It’s hard sometimes to get a perspective of where you are in life until you compare yourself with a certain standard. Think you’re on a high moral ground? Try reading The Sermon on the Mount. Think we’re going through difficult times? Go through Winston Churchill’s volumes on WWII. In a similar vein, if you think that today’s music is fresh and exciting, go and purchase two recent reissues: Columbia Legacy’s reissue of Charlie Mingus’ catalogue and Mosaic Records’ collection of his Workshop Concerts from 1964-65. They’ll make you ask “where did we go wrong?”
In light of the plethora of this revival of Mingus Music, we decided to catch up with his widow, Sue Mingus, who is not only used for background information on these two opuses, but has written her own book on her relationship with the iconic bandleader, musician and composer.
WHY DID YOU INITIALLY DECIDE TO WRITE THE BOOK TONIGHT AT NOON?
Because I felt a need to relive and explore all of the feelings that accompanied Charles’ dying and the year of his dying. He certainly lived more than most, and he certainly died more than most. It was a most extraordinary experience to watch a man who was so physical and strong change so radically and yet maintain the same appetites and grace and courage. I wanted to write about that whole experience. I just got a letter who wrote a book on Mingus, and he asked me to write a few words about him as well.
WHAT”S THE BIGGEST MISCONCEPTION THE WORLD HAS ABOUT CHARLES MINGUS
Probably all of the things that are written in the press about him being “Jazz’s Angry Man.” Charles himself, by himself without having anyone to fight with the opposing forces of society that he faced when he was growing in the 30s and 40s. That can change you, when people don’t like you because of the color of your skin. And, when you have a big message to give, and you have to fight to get that message across more than most other people.
The Charles that I knew; Charles at home, Charles at the piano, Charles meditating, was a very spiritual and quiet man inside. We never fought at home. Well, we fought for 8 years before we ended up together, but that was all about whether we were going to get married. We had many, many confrontations about that. But he was attached to his music. He wanted you to hear it. And if you listen to his music, it’s all there. There’s not only the loud, energetic and angry Charles, but also the quiet, thoughtful , spiritual and meditative Charles which made a beautiful balance. Everything he was was in his music.
WHAT INITIALLY IMPRESSED YOU ABOUT HIM YOU WHEN YOU FIRST MET HIM IN 1964
I think it was the beef bone that he was eating! He was really focused, and it was a busy night. It was very noisy, and during intermission I happened to notice a large man (I didn’t know that it was Mingus) sitting alone at a table for four in the middle of the den, absolutely focused on this beef bone that he was eating. Completely unaware of the noise or attention. There was something about that focus and attention that he was giving that drew me instantly into his persona. Afterwards, I got to knowhim as a person.
I didn’t know the first thing about jazz before I met him. A couple records that I loved by Billie Holiday, like “I Can’t Get Started,” and I remember “Moonlight in Vermont.” I heard none of his music before I met him. I met the man first.
The first record of his that I bought was Black Saint and Sinner Lady. It remains one of my favorites. There wasn’t a flash or shock of recognition. It was a slow and gradual growth, understanding and hearing the music over and over, and then falling in love with it. But it was not overnight. It wasn’t a flash, like when Charles first heard Duke Ellington as a little kid and practically fell off the balcony. But that’s what happens to musicians, but it’s not how I came close to jazz.
DID HE CARE WHAT YOU LISTENED TO?
He didn’t direct me. He was not didactic. He didn’t tell people what to do. You found your own path. He wanted his music played a certain way on stage. That was different; off stage, Charles didn’t tell you what to do. He’d tell you what he believed on stage. He’d talk politics and social injustice, but individually he wasn’t telling me what to do, except that I was supposed to live with him.
WHAT WERE YOUR THOUGHTS WHEN YOU SAW HIM PERFORM FOR THE FIRST TIME IN A JAZZ CLUB?
I was just listening. He was a very powerful performer on bass. He dominated the stage. I happened to sit next to a historian. It was the first time I’d ever been in a jazz club by myself. He was giving me a running commentary, sort of a background about the music. At a certain point, Charles told him to be quiet. He challenged the audience to listen. He didn’t accept talking or the ringing of cash registers. He actually wanted people to listen, and he’d confront people who were talking.
WHEN YOU LOOK BACK ON HIS LEGACY OF MUSIC, WHAT STANDS OUT IN YOUR MIND?
The enormity and variety of it. The challenge of the music. He got one of the most personal style of music, in any genre. Dr. Gunther Schuller will tell you this over and over. There is no music that is more personally expressive than Mingus, be it classical or any other, and he wrote everything he felt. He wrote in every kind of genre. He wrote blues, classical, extended forms, latin forms an bebop. There was almost nothing that he didn’t use and turn it into his own voice. Into Mingus music.
People used to ask to describe his music. Was it jazz? Was it classical? He’d ask why you couldn’t just call it “Minus music”?
MINGUS HAD A WIDE RANGE OF MUSICIANS. GUYS LIKE DOLPHY, BYARD, RICHMOND, KNEPPER AND ERVIN. WHICH SIDEMEN WERE THE MOST “MINGUSY?”
They all became that way. I think that if you played in Charles’ band you had to get inside the music and inside yourself, or you wouldn’t stay. There was no hiding in Mingus’ music. It’s a very challenging music. I’ve heard this from the musicians, who loved to play the music. Well, a certain kind of musician. A musician who likes a challenge, who likes to express himself, and who has a lot on his mind that he wants to say on his horn. And likes the difficulty. Charles loved the kind of music that he played. He loved the challenge. Woody Allen talks about “difficult pleasures.” The kind of great reading that challenges you, the great reading is difficult and is a different and more interesting kind of reading. Mingus’ music was like that.
WHAT WOULD MINGUS THINK OF THE JAZZ SCENE TODAY?
I’m very bad at sweeping overviews. I can just tell you from my local view. In NYC, we have a local band that plays every Monday night. One of the three Mingus reparatory bands; and we’re packed. We have started a Mingus high school competition. We’re in our 5th year. A national high school, and we’ve opened it up to Canada this year. Kids come from all over the country, which means that teachers are teaching Mingus’ music in high school now. So, it’s leaking across the country into schools, far more than when Charles was alive. I think he’d be pleased.
YOU SEEM TO HAVE A FAIRLY LARGE PRIVAT COLLECTION OF MINGUS’ MUSIC THAT YOU OCCASIONALLY PUT OUT, AS WELL AS THE REiSSUED PROJECTS BY SONY AND MOSCAIC. DO THEY CONSULT YOU BEFOREHAND?
They don’t consult me; they ask me to write liner notes. About 20 pages of liner notes for the boxed set that Sony has just released. Don’t expect musicological notes from me. These are personal notes from my memories of the music and of Charles playing the music. I also wrote liner notes for Michael Cuscuna’s Mosaic set.
I have about 40 tapes in archives. I brought these archives, and Michael chose through these material from 1964-1965 for a 5 cd set of music that Mingus wrote and performed both on the 1964 European tour, and for a true Mingus fan, for well known events in California in Monterrey and UCLA in 1964 and 65.
ANY SURPRISES IN YOUR TREASURE CHEST?
There is some fantastic music that Charles recorded at Ronnie Scotts that is still there, as well as a number of other things.
IN THE LINER NOTES, MINGUS SAYS THE MUSIC CAME FROM GOD
He took credit for the hard work that he did on his bass, and for his virtuosity. He made his fourth finger as fast as possible. The fourth finger is your weakest finger because it doesn’t have a muscle of its own. It plays off of the little finger muscle. So, Mingus would play 8 hours a day with just him exercising that one finger to make it his fastest finger. So, he took credit for that. But he said that the melody came from God. And when he’d rise up from bed in the middle of the night and stumble in the dark to the piano to compose, he said that the music was waiting for him in the keys. He, like many musicians, was very mystical about his gifts.
ANY FAVORITE PERIOD OF HIS MUSIC YOU LIKE MORE THAN OTHERS?
No, it’s all different. Charles said that he never wrote the same thing twice. When I release his old records, it’s always difficult because I always feel like I’m shortchanging him somehow. The record companies generally want a concept. We’d call one album “Blues and Politics” and another one “Viva Mingus” which focused on his latin music. It’s hard to just pick one side of Mingus because there were so many sides to him and they were all authentic and legitimate. You can’t choose just one, as you leave off the other 50 times.
WHAT ABOUT THE FAMOUS DOCUMENTARY WHEN HE GETS EVICTED AND FIRES OFF THE GUN?
That wasn’t in a hotel, that was in a studio in New York. He rented an apartment from a woman who did not tell him that after 6 months the landlord was going to completely redo the building and throw everybody out. So, unwittingly, he rented something not knowing it was only good for 6 months. So, after 6 months they tossed him out. And Tom, who was making a documentary of Mingus at the time filmed that eviction.
GOING TO DOLPHY AND RICHMOND. DID HE HAVE A SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP WITH THEM?
He didn’t go back to them or to certain musicians. They were just part of the line of his musical career. Eric was there in the early 60s, on and off, up until 64 when he died in Europe. He died very young in his 30s, about a month after he left the Mingus band. He was in Germany. So, that was a short period, a strong period, and Eric had a great influence on many many musicians. It was a great loss. But that was one brief period in Charles Mingus’ life, and Dannie Richmond was his drummer for a long period. He moved to different periods. There was a time when he didn’t write down compositions. He felt that it lost spontaneity and he didn’t want to be what he called “a pencil composer.”
Then there was a time when he wrote ENORMOUS scores. 20 pages pieces like Cumbia Jazz Fusion and Todo Modo. Very classical pieces, so Charles was always moving on.
He changed his personnel. He had a quintet with Dannie Richmond and Charles McPherson and Lonnie Hillyer and Jackie Byard. That was one of those that he called “my favorite quintet.” That’s one of the albums that will be released on the Mosaic set. Charles had a short-lived record company in the 60s called Charles Mingus enterprises that released four albums. That was one of them. He had the band with Ted Curson and Eric Dolphy. Johnny Coles later replaced Curson, and Clifford Jordan was in the band, and later he had George Adams.
WHEN PEOPLE THINK OF CHARLES MINGUS WHEN THEY GET THESE MOSAIC AND SONY SETS, AND MAYBE LISTEN TO HIS MUSIC FOR THE FIRST TIME, WHAT SHOULD GO THROUGH THEIR MINDS?
They should just listen to the music.