Charles Mingus

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Charles Mingus in 1976 in Manhattan (New York)

Charles Mingus (* 22. April 1922 in Nogales , Arizona ; † 5. January 1979 in Cuernavaca , Mexico ) was an American jazz - double bass player and band leader and one of the most important bassists and composers of modern jazz.

His compositions were based on hard bop , but were influenced by gospel , third stream , free jazz and classical music. He once named the church and Duke Ellington as defining models for his music. Mingus attached importance to collective improvisation in his bands. He hired talented and sometimes little-known musicians to put together some unconventional instrumental configurations. Mingus was considered a pioneer of the double bass technique and one of the most skilled players of this instrument.

Life

Charles Mingus was born in the border town of Nogales, where his father served as a staff sergeant in the US Army . Because of the serious illness of his mother Harriett Sophia Mingus-Philips - she died on October 3rd of chronic myocarditis - the family moved to Los Angeles. The roots of the family are ramified: Mingus' mother was born in Texas in 1888, the daughter of an Englishman and a Chinese woman; his father Charles, born in North Carolina in 1877 , came from the fleeting association of a black farm worker with a Swedish woman. The senior initially worked as a postal worker and joined the army in 1915. Charles Mingus junior was, like his father, relatively fair-skinned and, as a “half-breed”, was later to react particularly sensitively to the racial conflicts that were virulent until the 1960s.

As a result of the early loss of his mother, he grew up rather neglected in Watts , an Afro-American suburb of Los Angeles . He lived there with his father, his sisters Grace and Vivian, and his stepmother "Mamie" Carson, a half-Indian from South Carolina who had a strong influence on the young Charles and her love (besides ice cream) for classical music. As a six-year-old he first tried his hand at the trombone and the flute .

After listening to Duke Ellington's East St. Louis Toodle-Oo on radio at the age of nine , he began learning the cello. Since the household also had a piano and his sister took lessons, he was also familiar with this instrument. With the stepmother he attended the ecstatic gospel services of the Holiness Church , which deeply impressed him. Eventually he met Britt Woodman , who would later become a jazz trombonist, two years his senior, who took him to a concert with the Duke Ellington Orchestra . During this time, Mingus was taught the cello by a hobby musician, who taught him neither fingering nor reading music, but instead let him play mainly by hearing and feeling. Nevertheless, Charles developed such a skill that he was able to play classical concerts with his sisters in a trio and participate in the Los Angeles Junior Philharmonic Orchestra . As a teenager, he developed an identity as a “proud black man”. At the same time he was interested in “white” music, listening to Richard Strauss , Debussy and Ravel.

His friend Buddy Collette pointed out to him in 1938 that the school band didn't need a cellist but a bassist and arranged for him to take lessons from Red Callender ; Mingus also took piano lessons and trained in music theory, especially harmony . The poem The Chill of Death , which he set to music at the time, and the composition Half-Mast Inhibition were composed during this period . He spent the summer of 1939 in San Francisco , where he met the painter Farwell Taylor, to whom he would later dedicate his Far Wells Mill Valley ; this made him familiar with karma yoga and encouraged him to work as a composer. In 1940, in his senior year at school, Mingus performed with the Al Adams Band , which also included Dexter Gordon , Chico Hamilton , Jack Kelso and Ernie Royal . As a soloist he emulated the Ellington bassist Jimmy Blanton . Mingus' father wanted Charlie to join the postal service; to avoid this, the junior pretended not to have passed the entrance exam. He then made his way as a musician. On August 20, 1941, he had an appearance in Los Angeles with Barney Bigard , which earned him a first newspaper note.

From 1942 he took lessons from the former first bassist of the New York Philharmonic, Hermann Rheinshagen. Mingus quickly developed into a top bassist and initially played with local bands in the early 1940s, which also accompanied musicians like Roy Eldridge who were traveling through . Lloyd Reese taught him the basics of harmony. Mingus wrote the first pieces and also compositional parts for Dimitri Tiomkin . In 1944 he married Camilla Jeanne Gross, the marriage lasted until 1947.

After moving from the West Coast to New York City , he married Celia Nielson on April 2, 1951, who stayed with him until 1958. Then he sank into severe depression, so that he was temporarily admitted to the Bellevue Hospital . Mingus moved to Harlem with his new partner, Judy Starkey, in early 1960 . In 1965 he met his future third wife, Sue Graham Ungaro . Because of his illness with incurable amyotrophic lateral sclerosis , he went to see a faith healer in Mexico, but she was unsuccessful. Mingus died of a heart attack at the age of 56 . After his death in Mexico, his widow later scattered his ashes in the Ganges ( India ).

Mingus had five children. His eldest son Charles Mingus III (born September 12, 1944) is a visual artist, his youngest son Eric Dolphy Mingus (born July 8, 1964) works as a singer. In between, his sons Eugene (* 1946) and Dorian (* December 30, 1957) and his only daughter "Keiki" Carolyn (* 1961) were born. Jazz bassist Kevin Ellington Mingus (* 1976) is his grandson.

Musical career

Beginnings in Los Angeles (1942–1950)

From 1940 Mingus had occasional engagements with Lee Young , once he jammed with Art Tatum . In 1942 he was briefly in Louis Armstrong's band . He also played with Illinois Jacquet while continuing his musical education at Los Angeles City College . In 1944 he worked in Long Beach with the trio Strings and Keys . In 1945/46 Mingus made a name for himself primarily as a studio musician, u. a. When shooting Dinah Washington and the all-star band of Lucky Thompson . In 1945 the first recordings were made under his own name. Mingus also temporarily took a job at the Post Office in San Francisco.

In 1947 he returned to Los Angeles and tried to accommodate his composition The Chill of Death . For most of 1947 and early 1948 he played with Lionel Hampton , for whom he also arranged and with whom he recorded his composition Mingus Fingus . "I hope it will not be for a musician longer necessary on a drum and down to jump or dance on stage to draw attention to his talent," he complained in a letter to the downbeat about this Time. During that time at Hampton he also met Billie Holiday and Benny Goodman , whom he accompanied on the east coast.

He then played with Red Callender in the Pastel Sextet and as Baron Mingus with his own bands. He also worked with Billie Holiday, for whom he wrote the composition Eclipse . In 1949 recordings of Baron Mingus and his Rhythm were made , but they were not distributed nationally. Since he couldn't make a living from music, he went back to work at the Post, this time in a full-time position. From spring 1950 he played in the economically successful trio of Red Norvo with guitarist Tal Farlow . (The recordings from three recording sessions in 1950/51 in Hollywood and Chicago were later combined on the Savoy album Move! ) In March 1951, the trio performed in San Francisco for three weeks at the Black Hawk . Mingus should not take part in TV recordings of the trio because of his skin color. When Norvo swapped him for a white bass player for a TV show in New York, he dropped out of the trio.

Own bands and own label in New York (1951–1955)

In 1951 he worked with Miles Davis and Charlie Parker , whom he had met in Los Angeles in 1946 - Davis was close friends at the time. In 1951 duo recordings were made with the pianist Spaulding Givens . In January 1953 he worked for a short time at Duke Ellington , who, after a heated argument with Juan Tizol, suggested resignation as the more convenient solution; because he knew the Tizol problem and could cope with it, according to Ellington, but Mingus seemed to bring a whole sack full of new quirks with him.

In 1952, Mingus and Max Roach founded the first musician-owned label of the 1950s, Debut Records . His wife Celia took over the management of the record company. On his debut he played with various bands, including a. with Paul Bley , Hazel Scott , JJ Johnson , Kai Winding , Lee Konitz as well as the singer Jackie Paris and his various jazz workshop formations formed from 1953. After avoiding bebop in the 1940s , he organized the legendary “ Massey Hall Concert ” in Toronto in 1953 with Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie , Bud Powell and Max Roach , which also made its debut . Due to various difficulties (sales problems, differences of opinion between Mingus and Roach - and above all additional demands by the AFM, the American musicians' union to which Mingus had failed to pay taxes), Debut stopped producing records at the end of 1957. In 1954 he made sextet recordings for Savoy with the Jazz Composers Workshop . a. John LaPorta , Teo Macero and Mal Waldron contributed. Regarding his piece Gregorian Chant , he said: “In this piece we won't play any changes, just moods.” The formation also performed in the Carnegie Recital Hall under the motto Developments in Modern Jazz . In 1955 Mingus also worked as a sideman on recordings of Teddy Charles , Miles Davis ( Blue Moods ) , Thad Jones and Little Jimmy Scott.

The emergence of the Mingus sound (1955–1960)

With his new formation, which he presented at the Newport Jazz Festival , Mingus developed the concept that was decisive for his future work: the musicians should learn all pieces without notes, exclusively by listening and memorizing. Mingus later changed his band concept and looked for distinctive individualists. His performance in Café Bohemia in December was recorded - the trombonist Eddie Bert , the tenor saxophonist George Barrow , the pianist Mal Waldron and Max Roach now played in the Mingus band . In early 1956 Mingus expanded his band concept and recorded the LP Pithecanthropus Erectus with Jackie McLean and JR Monterose . The title track was his first experiment with the “large form”, a multi-part composition with two modal sequences. In the following years the band experienced numerous line-up changes due to his choleric outbursts. In the second half of the 1950s, u. a. Bill Evans , Shafi Hadi , Jimmy Knepper and Dannie Richmond . Due to his harsh behavior, he also earned a bad reputation with the club owners and was considered difficult to place. In 1957 he recorded the album Tijuana Moods , which was influenced by Mexican mariachi sounds, but was only released by RCA Victor in 1962. In 1958 Mingus was rather underemployed; that year his albums The Clown and East Coasting were released . However, Mingus hardly had any chance to perform because - u. a. because of his attacks on musicians and his public abuse - agencies and record companies made trouble. In March 1958, Mingus went into the studio with the poet Langston Hughes and the Horace Parlan quintet and worked on the soundtrack for the film Shadows by John Cassavetes . It was not until November that he presented a new formation in the Half Note Cafe with which he was to record the LP Jazz Portraits - Mingus In Wonderland for United Artists in January 1959 . 1959 was his most productive year; After Blues and Roots he recorded the legendary albums Mingus Ah Um and Mingus Dynasty for Columbia with such important compositions as Fables of Faubus , Goodbye Pork Pie Hat and Better Git It in Your Soul . Important newcomers during this period were the multi-instrumentalist Eric Dolphy and the young trumpeter Ted Curson .

The 1960s

In 1960 he attracted attention when he organized a counter-festival (The Newport Rebels) to Newport at the same location with Max Roach, Clark Terry , Ornette Coleman and others at the same time in protest against the commercialization of the main festival . In the same year he was invited to the (first) Antibes Festival ( Jazz à Juan ). His record sales picked up in 1961. In addition, he now had copyright income, as compositions like Better Git It in Your Soul are also performed by other musicians. In November 1960 he could also be heard as a pianist and singer on his album Oh Yeah , and his sextet also included the multi-instrumentalist Roland Kirk .

The recordings for his large orchestral suite Epitaph 1962 were only partially successful due to insufficient economic conditions: The Town Hall Concert took place under chaotic circumstances , where parts of the work were premiered. At the end of 1962 he appeared with a tentet in the Village Vanguard and worked on the ambitious work The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady , the recording of which began in January 1963 under the direction of Bob Thiele . Since Mingus was on probation - he knocked a tooth out of Jimmy Knepper while preparing for the Town Hall Concert - he made only a few appearances. He therefore recorded a solo piano LP in July 1963 ( Mingus Plays Piano - Spontanous Compositions and Improvisations ) , another album for Impulse ( Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus ) and finally fell out with the management of ABC-Paramount .

At the beginning of 1964, Mingus couldn't keep his tentet financially, so he cut it in half. In April he carried out his successful European tour in 1964 with an excellent band, in which Johnny Coles , Clifford Jordan , the returned Eric Dolphy , Jaki Byard and Dannie Richmond played. At the end of the tour, Dolphy left the band. He then returned to the Five Spot with Lonnie Hillyer and Charles McPherson . However, he messed with the audience, smashed the inventory to pieces and stormed out of the club. His appearance at the Monterey Jazz Festival in September, the climax of which was a big band version of his title Meditations , then became a triumph.

In 1965 he appeared again in Monterey with new compositions; however, he was not given enough time. A week later he presented the program at UCLA in Los Angeles ( Music Written for Monterey 1965, Not Heard ... Played in Its Entirety at UCLA ). In the spring of 1966, Mingus stopped working at all. He canceled a long-awaited European tour in a trio with Sonny Rollins and Max Roach at short notice. In November, police force forced him to vacate his loft due to arrears in rent. This eviction, which Tom Reichman recorded in a documentary, threw Mingus completely off course. Although his friends could at least trigger his instruments, a large part of his notes and notes got lost. In addition, there were high debts from a catastrophically failed school project, whose long-term rental agreement weighed on him, and because of several attempts to set up his own record companies.

In the late 1960s Mingus disappeared from the musical scene due to psychological problems - at times he was in a psychiatric hospital and took strong sedatives. Throughout his life he could hardly control his emotions - now he also irritated with performances in which he smashed his bass on stage.

The 1970s

Charles Mingus (1976)

Apart from collaborations with the poet Sayed Hussein, he did not appear again until 1969; at Village Vanguard and Village Gate he introduced his new band of Richmond, Bill Hardman , Charles McPherson and tenorist Billy Robinson . In 1970 Duke Ellington did him the honor of putting The Clown on his anniversary concert , but hoped in vain that the present Mingus would emerge from the audience. In the same year the bassist went on a European tour with his new sextet; the studio albums Pithycantropus Erectus and Blue Bird were created in Paris . In 1971 Mingus received a Guggenheim scholarship , went on a tour of Japan, played at the Newport Jazz Festival and produced the big band album Let My Children Hear Music for Columbia with Sy Johnson . In the same year his strongly surrealist-novel-like autobiography Beneath The Underdog appeared in excerpts in the underground magazine Changes published by Sue Mingus .

In 1972 there was an all-star concert at Avery Fisher Hall ; Mingus' regular band was supported by guest stars such as Lee Konitz , Gene Ammons , Dizzy Gillespie and Gerry Mulligan ; the recordings appeared on the Columbia double album Charles Mingus and Friends in Concert . In 1973 Don Pullen and George Adams joined the band; they were the "cornerstones" of Mingus' last great formation. In 1974 there was an acclaimed concert at Carnegie Hall . The last two years of his life were increasingly overshadowed by health problems: He suffered from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis , which led to muscle wasting and forced him to use a wheelchair. In 1978 he was no longer able to play bass himself ( Me Myself an Eye ), and engaged George Mraz and Eddie Gomez for the last recordings . In April he wrote four more compositions for Joni Mitchell , which she presented on her album Mingus . In June 1978, while still in a wheelchair, Jimmy Carter met him at the White House .

His personality

In 1959, he insulted the audience in Five Spot , who were chatting animatedly during his performance, as a gang of bang-bang bags. His impulsiveness made it difficult for him to keep his excellent musicians: "Play it yourself!" He shouted at his musicians and the world. He knocked a tooth out of Jimmy Knepper in an argument in 1962.

On the European tour in 1964, Mingus almost broke with Dolphy because of Mingus' eccentric appearance: Mingus threw the welcoming flowers around the ears of the organizer Ralf Schulte-Bahrenberg , because he had not shown him, but Dolphy as the band leader on the concert poster. And in Bremen he insulted the audience as Nazis. Dolphy stepped forward during the concert, distanced himself from his band leader, and vowed never to perform with Mingus again. Even his long-time drummer (since 1957) and musical confidante Dannie Richmond left him for almost two years in the early 1970s, but returned again. Mingus was aware of his quirks and often regretted his actions in retrospect - his (fictional) autobiography begins like this: "In other words: I am three", the cool observer, the "fearful animal" that attacks to defend itself, and "the loving, gentle being" that is exploited and then (also against itself) becomes berserk.

Services

Mingus had a powerful sound on the double bass and also mastered playing with the bow. “When I can really play,” he fantasized in his early years, “people will see me with a big bass, but if I want they will hear a viola, my magical viola that is as high as a violin and so low how a bass plays, has freed itself from all unclear undertones, and a pizzicato tone with the clarity of Andrés Segovia . ”After initially trying to outdo other bassists with virtuoso technique and speed, he changed his perspective around 1941: “Suddenly it was me, no longer the bass, playing. Now I no longer see the instrument as an instrument when I play. ”From then on he was able to redefine his way of playing the double bass and learned rather bulky lines that often ran counter to the specifications of the fingerboard. He also played piano in his bands every now and then. In 1963 he even recorded a solo record as a pianist for Bob Thiele ( Impulse! Records ).

From 1946 he took on records under his own name as a band leader, but initially only for smaller Californian labels. It was not until 1951 that his recordings became more widespread. Together with John LaPorta and Teo Macero , he founded the Jazz Composers Workshop in 1953 , which performed compositions by its members and which Teddy Charles later joined. First, Mingus tried out pieces of an open, experimental character with the workshop and its composer band. He deliberately ignored the jazz style drawers. He played with both bebop and cool jazz musicians . He very consciously turned to the tradition of jazz and worked with Art Tatum in 1954 . In 1955 and 1956, Mingus often asked the audience for discussions at the concerts of the Jazz Workshop in Cafe Bohemia .

Excellent musicians usually played in his combos, which were still dubbed Jazz Workshop in the 1960s . These included the woodwind players Clifford Jordan , Eric Dolphy , John Handy , Jackie McLean , Shafi Hadi , Booker Ervin , Charlie Mariano , George Adams, the trumpeters Clarence Shaw , Ted Curson , Jack Walrath , the trombonists Jimmy Knepper , Britt Woodman , Willie Dennis and the pianists Mal Waldron , Jaki Byard , Jane Getz and Don Pullen.

Working as a composer

His compositions are pieces of modern jazz with some strong roots in gospel and blues , some of which also represent transitions to new music. Changes in time and mood are regularly provided for in the pieces. Jimmy Knepper recalls: “The band played a chord or two. His idea was to start gently, simply, and with plenty of space. Then the whole thing should become more and more complex and come to a climax . Then there was some sort of cue, and another part of the music followed. ”The recordings were mainly made with small combos (sometimes with an emphasis on collective improvisations ), and since 1960 also by larger orchestras with more solid arrangements.

The breakthrough came in 1956 with the album Pithecanthropus Erectus and the overcoming of the formal language of conventional jazz. A visit to the Mexican border and entertainment town of Tijuana with Dannie Richmond (as he describes in his very revealing memoir) was reflected in the 1957 album Tijuana Moods . The varied album, in which calypso, waltz and quadruple rhythms alternate as a matter of course and folklore motifs are picked up and performed skillfully, was only released by the record company RCA Records in 1962.

In 1957 Gunther Schuller performed his composition Revelations at the third Brandeis Festival . Other highlights are the albums Mingus Ah Um (1959) with homages to Duke Ellington , Lester Young and Charlie Parker , and Blues and Roots (from the same year) with a reverence to the Methodist services that his stepmother attended with him regularly (Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting) . On the album Pre-Bird , in addition to Billy Strayhorn's Take The “A” -Train , which is added as the second topic Exactly Like You , the third-stream ballad Eclipse and the heavily structured, large orchestra Half-Mast Inhibition are on the one hand with its echoes Weill and the late romanticism, on the other hand a lively jazz waltz, particularly remarkable. Half-Mast Inhibition rated jazz critic Leonard Feather as a masterpiece as early as 1965 . Another central work is the suite-like recording of 1963 The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady , influenced by Ellington's work . a. Dick Hafer , Jaki Byard , Charlie Mariano and Jerome Richardson play leading roles on the soprano saxophone. The 1964 European tour with Eric Dolphy , on which Mingus regularly played his composition Fables of Faubus , which is his best-known statement on racial discrimination, is documented many times on records .

His late work - after Dannie Richmond's return to the band - has another highlight with the production Changes One / Two with the quintet around George Adams , Don Pullen and Jack Walrath and the tour in 1975 (appearance at the Jazz Festival Montreux , DVD) : In 1977 the immediately commercially successful record Three or Four Shades of Blues was created with guitarists Philip Catherine and Larry Coryell .

His large orchestral work Epitaph , which he could only partially realize as a Townhall Concert in 1962 , was recorded in an exemplary version under the direction of Gunther Schuller after the score was found and reconstructed in 1989.

Care of the compositional work

Two bands continued Mingus' music after his death: from 1982 the Mingus Dynasty , from 1988 mainly the Mingus Big Band , u. a. with Randy Brecker , Lew Soloff , John Stubblefield , both organized by his widow Sue Mingus. Some of the compositions still sketched by Mingus but no longer listed during his lifetime were developed and performed by both bands, as was his last composition Harlene .

Also worth mentioning is the homage by Joni Mitchell , recorded with musicians such as Don Alias , Peter Erskine , Jaco Pastorius and Wayne Shorter from Weather Report and published in 1979 under the title Mingus . The 1992 tribute album by producer Hal Willner , Weird Nightmare: Meditations on Mingus , is original ; Harry Partch's unusual set of instruments was also used to interpret Mingus compositions with jazz and rock musicians . Another project is the Swedish Mingus Band (Siegmund Freud's Mothers) , led by Lars Gulliksson .

Recognitions and Awards

In 1953 Mingus Polls won as bass player. There were numerous posthumous honors for the composer in the 1990s, including a 1995 US Post stamp and the 1997 NARAS Lifetime Award.

Compositions (selection)

Recordings (selection)

Documentaries

Movie title Director Release length Remarks
Mingus: Charlie Mingus 1968 Thomas Reichman 1968 58 min. In 1966 Thomas Reichman (1944–1975) portrayed Charles Mingus and his five-year-old daughter in his New York apartment and interviewed him on various topics.
Charles Mingus: Triumph of the Underdog Don McGlynn 1998 78 min Biographical portrait with performances by Charles Mingus, Sue Mingus, Gunther Schuller , Duke Ellington , Jack Walrath and other musicians.
Mingus on mingus Kevin Ellington Mingus 2014 Film project of the Mingus grandson and bassist about his grandfather.

literature

  • Krin Gabbard: Better Git It in Your Soul: An Interpretive Biography of Charles Mingus . 2016
  • Hans-Joachim Hessler: The angry baron. The principle of discontinuity in life and conceptual compositional work of Charles Mingus jr. United Dictions of Music, Duisburg 2010, ISBN 978-3-942677-00-4 .
  • Brian Priestley: Mingus: A Critical Biography. Quartet Books, London 1982, ISBN 0-7043-2275-7 .
  • Todd S. Jenkins: I Know What I Know: The Music of Charles Mingus. Praeger, Westport, CT / London 2006, ISBN 0-275-98102-9 .
  • Uwe Weiler: The Debut Label - A Discography. Private publication, Norderstedt 1994.
  • Sue Graham Mingus: Tonight At Noon. A Lovestory. Nautilus, Hamburg 2003, ISBN 3-89401-415-6 .
  • Charles Mingus: More than a Fake Book. Jazz Workshop / Hal Leonard Publishing Comp.
  • Charles Mingus: Beneath The Underdog. 2nd, expanded edition. Nautilus, Hamburg 2003, ISBN 3-89401-416-4 .
  • Horst Weber, Gerd Filtgen: Charles Mingus. His life, his music, his records. Oreos, Gauting-Buchendorf approx. 1984, ISBN 3-923657-05-6 .
  • Gene Santoro: Myself When I am Real: The Life and Music of Charles Mingus. Oxford University Press 2000, ISBN 0-19-514711-1 .
  • du - Journal of Culture , February 2002 / Issue No. 723: Charles Mingus - The Talking Bass. With contributions by Gene Santoro, Charles Mingus, Manfred Papst, Wolfram Knauer , Brian Priestley , Peter Niklas Wilson , Jürgen Schaal, Wolfgang Sandner and Peter Ruedi.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ which he could not record until 1971 on the album Let My Children Hear Music .
  2. ↑ It was first recorded on the album Pre-Bird in 1960 .
  3. ↑ recorded in 1959 for the album Mingus Dynasty .
  4. ^ Information on childhood and youth according to: Manfred Papst: Chronicle of life and work. In: Charles Mingus - The Talking Bass. In: du , issue 723 / February 2002, p. 83 f.
  5. ↑ Eric Mingus worked on the 1991 Mingus Dynasty CD The Next Generation Performs Charles Mingus Brand New Compositions (Columbia / Sony).
  6. ^ Priestley: Mingus. A Critical Biography. 1985, p. 23 ff.
  7. ↑ In fact, it was recorded by Columbia Records , but never released.
  8. ↑ cit. n. Weber, Filtgen: Charles Mingus. His life, his music, his records. Approx. 1984, p. 33.
  9. ^ Priestley: Mingus. A Critical Biography. 1985, p. 47.
  10. ↑ A nickname he had adopted as a bow to Duke Ellington. Miles Davis: The Autobiography. Hamburg 1993, p. 110.
  11. ↑ A tour with Billie Holiday had to be canceled because the singer quit. Recordings with Buddy Collette remained without any response; see. Manfred Papst: Chronicle of life and work. In: Charles Mingus - The Talking Bass. du issue 723 / February 2002, p. 84.
  12. ^ Priestley: Mingus. A Critical Biography. 1985, p. 55.
  13. ↑ According to Davis' autobiography, when he left for New York, there was a small break in friendship when Mingus accused him of abandoning Parker, who had meanwhile been admitted to a psychiatric hospital and who was his musical father.
  14. ↑ quoted in Weber, Filtgen: Charles Mingus. His life, his music, his records. Approx. 1984, p. 36.
  15. ↑ The catalog was bought by Fantasy Records , where his ex-wife Celia worked, and some of it was published again from 1962 onwards.
  16. ^ David Kastin: Too Late Blues - Nica Goes to Hollywood . In: JazzTimes , 2015
  17. ^ Priestley: Charles Mingus: A Critical Biography. 1982, pp. 124-126.
  18. ↑ Mingus invited his forgotten maternal uncle, Fess Williams , to the concert . However, the recordings his uncle contributed to are not included on the album of the same name. Gene Santoro mentions in his Myself When I am Real - The Life and Music of Charles Mingus biography that Fess Williams was the husband of Louise, the sister of Mingus' mother. He helped the young musician with the arrangements of his early composition Mingus Fingers .
  19. ↑ Literally "Poppaloppers". The entire speech is quoted by Ekkehard Jost in: Social history of jazz. 2003, p. 219.
  20. ^ Sue Graham Mingus: Tonight at Noon. A Lovestory. Nautilus, Hamburg 2003, p. 284.
  21. ^ Weber, Filtgen: Charles Mingus. His life, his music, his records. Approx. 1984, p. 134.
  22. ↑ On the stress on this tour organized by George Wein due to a tight schedule, cf. Priestley: Mingus. A Critical Biography. 1985, p. 166.
  23. ↑ See Charles Mingus: Beneath the underdog. Translated from the English by Günter Pfeiffer. With an afterword by Harald Justin . Nautilus, Hamburg 2003, ISBN 3-89401-416-4 .
  24. ^ Peter Niklas Wilson: Charles Mingus. In: Jazz classics. Reclam Verlag, Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 3-15-030030-4 , pp. 327-328.
  25. ^ Nat Hentoff after M. Kunzler: Jazz-Enzyklopädie. Vol. 2, ISBN 3-499-16513-9 , p. 862.
  26. ^ After Weber, Filtgen: Charles Mingus. His life, his music, his records. Approx. 1984, p. 77.
  27. ↑ in the liner text for the edition as Mingus Revisited 1965, which was later included on the EmArcy CD .
  28. ↑ It also contains a short vocal duet by Mingus and Mitchell - the swing classic I's A Muggin ' ; this was probably Mingus' last recording.
  29. ↑ nytimes.com
  30. ^ Charles Mingus (1968). Internet Movie Database , accessed June 8, 2015 .
  31. ^ Charles Mingus: Triumph of the Underdog. Internet Movie Database , accessed June 8, 2015 .
  32. ↑ orangethenblue.com

Web links

Commons : Charles Mingus  - collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Mingus, Charles
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American jazz musician
DATE OF BIRTH April 22, 1922
PLACE OF BIRTH Nogales , Arizona, USA
DATE OF DEATH 5th January 1979
Place of death Cuernavaca , Mexico