Charles Mingus · New to them

New to Mingus

Charles Mingus was a bassist who became one of the great composers in jazz, with a sound built from church, blues, Ellington and Charlie Parker. This path starts with his best-loved record, goes back to where he came from, then follows his bands from the 1950s workshops to the big works of 1963.

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Start with the songbook
Mingus Ah Um Charles Mingus · Columbia CL 1370 · 1959
Start here. In May 1959 Mingus took eight players into Columbia's 30th Street Studio in New York for two days and came out with his first record for the label. Teo Macero produced it. The title is a joke on a Latin lesson, his name declined like an adjective. Many tunes are tributes to what made him: gospel church, Jelly Roll Morton, Duke Ellington, and Lester Young, who had died two months before. There is a protest song too, "Fables Of Faubus", aimed at the Arkansas governor who fought school integration in 1957. Columbia would not let him record the words, so it went down as an instrumental. It is the easiest way in.
Start with
- Better Git Hit In Your Soul
- Goodbye Pork Pie Hat
- Fables Of Faubus
"Better Git Hit In Your Soul" grew out of the gospel singing and preaching Mingus heard as a boy: listen for the church in it. "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat" is his slow elegy for Lester Young. In "Fables Of Faubus", hear the mocking theme and the sections where the band doubles the time. On "Jelly Roll", Horace Parlan slips a quote of Sonny Rollins's "Sonnymoon For Two" into his piano solo.
In the band
Horace Parlan · piano
Horace Parlan was 28 and from Pittsburgh. Polio had partly crippled his right hand when he was a baby, and he built a style around it: hard, pungent chords in the left hand and short rhythmic jabs with the right. He had worked with Sonny Stitt in Washington before two years in Mingus's Jazz Workshop. He went on to lead his own records, moved to Copenhagen in 1973, and made gospel duets with Archie Shepp.
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The trio that made his name
Move! The Red Norvo Trio · Savoy MG 12088 · 1956
Before he led anything, Mingus was a bass player people talked about. In 1950 and 1951 he worked in Red Norvo's trio: vibes, guitar and bass, with no piano and no drums, so the bass had to keep the time and carry the harmony at once. This record gathers sides from three dates, in Los Angeles in May 1950, Chicago in October 1950 and Los Angeles again in April 1951, issued together by Savoy in 1956. The trio was a hit in the clubs. It ended badly for Mingus: in 1951 he was replaced by a white bassist ahead of a television appearance, and he left for New York. Hear him here before the anger and the big bands.
Start with
- Move
- Godchild (master)
- I've Got You Under My Skin
With no drummer, listen to how much the bass does. Denzil Best's "Move" is taken very fast, and the three lines run side by side: Norvo's mallets, Tal Farlow's guitar and Mingus underneath, pushing. Then try a standard like "I've Got You Under My Skin" and notice how the three trade the lead and the accompaniment between them.
In the band
Tal Farlow · guitar
Tal Farlow came from Greensboro, North Carolina, taught himself guitar in his twenties and worked as a sign painter. His big, fast hands earned him the nickname "Octopus". This trio is where the public first heard him. He later said Mingus was easy to play with, because the bass gave the trio such a strong base. He led his own trio from 1955, then mostly went back to sign painting after 1958.
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One night in Toronto
Jazz At Massey Hall The Quintet · Debut DEB-124 · 1956
On May 15, 1953, five of the founders of bebop played Massey Hall in Toronto: Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Max Roach and Mingus. It was the only time the five recorded together, and the last record of Parker and Gillespie side by side. The house was thin, because a heavyweight title fight was on the same night, and the musicians were paid with checks that bounced; only Parker managed to cash his. Mingus brought the tape home to New York, dubbed in his bass where it was barely audible, and put it out on Debut, the label he had started with Roach in 1952. This 12-inch LP from 1956 gathers the quintet's set. It is his live date in this path.
Start with
- Salt Peanuts #1 & 2
- Hot House #1 & 2
- A Night In Tunisia
This is a club-sized band playing big for a small crowd. On "Salt Peanuts" Gillespie shouts the title phrase. On Tadd Dameron's "Hot House" and Gillespie's "A Night In Tunisia", listen to Parker and Gillespie trading ideas they had built together in the 1940s, and to Roach driving the tempo. Under it all is Mingus's bass, louder than it was on the night.
In the band
Charlie Parker · alto sax
Charlie Parker was 32 and couldn't be named on the sleeve for contract reasons, so he was billed as "Charlie Chan", after the film detective and his wife, Chan. He played a plastic Grafton alto that night. Mingus held him above every other jazz musician, though he hated the copycats and the drug myth that grew around him. Less than two years later Parker was dead. One of his last public appearances was a 1955 Birdland date with Mingus, Powell and Roach.
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His own tunes, live
Mingus At The Bohemia Charles Mingus · Debut DEB-123 · 1956
Two and a half years after Toronto, Mingus was leading his own band in Greenwich Village. On December 23, 1955, he recorded a quintet at the Café Bohemia: Eddie Bert on trombone, George Barrow on tenor, Mal Waldron on piano and Willie Jones on drums. Debut issued the record in 1956. AllMusic notes that it is the first Mingus recording built mostly on his own compositions. He was already reworking old songs into new ones: "Septemberly" lays "September In The Rain" over "Tenderly", and "All The Things You C-Sharp" crosses a Jerome Kern standard with Rachmaninoff. Max Roach, his partner at Debut, came by for one number.
Start with
- Jump Monk
- Percussion Discussion
- All The Things You C-Sharp
"Jump Monk" is a portrait of Thelonious Monk. "Percussion Discussion" is just bass and drums, Mingus and Roach in conversation, with an extra bass line Mingus added later on a piccolo bass. In "All The Things You C-Sharp", listen for the Rachmaninoff prelude breaking into a standard everyone in the room knew.
In the band
Max Roach · drums
Max Roach was one of the first drummers of bebop, from the Parker and Gillespie bands of the 1940s. In 1952 he and Mingus started Debut Records together, one of the first labels owned by musicians. By the time of this date he was co-leading a quintet with Clifford Brown. In 1960 he and Mingus organized a protest festival against the Newport Jazz Festival, and the same year he recorded his We Insist! Freedom Now Suite.
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The breakthrough
Pithecanthropus Erectus The Charlie Mingus Jazz Workshop · Atlantic LP 1237 · 1956
A month after the Bohemia, on January 30, 1956, Mingus made the record most people point to as his arrival as a composer. Atlantic issued it that August. He said it was the first time he taught a band its parts by ear instead of handing out written charts, and you can hear the freedom that gave. The title piece is a ten-minute tone poem in four parts about the rise of man and his fall, which Mingus tied to greed and to the refusal to free those he had enslaved. The band was young: Jackie McLean, J.R. Monterose, Mal Waldron and Willie Jones. The Penguin Guide to Jazz calls it one of the truly great modern jazz albums.
Start with
- Pithecanthropus Erectus: Evolution
- A Foggy Day
- Profile Of Jackie
Follow the title piece through its four sections, from the slow rise of the opening to the passages where the whole band improvises at once. The Penguin Guide hears that all-in ensemble work as crucial to the free collective playing of the next decade. "A Foggy Day" is the band's take on Gershwin. "Profile Of Jackie" is a short feature for McLean.
In the band
Jackie McLean · alto sax
Jackie McLean was 24, a Harlem kid who had been tutored informally by his neighbors Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk and Charlie Parker. He had recorded with Miles Davis at 20. His alto had a sharp, bittersweet tone and the blues at its root. He did not stay long: the story goes that Mingus punched him, and McLean, who said he was glad he never used the knife he pulled, went to Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers. He later made many records for Blue Note.
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Blues, a lovebird and a clown
The Clown Charles Mingus · Atlantic LP 1260 · 1957
A year later Mingus was back at Atlantic with a quintet, on February 13 and March 12, 1957. He told Nat Hentoff, in the original notes, that he picked four of the swinging pieces because some musicians had said he didn't swing. "Haitian Fight Song" became one of his set pieces. "Reincarnation Of A Love Bird" is his feeling about Charlie Parker. The title track tells the story of a clown who only pleases the crowd by dying, narrated by the radio humorist Jean Shepherd, who improvised his words from Mingus's outline. Shafi Hadi, billed as Curtis Porter, and Jimmy Knepper were the horns. It was also the first record with the drummer who would stay with Mingus for the rest of his life.
Start with
- Haitian Fight Song
- Reincarnation Of A Love Bird
- The Clown
In "Haitian Fight Song", listen for Mingus's own bass solo; he said he couldn't play it right unless he was thinking about prejudice and persecution. In "Reincarnation Of A Love Bird", hear the long lines he said were unlike Parker's short ones. In "The Clown", listen to how the band colors Shepherd's story.
In the band
Dannie Richmond · drums
Dannie Richmond was 25. Born in New York and raised in Greensboro, he had played R&B tenor saxophone in Paul Williams's band, and had taught himself drums only a few years before. This was the start of a partnership that lasted, on and off, 21 years. The biographer Brian Priestley called him "Mingus's equivalent to Harry Carney in the Ellington band", the one player the sound depended on. He stayed close to Mingus's music after Mingus died.
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Church, blues and shouting
Blues & Roots Charlie Mingus · Atlantic LP 1305 · 1960
Now go back to the same year as the first step. On February 4, 1959, three months before the Columbia sessions, Mingus recorded an all-blues, all-original record for Atlantic, which waited until 1960 to issue it. The band was big for him: two altos, tenor and baritone, two trombones, piano and drums, with Jackie McLean back in the line. In his notes he wrote that he was "born swinging" and clapped hands in church, but that blues can do more than swing. "Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting" came from the Holiness church services he went to in Los Angeles. This is the gospel side of Mingus, loud and loose and shouting.
Start with
- Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting
- Moanin'
- E's Flat, Ah's Flat Too
In "Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting", listen for the hand claps and the shouts of the band, and for Mingus urging everyone on. His "Moanin'" (not Bobby Timmons's tune) has a long solo by Pepper Adams on baritone. "E's Flat, Ah's Flat Too" has Mal Waldron on piano instead of Horace Parlan.
In the band
Pepper Adams · baritone sax
Pepper Adams came from the Detroit scene and moved to New York in the late 1950s. His baritone saxophone had a hard, cutting sound, and his extended solo on "Moanin'" is one of the moments on this record. In 1958 he started a quintet with Donald Byrd that ran until 1961. He kept working with Mingus off and on until 1979, and in 1963 he recorded a whole album of Mingus's compositions, one of the very few made in Mingus's lifetime.
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Four players, no piano
Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus Charles Mingus Quartet · Candid CJM 8005 · 1960
In 1960 Mingus heard Ornette Coleman's quartet at the Five Spot and was not sure what to make of it. That year he put together his own quartet with the same instruments and no piano: Eric Dolphy, the trumpeter Ted Curson and Dannie Richmond. They played for weeks at the Showplace in New York. On October 20, 1960, they recorded for Candid, the small label Nat Hentoff ran, which gave Mingus more freedom than the big companies. It is a studio record made to feel like the club: Mingus talks to an imaginary crowd and asks them not to clap. Here at last are the words to "Fables Of Faubus", now called "Original Faubus Fables".
Start with
- Folk Forms No. 1
- Original Faubus Fables
- What Love
"Folk Forms No. 1" is built on a pattern from the bass; Mingus said the others had to listen to him and follow when he changed it. "Original Faubus Fables" is the protest song from the first step, now sung by Mingus and Richmond. In "What Love", listen for the long conversation between Mingus's bass and Dolphy's bass clarinet.
In the band
Eric Dolphy · alto sax
Eric Dolphy grew up in Los Angeles, where Mingus had known him, and joined the Jazz Workshop in 1960 just after reaching New York. He played alto saxophone, flute and bass clarinet, an instrument few had used in jazz, with wide leaps and cries like a human voice. Mingus called him a complete musician who had mastered every instrument he played. He also worked with John Coltrane and made his own records. He died in Berlin in June 1964, at 36.
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Mingus at the piano, singing
Oh Yeah Charlie Mingus · Atlantic LP 1377 · 1962
A year on, on November 6, 1961, Mingus came back to Atlantic and did something odd: he left the bass to Doug Watkins and sat at the piano, and sang. Atlantic issued it in April 1962. The band was Jimmy Knepper, Booker Ervin, Dannie Richmond and a new voice, Roland Kirk, who could play two or three horns at once. The songs are blues and gospel taken to extremes, some of them very funny: one is a prayer that nobody drops the atomic bomb on him. Mingus's singing is rough and full of feeling. It shows how close the church and the blues stayed to everything he wrote.
Start with
- Hog Callin' Blues
- Oh Lord, Don't Let Them Drop That Atomic Bomb On Me
- Eat That Chicken
On "Hog Callin' Blues", listen for Kirk's sirens and the shouting horns. "Oh Lord, Don't Let Them Drop That Atomic Bomb On Me" is a slow gospel plea that is half joke and half fear. On "Eat That Chicken", hear Mingus singing. Through it all, listen for him at the piano and calling out to the band.
In the band
Roland Kirk · tenor sax
Roland Kirk was 26, from Columbus, Ohio, blind since he was two. As a teenager he was already playing two horns at once in R&B bands. Besides tenor and flute he played the manzello and stritch, old saxophone relatives, and often more than one at once. He moved to New York in 1960 and seldom worked as a sideman, so this record is a rare meeting. He later added "Rahsaan" to his name, after a dream, and made many records of his own.
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A ballet in six parts
The Black Saint And The Sinner Lady Mingus · Impulse! A-35 · 1963
On January 20, 1963, Mingus recorded what many listeners count as his greatest work: one long composition, partly written as a ballet, in four tracks and six movements, for an eleven-piece band. Impulse! issued it that July. He worked it out over six weeks at the Village Vanguard with a band built partly from the rehearsal group of the pianist and arranger Bob Hammer, who helped orchestrate it. Mingus called the style "ethnic folk-dance music". He asked his psychotherapist, Dr. Edmund Pollock, to write part of the liner notes. You have heard church, blues, Ellington and the free quartet on this path. Here they are all in one piece.
Start with
- Track A - Solo Dancer: Stop! Look! And Listen, Sinner Jim Whitey!
- Track B - Duet Solo Dancers: Heart's Beat And Shades In Physical Embraces
- Mode D - Trio And Group Dancers: Stop! Look! And Sing Songs Of Revolutions!
Listen for the colors Mingus and Hammer found in an eleven-piece band: tuba, flutes, a soprano sax and Jay Berliner's classical guitar, which brings a flash of Spain. Listen too for Charlie Mariano's alto. It is one continuous work, so hear how the music flows from one track into the next.
In the band
Charlie Mariano · alto sax
Charlie Mariano was born in Boston in 1923, the son of Italian immigrants. After war service he studied at what became Berklee, then played in one of Stan Kenton's big bands. At the time of this record he was married to the pianist Toshiko Akiyoshi. He taught at Berklee in the late 1960s, moved to Europe in 1971, settled in Cologne, and later played the nadaswaram, a South Indian wind instrument.
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Alone at the piano
Mingus Plays Piano Charlie Mingus Solo · Impulse! A-60 · 1964
You have heard Mingus at the piano already, singing over his band in 1961. On July 30, 1963, at RCA's studio in New York, he went further: a whole record alone at the keyboard, with no bass, no drums and no one else. Impulse! issued it in 1964, with notes by Nat Hentoff. Some pieces are standards, some are his own tunes, and some, as the record's subtitle says, are spontaneous compositions, made up on the spot. It is the most private record on this path, and the best place to hear how he thought as a composer: the harmonies, the moods and the church and Ellington inside him, with nothing between you and him.
Start with
- Myself When I Am Real
- Memories Of You
- Orange Was The Color Of Her Dress; Then Silk Blues
"Myself When I Am Real" opens the record and runs more than seven minutes; listen to how it wanders and returns as he thinks aloud at the keyboard. "Memories Of You" is Eubie Blake's old song, played slow. "Orange Was The Color Of Her Dress; Then Silk Blues" moves from a melody of his own into the blues.
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Old tunes, new clothes
Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Charlie Mingus Orchestra · Impulse! A-54 · 1964
Mingus liked to go back to his own tunes and rework them. This record, issued in January 1964, comes from two dates with Bob Hammer's orchestrations: two pieces left over from the Black Saint session in January 1963, and the rest from September 20, 1963, with a band that brought back Eric Dolphy and Booker Ervin alongside Jaki Byard and Britt Woodman. Most of the titles are songs you have already met under other names. "II B.S." is "Haitian Fight Song". "Theme For Lester Young" is "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat". "Hora Decubitus" is "E's Flat, Ah's Flat Too". It is a fine end to this path, and a door to the many records it hasn't reached.
Start with
- II B.S.
- Theme For Lester Young
- Hora Decubitus
Set each piece beside the earlier version you know from this path. Listen to what Bob Hammer's larger band, with tuba, flutes and a full reed section, adds to tunes first written for a handful of players, and to which parts Mingus kept just as they were.
In the band
Booker Ervin · tenor sax
Booker Ervin, from Denison, Texas, taught himself tenor saxophone while stationed with the Air Force on Okinawa. He studied at Berklee and reached New York in spring 1958, and from late that year he worked regularly with Mingus, coming back to him until 1964. His sound was big and tough, with the blues and gospel in his phrasing. Randy Weston put him on the same level as John Coltrane. He made his own records for Prestige and Blue Note and died in 1970, at 39.
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