Happy Centennial Charles Mingus
Mingus would have been 100 years old today, if he hadn’t died in 1979. He was only 57 years old—younger than I am now. Charles Mingus was the first jazz musician I loved. Here is a video of his sextet practicing for a show in Stockholm.
The band is Eric Dolphy on alto sax and bass clarinet, Dannie Richmond on drums, Jaki Byard on piano, Clifford Jordan on tenor sax, Johnny Coles on trumpet, and of course, Charles Mingus on bass. Rarely do bass players become band leaders, as far as I know. But Mingus was a great band leader and songwriter.
Here is Mingus’s band playing “Fables of Faubus”, a song about when the Little Rock Nine attempted to enroll in Little Rock Central High School. You would probably get fired for showing this video in a classroom today, because it might hurt the feelings of Trump’s littlest snowflakes.
My favorite album by Mingus is Mingus Ah Um, recorded in 1959. Every song is a classic. Amazingly, you can hear the whole thing on YouTube.
Mingus wrote an absolutely insane autobiography called Beneath the Underdog. It is probably not the best source for biographical information, but it puts you into Mingus’s head—a somewhat scary place for a middle class white boy like me.
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