Jazzscript.co.uk - CHARLES MINGUS : LIFELINE

CHARLES MINGUS double bass LIFELINE 1922-1979
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1922 Born in Los Angeles, of mixed ancestry, which reinforces feelings of persecution and a sense of 'not belonging'. Mingus is deeply sensitive, with a tendency to dramatise his own experiences. 1941 Mingus serves a professional apprenticeship in Central Avenue, LA's equivalent of New York's 52nd Street. Mingus plays with Lee Young, Barney Bigard, Louis Armstrong (1941 to '43 - but is upset with Armstrong's compromise with the white dominated entertainment circus), Kid Ory and Lionel Hampton. He receives critical acclaim with the Red Norvo trio in 1950 and 1951. 1955 Mingus starts his own workshop ensemble as his compositional style develops. His ensembles vary from 4 to 11 players, including Booker Ervin, Jackie McLean, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Eric Dolphy, Jimmy Knepper, Charles McPherson, John Handy, Paul Bley, Ted Curson and the drummer Danny Richmond. 1966 In dire economic circumstances and troubled by psychological problems, Mingus becomes ever reclusive and eventually withdraws from public life. Reichman's 1968 film Mingus documents his eviction from a New York apartment. 1971 His autobiography, Beneath the Underdog, is published; and he is granted a Guggenheim fellowship for composition. More albums, work and travel follow this new success. His ensembles include Don Pullen, George Adams and Jack Walruth.		1938 As a child Mingus learns the trombone and 'cello; at 16 he takes up the double bass, and is taught by Red Callender and a bassist with the New York Philharmonic, and has formal lessons in composition. 1952 Founds Debut Records with Max Roach, releasing early Jazz Workshop recordings and the famous Massey Hall concert with Parker, Powell and Gillespie. 1953 With Teo Macero, Teddy Charles and others, Mingus forms the Jazz Composers' Workshop. 1960 Mingus attempts to disentangle himself from economic dependence on the white commercial jazz world, but ultimately fails. With Max Roach he promotes an alternative to the Newport Jazz Festival, from which the Jazz Artists' Guild - an attempt to allow jazzmen to promote their own business - emerges. A 1962 New York big band concert fails, as does Charles Mingus, his new label, after only a clutch of releases in 1964 and 1965, and he fails to publish his autobiography. 1969 Mingus returns to work. 1977 Mingus is diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's disease), and by 1978 is confined to a weelchair.
1980 The Mingus legacy is continued by his wife, Sue, through reissues and the Mingus Dynasty, eventually to be known as the Mingus Big Band, a group of alumni headed by Danny Richmond.
INFLUENCES His early influence was the uninhibited music of his local Holiness Church which he attended as a boy with his stepmother: there he heard blues drenched vocal improvisations, unrestrained vibrato, moaning, call and responses. This contrasted with his schooling in the strictures of Western classical music. Later the music of Duke Ellington was to have a profound influence, particularly in compositional techniques.
BASSIST As a bass player Mingus was as dramatic as his personality, covering a great breadth of styles with a sound technique and full tone. He combined the traditional bass line, providing the harmonic foundation, a style developed by Jimmy Blanton with Ellington, with complex bop harmonies and improvised counter-melodies. He developed his "conversational" approach of playing in the 1960s through his work with Eric Dolphy.
COMPOSER Mingus was a Janus figure. He combined New Orleans jazz, blues and gospel in a bebop setting, and at the same time prepared the way for Miles Davis's modal work (with his use of pedal points and ostinati patterns) and free jazz (with his rhythmic and ensemble devices). His greatest achievement as a jazz composer was to destroy the distinction between improvisation and composition. Mingus grew away from the use of musical notation, which he found inadequate, and developed the technique of dictating lines to each player individually, even prescribing the style of improvisation. Like Ellington, who in Brian Priestley's words was "cannibalizing his musicians' very souls", Mingus personalised each voice in his ensemble, achieving in bop terms what Ellington had done with swing-style musicians. Mingus loved non-standard chorus structures; he loved dissonance and dense low-pitched sonorities; and, above all, shifting tempos and meters. At all times mixing spontaneity with composed complexity.

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