In 1979, the last year of his life, Charles Mingus was dismayed when a radio commentator, during a rebroadcast of a Mingus concert in New Orleans, praised an early composition of his but got its musical lineage wrong. "I was inspired by Duke Ellington, Debussy, Stravinsky, Bartok," he said. "It had nothing to do with [jazz bassist] Oscar Pettiford."
Ellington was his lifelong idol, and because Mingus also composed for the full orchestral palette, he is Ellington's truest successor. His only rival, Thelonious Monk, was perfectly at home with the small ensemble (although his music is periodically the subject of successful orchestral settings).
I remember seeing Mingus one night at Birdland during the 1960s. He stood with his bass to the left on a bandstand that included reeds, horns and a rhythm section, and though his players had scores, Mingus would spontaneously call on soloists or indicate whole sections for particular emphasis or unrehearsed interludes. It was as if he was playing his bass and his orchestra simultaneously.
His body of work is among the most emotionally protean with one of the most varied and informed musical pedigrees in American history. In addition to the influences he names above, his compositions embrace gospel, blues, R&B, salsa and Afro-Cuban strains--often in boldly articulated "movements." Works such as "Fables of Faubus," "Self Portrait in Three Colors," "Reincarnation of a Lovebird" and "Sue's Changes" are American classics.
When the New Thing in jazz came along in the 1960s, Mingus readily integrated free jazz intervals into the body of his compositions. But we learn in "Tonight at Noon: A Love Story," his widow Sue Graham Mingus' telling and moving memoir, that he considered musicians playing exclusively free jazz to be at best incomplete. "You don't do anything all the time," he said.
Sue Mingus reports a conversation between her husband and Ellington apropos the New Jazz, then at its height, quoting from a piece Mingus wrote: " 'Duke, why don't you, me and Dizzy [Gillespie] and Clark Terry and Thad Jones get together and make an avant-garde record?' Duke's reply was very quick: 'Why should we go back that far? Let's not take music back that far, Mingus. Why not just make a modern record?' "
Mingus died at 56 of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease. Even so, his body of work is the second largest in jazz, exceeded only by Ellington's, and includes major compositions still to be recorded.
