Charles Mingus

Charles Mingus, the jazz bassist, composer, and arranger, was an intelligent, iconoclastic crank: an incredibly gifted composer who understood how to bring the energy of the blues and gospel into an improvisatory setting; a sideman feared for his angry outbursts; a leader who treated his band like a free-form workshop; and the owner of a label (Debut) that documented some key jazz sessions of the '50s. But that's not all -- a victim of racism, Mingus became one of the most outspoken jazz musicians, whose titles offered trenchant commentary on current events (one song, "Fables of Faubus," took aim at the Arkansas gov-erner who sought to continue segregation). He also contributed a classic memoir of jazz, Beneath the Underdog, and several ambitious large-ensemble pieces, including the haunting Epitaph, which was pieced together from his notation after his death.

After working in several famous bands (including the Jazz at Massey Hall ensemble featuring Charlie Parker), Mingus began his composing career in the conventional manner -- as an Ellington disciple, writing out parts for each of his musicians. Sensing this approach denied his musicians the chance to shape the music, he switched tactics, singing the parts to each player and outlining structures in ways that allowed for spontaneous revision. This gave the music a hocketing, sometimes frenetic call-and-response quality, and a sense of rippling invention first heard on 1956's Pithecanthropus Erectus, Mingus' first great state-ment as a leader. The recordings that followed are marvels of extrapolation and motific embellishment that, by the way, yield some of the most visionary writing in jazz: The Clown contains the catcalling "Haitian Fight Song," Blues and Roots has the revival blues "Better Git It in Yo' Soul." These dates feature some of the sidemen who became crucial collaborators for Mingus -- saxophonists Eric Dolphy, Jackie McLean, and Booker Ervin, multi-instrumentalist Rahsaan Roland Kirk, and trombonist Jimmy Knepper all helped Mingus find an inspiring midpoint between uproarious free improv and gutbucket blues, a balance he achieved best on his 1959 Columbia debut, Mingus Ah Um. Dolphy, a fixture with Mingus in the early '60s, lights up the consistently energized At Antibes. And 1963's The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady, written for big band and featuring Dolphy, remains one of the most adventurous long-form pieces in jazz history -- a fate that would have been shared by Epitaph had Mingus himself been able to finish it.

Active into the 1970s, Mingus continued to record even after Lou Gehrig's disease made it impossible for him to play the bass anymore. Among his last proj-ects was a collaboration with singer/songwriter Joni Mitchell, Mingus, which contains her approximations of several of his classics. Because his recordings were issued by many labels, there's no comprehensive career anthology, but there are several era-specific sets; of these, Rhino's The Very Best actually is the best. A posthumous recording of Epitaph featuring some Mingus sidemen was issued in 1989. (TOM MOON)

From 2004's The New Rolling Stone Album Guide