Charles Mingus’s creativity as a jazz musician atones for all his mood swings
Sanjoy Narayan revists a genius and a very difficult man.
I was zero when Mingus Ah Um, Charles Mingus’s landmark album, was recorded. Mingus recorded that album in New York over two days in May 1959, on the 5th and 12th (I hit the world four days later; just saying!). I was introduced to jazz late in the day.
Many consider Mingus Ah Um to be the double-bassist, composer, bandleader, and genius Charles Mingus’s best album, but that is a difficult choice to make. Mingus’s career spanned more than 30 years till he died in 1979. And the number of records he made as bandleader, sideman or collaborator is huge. I’ve not had the chance to listen to all of them and probably will not be able to, but I’m yet to hear a Mingus album that is not excellent.
On Mingus Ah Um, you can hear all of the unique roots that Mingus put into his pot to stir up and brew his brand of jazz – gospel, blues, classical music and more. Whenever I put on the album and the first tune, Better Git It In Your Soul begins with his bass notes I sit up straight and get transfixed. That happened again when I picked out Mingus Ah Um once again last week.
For the album, Mingus, who was a difficult and temperamental man to work with, had gathered a star cast: Horace Parlan on piano, Willie Dennis trombone, Shafi Hadi, Booker Evan and John Handy on saxophones, Dannie Richmond on drums, and Jimmy Knepper on trombone.
It wasn’t very much after the release of Mingus Ah Um that Knepper, an accomplished trombonist and a friend of Mingus with whom he’d also co-arranged music, got a taste of Mingus’s legendary violent mood swings. The two were practicing in the bassist’s house when Mingus, in an angry outburst of violence, punched Knepper in the face. This was the second time Knepper got punched by Mingus. The first was once during a performance onstage. This time it was worse.
Embouchure is the French word used to describe the way the facial muscles, lips and the mouth are used by musicians to play wind instruments, such as the trombone Knepper played. That blow from Mingus, a big man, damaged his embouchure and affected the way he could play for a couple of years.
Several musicians were victims of Mingus’s rage, sometimes being summarily sacked or publicly rebuked. Yet the man’s sheer genius and creativity probably atones for all of that. On Mingus Ah Um, I particularly like Goodbye Pork Pie Hat, a tribute to Lester Young, a great saxophonist who’d died just before the recording of the album. And also Jelly Roll, which name-checks Jelly Roll Morton, an early jazz pianist.
