The rage, the swing, the beauty and the confusion

April 22, 2022 8:52 AM

Charles Mingus would have been 100 today. “Mingus contained multitudes, but his native language was protest.” “What I’m trying to play is very difficult, because I’m trying to play the truth of what I am,” Mingus said. “The reason why it’s difficult — it’s not difficult to play the mechanics of it — it’s because I’m changing all the time.” “Genius and madman, visionary composer and canny showman, sensitive artist and tempestuous bully, crusader for justice and two-fisted tyrant—each of these depictions is rooted in fact while obscuring a more nuanced reality.”
posted by oulipian (14 comments total)

I feel like this should also be brought up here?
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:25 AM on April 22, 2022 [8 favorites]

Towering musical genius.

Also known for his eggnog.

Multitudes.
posted by box at 9:30 AM on April 22, 2022 [2 favorites]

To be played as loud as possible in tribute.

Mingus and everyone else here - notably Eric Dolphy - are on fire.
posted by ryanshepard at 9:36 AM on April 22, 2022 [3 favorites]

Thanks! There's a whole category of artists I really like and respect but don't actually often think of listening to. I have many albums, but probably haven't listened to Mingus in a decade. (Aside from a few that I think of as Max Roach albums.) Perhaps tonight I should pay attention again.
posted by eotvos at 9:36 AM on April 22, 2022

Also known for his eggnog.
And his toilet-training method for cats.
posted by neroli at 9:39 AM on April 22, 2022 [3 favorites]

And 'Original Faubus Fables.'
posted by box at 9:44 AM on April 22, 2022 [3 favorites]

That's great fun, box. (But, I'm gonna rattle the ice in my glass.)
posted by eotvos at 10:11 AM on April 22, 2022

Aw, Christ, do I love Mingus.

If we're doing the song linking thing, here's my pick: II BS (Haitian Fight Song). Album opener of Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus. Opens with Charles just laying stuff down, feeling around, a little percussion, and then he starts in on the main theme and we're off to the races, and when the horns start laying in THEIR main theme it is just, you know, dastardly. There's another, earlier version of this one out there, with Max Roach (recorded way earlier, in '55, but released in '64, the same time as this one), that is great and so so different in feel and the contrast between them is illustrative, to me, of what makes Mingus so terrific. Restless magnificence. Constant exploration. God damn.
posted by dirtdirt at 10:18 AM on April 22, 2022 [7 favorites]

I was an Industrial / Extreme Music Dingus in high school / early university, a special breed of dork who listened to a lot of Skinny Puppy and Ministry and Throbbing Gristle and thought that anything that sounded like music was, like, selling out, man. So loud stuff led to Painkiller, led to John Zorn's Naked City, and then a friend of a friend gave me a copy of Weird Nightmare: Meditations on Mingus, a Hal Wilner compilation that paired all sorts of alternative musicians and acts with Mingus compositions. Chuck D rapping "Gunslinging Bird," Leonard Cohen intoning "The Chill of Death..."

And I was off to the races with jazz! The next week I was stopping by the late, lamented Happy House record shop to get everything they recommended from Mingus, and haven't really looked back since. Despite some brief flirtations with Charlie Haden, Max Roach, Trane and Miles Davis, Mingus is my go-to #1 jazz love of all time.
posted by Shepherd at 11:47 AM on April 22, 2022 [6 favorites]

Haitian Fight Song was first released on The Clown in '57, though he'd been playing it live for a few years.

Underrated is Freedom, which wasn't released for decades though it was recorded for Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus.

One of the great American composers. Up there with Ellington in my book.
posted by dobbs at 11:52 AM on April 22, 2022 [4 favorites]

I encourage anyone interested in Mingus to read his autobiography, Beneath the Underdog, which, as far as I can tell, contains approximately 5% truthfulness. A hell of a read.
posted by Dr. Wu at 1:55 PM on April 22, 2022 [3 favorites]

I was lucky enough to see Mingus in the mid-70s. As you would imagine, he was strong and brilliant and did not smile...but he didn't throw anything at anybody, so on balance, everybody was happy.
posted by kozad at 5:21 PM on April 22, 2022

"Charles Mingus, 1968" by Harmony Holiday

...In 1968, when bassist and composer Charles Mingus tried to create a jazz school in Harlem, to teach that consciousness-expanding music to the community and enhance the skills of those already playing it, and was undermined, spectacularly, his missteps made into a spectacle in case anyone like him had been considering that same brand of altruism, it was omen for a frequency war that would dilute black music and culture and unravel what the previous decade had built until it spiraled into a psychedelic stupor....

The documentary Charles Mingus, 1968, directed by Thomas Reichman (who was either a fan or a federal agent, or both), let’s us into the would-be Mingus School, a shabby and disheveled flat in Harlem that was robbed the day after Mingus moved his things in, and appears somewhere between ransacked and unpacking....

posted by oakroom at 8:15 AM on April 23, 2022

F7 Db7. Gb7 B7 Eb7 Db7
Eb7 F7 Bbmi7 Db7 Gmi7 C7
D7 G7 Db7 Gbma7 B7 Bb7
C7 Eb7 F7 Db7 Gbma B7b5 Fmi13

Played with my head
posted by Narrative_Historian at 10:27 PM on April 23, 2022 [1 favorite]