Charles Mingus on Paper

I have to confess it: I have a bad memory for books and movies. With the passing of the years, I tend to forgot about everything I read or everything I see. When I see again a film, or a read again a book, my memories tend to be dissimilar from what I reread or I resee. Sometimes I remember more something that occurred in that period of time: as an example, I can remember the feelings in reading the final lines of Saramago’s Blindness or the fact that when I started reading Tropic of Cancer I wanted to regain possess over my instincts, that my catholic education repressed for so many years.

This is also the case with Beneath the Underdog, the beautiful and meaningful autobiography by bassist and composer Charles Mingus, one of my all time favorites musicians. Mingus is luckily so recognized today that his birthday, April 22, has been taken as the International Day of Jazz. His autobiography starts with a confession by Mingus himself to his psychiatrist (the famous lines “In other words I am three” ... ) and, this is what I remember, it ends with Mingus taken into the mental hospital who hosted him for some weeks after a little crisis during which the bassist was completely unable to sleep.

What I was missing is the fact that during that period Mingus was at risk of being lobotomized, and that he was saved by his friend the jazz critic Nat Henthoff. I was made aware of this circumstance by a beautiful graphic novel titled simply Mingus issued in my country and in my language, Italian, by Coconino Press/Fandango last year, a novel created by Squaz with texts written by the music journalist Flavio Massarutto. A novel I have bought today and read during the train trip to home. The graphic novel is terrific. You’ll find the dance for The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady, the recording session for the song Original Faubus Fables for the album Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus, the period passed at the mental hospital and other episodes of his life, interspersed with interpretations of Mingus’ covers for some of his most famous albums.

As an example you’ll find the cover of Pithecantropus Erectus followed by a story of primates discovering how to extoll life from their counterparts (very Kubrickian), using tools like spears and stones, then you’ll find the photo for Blues and Roots with Mingus transfigured in a thorns-crowned Christ. But you’ll find also Mingus threatening Shafi Hadi after he composed the score for John Cassavetes’ Shadows. So you have basically all the three Minguses: the one full of music, the one who was at risk of harming himself, the one who endangered to harm others. This is, to tell the truth, the Mingus I like the less. When I think of an interview with one of his musicians in the interesting book Mingus Speaks, written by music journalist John F. Goodman, where Mingus is reported to have almost broke the hand of a pianist and punch on the mouth a saxophonist because they weren’t playing his music as it was intended, I would love to pass the buck. But it’s impossible, because I do love Mingus’ music.

The reason I love jazz is because it’s more than music to me. Coltrane, as an example, made me understand that creating (music) is something related to (universal) love, and so an artist has to pursue the goal not only to improve as a creator, but also as a human being. I talked many times about this issue with friends of mine who are artists (actors, musicians, etc.) and I had different answers to the same questions. One told me once that it was so compelling to him to improve as a musician he didn’t had the time to become also a better person, on the other hand another friend, an actress, told me that she was afraid by people who wouldn’t become better as persons as they age as artists.

My dream, so, was to unify the uman being. Studying acting and a little bit of painting myself, I have this urge to become one, not separating the artist from the man I am. On one hand, so, you have Coltrane who was an example for everyone (there’s also a church devoted to him!), on the other you have Mingus. But who knows, maybe Mingus would have been a worst person without the art he was creating. After all, who am I to judge? One of the problems you can enucleate in reading books such as the three this post is dedicated to, is how Mingus was trying to play with his so-called madness, having this documents he talk about in the interview book where it was written he was unable to understand and want.

Thanks to these documents, he was able to trick some clubs he initially signed an exclusive contract with. So in a way he started profiting about his mental condition and instability. I think this is an enormous confusion for everyone, because it helps you overcome your responsibilities since of your defaillances. Add some episodes from his life like the psychiatrist who wanted to practice electro-shock on him, because the doctor took him for a “paranoid as every black person (is)”, and you obtain a confusion and a certain amount of instability in the life of a man.

As Anthony Braxton wrote many times about Charlie Parker, another jazz cat who had troubles with psychiatry, and to whom Mingus dedicate the composition Parkeriana, people who taste how bitter is the hatred from societal norms, tend quite often to hate themselves. And not only themselves. Mingus was one of the greatest composers, but his social and personal funcioning was compromised by racism and I’d say ‘capitalism’, thinking with this term to the way the music industry was going on during those days in the U.S. After all, one of the reason Mingus hated free jazz and the avantgarde, was the fact that this music was not appealing to the majority of people, leaving the field free for white musicians to consolidate their robbing of rhythm and blues in the form of rock music.

So, if Mingus was ‘paranoid’, he was in the sense William S. Burroughs gave to this word, as ‘a paranoid is a well informed person’. Having treated the issue of Mingus’ violence against some of his friends, musicians, etc., another topic is religion. Mingus’ music is many times the music of a man of faith (Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting, the opening of Blues and Roots, is a good testimony of this). But possibly, as stated by Mingus himself on Mingus Speaks, the man who helped him believe in God (and ESP perceptions) was drummer Dannie Richmond, a long time collaborator of the bassist and one of his best friends. His way of playing with Mingus was in fact almost telepathic. Sometimes the bassist tried to hide his instrument from the view of the friend, but he was always imagining what he would play.

As far as Mingus’ style of music instead, he was to me for free jazz like Thelonious Monk to bebop. Monk wasn’t a bopper, he was a world on his own. But he used to meet boppers because their sense of musical creation was the most free in his own time. Same with Mingus. Far as he was from free  jazz (read the firts interviews contained in Mingus Speaks to better understand the topic) he sometimes used musicians coming from that milieu, like multi-reedist Eric Dolphy, because of their attitude to be precise but instinctive as players. In fact, as Mingus himself tell to Nat Henthoff in a beautiful table of the graphic novel Mingus, the bassist was writing all the scores for his own music but didn’t wanted the musicians to read the sheet: he would have preferred to explain the music verbally, and because jazz musicians are always imaginative, Mingus would have obtained more spontaneous rendition of the music in comparison with the written notes. A risk, but a risk in name of the beauty.

How to conclude this little writing? Obviously with some advices. Here below you’ll find some of Mingus finest records and the three books I have talked about in this piece. It’s up to you to enjoy and deepen the music of a true genius through listening and reading. Enjoy.

 

Books about (?) Mingus

Charles Mingus/Nel King, Beneath The Underdog, New York Vintage Books, 1991

John Goodman, Mingus Speaks, University of California Press, 2013

Flavio Massarutto/Squaz, Mingus, Coconino Press, 2021

 

Albums of Mingus

Pithecantropus Erectus, Atlantic, 1956

Tijuana Moods, RCA, 1957

Mingus Ah Uhm, Columbia, 1959

Blues and Roots, Atlantic, 1960

Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus, Candid, 1960

The Black Saint and The Sinner Lady, Impulse!, 1963

The Great Concert of Charles Mingus, America, 1971

Let My Children Hear Music, Columbia, 1972