are four tracks: three originals (including the long-form "Pithecanthropus Erectus" and "Love Chant") and one cover (George Gershwin's "A Foggy Day"). Monterose, pianist Mal Waldron and drummer Willie JonesMingus' longtime drummer, Dannie Richmond, would not come aboard until 1957. The band is completed by alto saxophonist Jackie McLean, tenor saxophonist J.R. Mingus' first blinder, the first of many. But they are, indisputably, ten albums which deserve a place in any serious jazz library.ĬHARLES MINGUS: AN ESSENTIAL TOP TEN ALBUMS Unless noted otherwise, these albums are listed in the order they were recorded, not the order in which they were released. The ten albums which are listed below are by no means a definitive Mingus Top Ten, nor are they intended to be. He tries to tell people he is in great pain and anguish because he loves. The pen portrait written at Mingus' request by his psychiatrist, Edmund Pollock, for the sleeve notes for The Black Saint And The Sinner Lady (Impulse, 1963), is also inadequate for the task, although Pollock includes some telling observations, such as " feels intensively. Even Geoff Dyer, in his inspired collection of vignettes, But Beautiful (Jonathan Cape, 1991), possibly the greatest book ever written about jazz, in which Dyer seeks to inhabit the minds of eight icons including Mingus, Bud Powell, Lester Young and Chet Baker, and mostly does so with apparent authenticity, is least successful when it comes to Mingus.
But the book raises as many questions as it provides answers, as do his biographies. Knopf, 1971), in which he variously portrayed himself as a genius, a victim, a fighter, a moralist and a pimp, among other things. He wrote a lengthy and compelling autobiography, Beneath The Underdog: His World As Composed By Mingus (Alfred A. The best way to understand Mingus is to listen to his music, although much has been written by and about him. Also famously, at Mingus' urging the tenor saxophonist Dannie Richmond switched to drums to join Mingus in 1957 and remained Mingus' drummer until the very end. Knepper sued, but he returned to the lineup years later. He famously punched the trombonist Jimmy Knepper in the mouth for one such infraction, severely damaging his embrochure and necessitating his temporary retirement. He micro-managed the performance of his music in the recording studio and on the bandstand, unafraid to halt a piece midway and publicly berate a musician for failing to adhere to its spirit. Mingus excelled at composing for both small and mid-sized ensembles, and like Ellington, he wrote and arranged with specific soloists in mind. His music was gloriously, defiantly, completely his own, wrought unaided out of his (not so) private hell, a one-off mix of Ellington, Charlie Parker, gospel, the blues, New Orleans polyphony and fast small-band swing music. As a composer his peers included Duke Ellington, whose work he deeply admired, and unlike Ellington, Mingus had no Billy Strayhorn beside him. Mingus packed such an incendiary mixture of blistering and lyrical music into his career years 1945 to 1979 as to make many other musicians seem practically comatose. He was the very personification of that ancient cliché, the tortured genius. He never used narcotics to ease his pain, but was a compulsive comfort eater whose physique fluctuated wildly between the obese and the merely big. He blamed the white race for everything he disliked in the world, which was a great deal, yet he was part-white himself. He was martinet on the bandstand but could also be a nurturing leader, quick to heap praise on those musicians he felt deserved it. He could be violent one moment and loving the next. He was by turns depressed and exuberant, though mostly depressed. In his personal life, too, Mingus was a mass of conflicts and contradictions. It still has that power in 2021, four decades after his passing and on the eve of his hundredth anniversary in 2022. Charles Mingus was rarely a happy man and yet his music possessed a power to uplift listeners unlike that of most other composer / bandleaders before or after him.
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