Debut Records - Part 3

 © Copyright ® Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“The new phase of independent labels, in which for the first time the musicians themselves took a major role in ownership and management, seems to have gathered momentum at the turn of the decade (of the short lived 1940s companies, only Mezz Mezzrow's King Jazz and bassist Al Hall's Wax labels came into this category). With the major companies' interest in jazz at a new low after the second A.F.M. strike, first Dave Brubeck had helped start the Fantasy label in 1950, then in 1951 Dizzy Gillespie (Dee Gee) and Lennie Tristano (Jazz Records) had created their own outlets, as did Woody Herman (Mars) around the same time that Debut was founded. Also, despite still being contracted to Columbia, Duke Ellington had in 1950 formed the Mercer label to record small-group tracks which would not tempt the major companies, and he it was too who a decade earlier had set the precedent of an independent publishing company (Tempo Music) for his less commercial compositions.”

- Brian Preistley, Mingus: A Critical Biography [1982]

"We decided early on, since people weren't knocking our doors down to make records under our own names, that we'd start our own company. Basically that was how I got involved with the whole thing of Debut Records.”

- Max Roach, Mingus’ musical and business partner at Debut Records

As I commented in Parts 1 and 2, much of the Jazz research that I undertake focuses on searching out aspects of the music about which I was unaware back-in-the-day when I was first becoming familiar with and playing the music.

A case in point is Debut Records which like so many other small record companies had ceased to operate before I developed an awareness of what a rich source these short-lived “boutique” labels were for important recorded Jazz, especially in terms of the work of underrepresented artists.

So when I came across a 12-CD boxed set entitled Charles Mingus - The Complete Debut Recordings [Debut 12DCD-4402], I knew I best acquire it.

Here are the Ira Gitler notes from the detailed booklet that accompanies the set to serve as Part 3 of this series on Debut.

Ira made it a point to interview many of those directly involved with Debut including co-owner Max Roach, Celia Mingus [his wife at the time] and pianist Mal Waldron, a key member of Mingus’ groups during the mid-1950s and a close friend of Charles.

As such, Gitler’s notes become an important primary source document of which there are all too few regarding the history of Jazz and its makers.

BASS-ICALLY SPEAKING by Ira Gitler

“Exactly one year before the actual birth of Debut Records, before "Portrait" and "Precognition," Mingus did a duo session in Los Angeles with a pianist named Spaulding Givens that was later issued on Debut as Strings and Keys. Coincidentally, the same issue of Metronome with the very first Debut profile also contained a "File for the Future" feature on Givens. It referred to a trip he made from the Midwest with a vocal-instrumental quartet that landed him in California in 1941. He eventually traveled with the Oscar Pettiford trio for six months until Oscar joined Duke Ellington. (That would have been November 1945.) "Back on the Coast," reported Metronome, "[Givens] joined an all star group which was forming with Charlie Mingus, Lucky Thompson, Britt Woodman and altoist Buddy Collette. 'It was a co-op band which stayed together for six months,' he says, 'and it was born of writer's frustration. Everyone in the group was a writer and no one could get anything played. So we formed into a band and within two weeks we had a complete book.'

Debut was born, in part, of Mingus's "writer's frustration" and his not being able to "get anything played." Celia Mingus Zaentz, his second wife and partner in Debut, explains that Mingus left the Red Norvo trio in 1951 because "Red wouldn't try to play any of his music. Tal [Farlow] was great, they were great, but Mingus really wanted to play his [own] music."

Mal Waldron, Mingus's pianist in the mid-Fifties, says: "He felt that Debut was his chance to take the business away from the white man. He felt that the musicians were not controlling their own product, and that the man that was controlling it had nothing to do with music and was not really interested in music, but was interested in making money. So he wanted to have control over his music."

I had heard Mingus both on records and at the Embers with the Norvo trio, and, quite possibly, with the Billy Taylor trio at Le Downbeat in 1952, but I didn't actually meet him until a George Wallington recording session on September 4, 1952. At the time he was known as Charlie Mingus or Baron Mingus, the latter a carry-over from his sides as a leader for such small California labels as 4 Star and Fenton in the Forties (though he appeared on the Wallington album as "Baron Fingus" for contractual reasons).

Mingus's reputation as a volatile personality had preceded him, but I had no reason to believe all of the stories. It wasn't until I was asked by Prestige's president Bob Weinstock to check out a prospective record date that I saw Mingus's argumentative side. He was rehearsing a large ensemble and Weinstock asked me to report on whether or not it had merit. I don't remember if it was the end of '52 or early in '53, but I do know that Al Cohn was on tenor, George Barrow—maybe Danny Bank—on baritone, and Janet Thurlow the vocalist.

I listened for several hours on a Sunday afternoon in some midtown studio, then Mingus drove me home. During the ride he was pressuring me to persuade Weinstock that everything was in order for the date to become a reality. I was in the uncomfortable position of a middleman. Finally I told him that although I thought the compositions were indeed worthy, the band's execution was not yet to the point of necessary readiness. I didn't know what to expect because Mingus had been quite insistent.

After I gave him my opinion, however, he abruptly said: "You're right, man. We're not ready to record."

Dates with larger ensembles were rare for independent companies because of the larger outlay of cash required. I don't think Mingus's idea was ever revived at Prestige but the music eventually became the Debut session of October 28, 1953, another instance of Mingus being able to play and record his own music because it was his company.

On June 2, 1989, the day before the posthumous premiere of Mingus's extended work Epitaph at Alice Tully Hall, I talked with Celia Mingus Zaentz in the living room of Sue Mingus, his widow. Celia had come from California for the concert. The two women, both fair, with reddish-golden hair, from different times in Mingus's life, are good friends.

The span of Charles and Celia's marriage roughly approximates the beginning and end of active Debut recording, but their first meeting was in 1947. Celia was engaged to Jon Neilson, a young trumpeter with whom she had grown up. He was living in Los Angeles and she in Oakland. "Jon wanted to be a jazz musician so I was trying to find out what the jazz scene was, what that kind of music was about," she explained. "I went to the sessions at the Say When on Bush Street. That's where Jerome Richardson, Pony Poindexter, and Vernon Alley used to play."

One Sunday afternoon Mingus, in town with the Lionel Hampton band, was sitting in. "I was there with a girlfriend," she recalled, "and I heard the musicians talking about Mingus. That was the first time I heard his name. Because some were pro-Blanton, pro-Ray Brown, Mingus— 'He's faster, da da da.' When I walked in that afternoon he was playing and he was a really interesting-looking person. I think it hadn't been long since he'd separated from his wife and he had this very emotional, tortured face. And I knew he was something special in a musician, though I'd never really listened to a bass up to that time. I remember saying to this friend of mine, “Now there's a musician who looks like he would have something to say.'"

After she left the session, another friend called Celia and asked her if she wanted to go to the Lionel Hampton concert at the Oakland Auditorium. She didn't, really, but went to accommodate her friend. Then Celia realized that "Mingus was in the band. At the end of the concert some drummer we knew named Howard was going to give us a ride home. While waiting for him we walked up on the stage. Mingus was playing the piano. I was 22, cocky. I went up, leaned on the piano, and said, 'I thought you played bass.' He looked up and said, 'You were at the gig this afternoon.' When he noticed us walking toward Howard, he saw to it that he was introduced.

"At the time I was living with a family. Conservative family. In bed at 10. At 2 o'clock the phone rang. I knew it was him. He had gotten my number from another girl I had traded numbers with to keep each other informed about jazz events. He asked me to have dinner with him the next night and I did. I told him I was getting married and moving to New York. He told me, 'Good luck in your adventure. You're going to New York and I'm sure you'll enjoy that but you'll still have your first son by me.'

"I thought this was outrageous! I was a Catholic and I was getting married forever. I thought this man was crazy."

In 1948 Celia married Jon Neilson and moved to New York. In 1950 Mingus went with Red Norvo. He sent a letter inviting her and Jon to come up and hear the group in Toronto. "Our marriage was in trouble. Jon and I knew that," she said. "So things fell into place when I saw Mingus."

When she returned from Toronto she and Jon broke up. It was a hurtful time for both of them but they remain friends to this day. Celia went back to California with the Norvo trio and obtained a divorce in Reno, Nevada. The group played the Blackhawk in San Francisco and then, in 1951, the Embers in New York. "We wanted to get married on April 1," said Celia, "but Red wouldn't let us. He said it was a bad omen. Interestingly enough, April 2 is Sue Mingus's birthday.

"We had some really wonderful years then. I traveled with him on the road. They played the Embers for a long stretch. Then he decided to leave the band. So I said, 'It's a good time. I can work as a secretary. You can play Birdland on the night off and wait out your musicians' union card.' We lived at 83rd and 3rd. He got his card in '52."

That was also the year Mingus went to work in the post office. "He got disgusted, fed up with the jazz scene, the music scene as it was," Celia recalled. "It was near Christmas and he didn't have any money.

"His father was a postal clerk and he had wanted Mingus to be a postal clerk. And when Mingus was old enough to take the exam and was out of high school, his father arranged for him to take it. Mingus, by this time, was totally enmeshed in music and the band where they played for the burlesque theater. That was all he could think about, so when his father arranged the test, he didn't go. When it was all over, his father asked him how he did. Mingus said he failed it. And then he finally told him the truth and said, 'I didn't go. I want to be a musician.'

"His father asked him what he needed, and when he said 'a good teacher and a good instrument,' he got them. I liked his father, as briefly as I saw him. He was 81 at the time I visited the family in Watts, after Reno.

"Mingus was sort of enjoying the post office. We were going to bed at 10 and getting up at 6. Our whole life changed. He got a call from Bird for a gig in Philadelphia. And then he was sorry he took the gig. Something happened with Bird." (One can only wonder if that was the legendary night when Bird was leaving Charlie's Tavern in New York for Philadelphia at the very moment he was to begin his first set.)

Meanwhile the Minguses had gotten involved with Debut. "Originally there were two jazz fans who wanted to be part of it," remembered Celia (could one of them have been William Brandt?), "but ultimately they declined and Mingus just made up the money. It was Max Roach and his girlfriend, and Mingus and I. And my mother gave me a little bit of money. That's why we didn't need anyone else. We started with practically nothing. You know how little it costs to make a session those days. And one of those jazz fans did give it the name of Debut — Larry Suttlehan."

"With Mingus," Max Roach recounted, "we decided early on, since people weren't knocking our doors down to make records under our own names, that we'd start our own company. Basically that was how I got involved with the whole thing of Debut Records. There were the four of us: myself, Margo Eerraci, Celia, and Mingus. I was unaware of anyone else. I was on the road, working. Celia and Mingus manned the store, so to speak."

"Then Mingus started working more," Celia continued. "We had gotten an apartment through Roddie and Bill (a Metronome editor) Coss in Forest Hills, across the street from where they lived. After two years we moved to 51st between 8th and 9th Avenues in Manhattan, on the third floor of a brownstone. There was a nice little French restaurant downstairs."

On either their building or the one next door there was a huge cross, illuminated by neon at night, which read, "JESUS SAVES." Bassist Julian Euell, later to record with Mal Waldron for Prestige, was studying with Mingus at this time. Once we were driving by the building and Julian leaned out the car window and yelled up, "Mingus saves!" We always wondered if Mingus had been home and heard him. Julian had great respect, musically, for Mingus but, like many others, was a bit in nervous awe of him. This was the verbal equivalent of ringing someone's doorbell and running away.

"Mingus always felt encumbered," Celia declared. "He felt his ideas were good and sound but he never had the right people or enough of the right people to get him through. He never questioned the ideas. He was great at getting an idea, like when he said to me, 'We'll start a recording company,' like he knew how to go about recording. And he said to me, 'And you find out how to run a record company.'

"Well, that was wonderful. He had great confidence in me. And I did it. It was a wonderful experience because how do you start a record company? It isn't just making the session. It's how do you make a label? How do you make an album? Who presses it? What does it cost? Who distributes these records? How do you deal with them? How do you get your money? And I just went at it step by step, cutting expenses, writing liner notes, taking photographs. Billboard printed a list of the major jazz distributors. Well, that was gold. I wrote to each one of them."

Mal Waldron remembered a time, as a member of Mingus's group, when "we were all working in the Debut office. We were putting the records in boxes to send them off. That was a way to supplement our income because we weren't making that many gigs. Even painted his walls, too."

Working in the cauldron of a Mingus Jazz Workshop tested a musician's mettle in many ways. Waldron recalled that road travel with Mingus could sometimes be rugged. "One time we traveled all the way to Chicago," he recalled, "and Mingus decided he didn't want to play the club and we had to go back again.

"There were ego problems with the band. Mingus was not into ego but when he stopped a performance in a club this disturbed a lot of musicians because their egos were crushed. They couldn't 'cat.' And they would resent it. Arguments would break out and finally they would be dismissed from the band. He was very forceful. He believed in what he was doing and he wouldn't compromise."

Mingus would often fashion a small-band arrangement by singing or playing the parts to the musicians and have them repeat what they had heard until it was learned. "That was his way of making the music immortal," Mal explained, "because he felt if he put it on paper it would stay on paper, but if he put it in your mind you would remember it. That was his concept. And he would pump that bass behind us and make us all swing."

Waldron's relationship with Mingus was far from confrontational. "He was like a big brother to me," said Mal. "We never had any arguments or fights. I was like his younger brother and he took care of me and showed me things, and he introduced me to a whole new concept of music which I was very grateful for.

"I learned how to use the piano and how to have my own identity. He told me not to copy anybody. At that time I was copying Bud Powell and I was leaning towards Horace Silver and people like that.  He told me the essence of jazz was to be yourself. He drummed that into my mind and it worked. He was very inspiring. It was great to work off what he was doing — the interplay was very creative and moved you in directions that you didn't think possible and expanded your outlook in jazz, in music. He was the greatest influence in my life. Fantastic musician. Personality-wise I could understand why some musicians didn't dig him, but I loved him as a brother."

There was violence in Mingus — more often expressed verbally than physically — but at the core there was love. Once in the mid-Fifties I was having dinner when the phone rang. As I answered, I was greeted by a heated, fast-talking Mingus. "Don't write my name no more, baby" was his opener, delivered rapid-fire in a manner that made the words one continuous, seamless sound. Before I could reply, he continued his tirade. What had angered him was not something I had written concerning his work, but a reference to Phineas Newborn on the back of a Miles Davis LP. 

By the time I returned to the table my stomach was not receptive to food.

Then it came to pass that I had occasion to write Mingus's name in a liner note to a Teddy Charles LP on New Jazz, particularly in relation to his solo on "I Can't Get Started." I described the track as "a moving experience with Mingus evoking sounds and ideas from his instrument that rank with the classic bass statements. Here is an instance of technique marvelled at but not merely for its own sake." Later in the notes I referred to Mingus as "the personification of sensitive strength."

Several months later, after the album's release, I went down to the Half Note on Hudson Street where Mingus was leading his group. The Half Note had a very high bandstand which rose from behind the bar and commanded a fine view of both the club's rooms. As I looked up at the stand upon entering the club, I watched Mingus plucking away. When our eyes met, he smiled and, without missing a beat, shouted out, "Love you baby, now that you're calling my name."

On a sunny morning, well over a decade later, each of us was standing on 46th Street, about ten feet apart, engaged in conversation with third parties. When he saw me, he called over, "Love — Ira Gitler. Love Ira Gitler." Noun and verb; he conveyed his message with a Mingusian twinkle.

"Mingus was just an original," Celia put it. "He had such a wonderful way to turn a phrase. It was like composing music. He just had a way of expressing himself, not only musically but in words. I think if he'd had a different personality, Mingus would have been a preacher, I really do. He had all that fire, all that dedication, and all that feeling, that for him could only come out in the music. I loved when I walked into a club. I'd be with friends and I'd come down to hear him. Mingus's music was so personal that I'd [sometimes] get embarrassed and angered by it."

As Mal Waldron and I listened to "Serenade in Blue" from the live Café Bohemia session, he pointed out that when Mingus went into the theme from the television show Dragnet, he was sending a message to Celia that he didn't particularly approve of her partner in conversation. The "Just You, Just Me" reference around the same time in the piece could also be construed as another pointed aside.

"People would be just sitting there in a club, listening to the music, and he was saying things," Celia revealed. "When he'd play 'My country 'tis of me, sweet land of liberty,' he was really angry about something, a slur on him, or something racial.

"Mingus was strange. Being light-skinned— it was through him I realized that a person his color was not accepted by blacks and not accepted by whites — he was in a total land of his own and that was shocking to me. He had to deal with that from the time he was very young. Mingus would say that we stood for something. We are an example to the world that black and white can work. 'That's all well and good,' I would say, 'but I would like it if we were both black or both white. Our lives would be a lot easier.' But, as a matter of fact, we never had any trouble about that.

"Outside of the friends he had from going to school [in Los Angeles] — Buddy [Collette], Britt [Woodman], Red Callender — practically all his friends in New York were white. I mean friends, people he really talked to. He knew everybody but he and Miles weren't friends. He and Max were never friends. They really fought like cats and dogs. I don't know why Max ever got into that record company with us."

"We had differences about the way you would go about things," Roach admitted. "That's about it. It's just that we disagreed on procedures about how things were — sometimes he might go into a situation and I'd say, 'We should check it out more.' But basically the work of, you might say, marketing the material, that we had was left up to Celia. Celia did a lot of that. I was on the road most of the time. My input was financial and as a performer with the company. Celia and Mingus had the office. And sometimes there were discrepancies about bookkeeping and things like that, that would bug me, that annoyed me. But, other than that, you might say we got along famously, musically, and in other ways, too. We did have some pretty dog and cat fights. We did. But that wasn't really a big thing with the company. Celia perhaps had more problems than any of us. She had to live with it."

One of the arguments between Roach and Mingus concerned Danish Debut. Mingus had leased a part of the company's catalog to an outfit in Denmark which released the records there under a Debut label. "I guess my frustrations came about," concluded Max, "either because I wasn't consulted or somebody else told me after the fact. But I also understood that this was one of the reasons that the company could stay alive and do some more recordings as well."

As the late Fifties approached, both the marriage and Debut were winding down. "Marriage with Mingus didn't work out for many reasons," Celia conceded, "but I think he saw the potential in me. He didn't realize it was going to take a long time. He was by far the most spiritual man I was ever with, and all the values I have now are values I could have shared at that time with him, but I was in my learning process. Also, he was very difficult. You know how moody he was. But my ability to laugh and be light — he liked that. That offset his — I used to tickle him [not literally] because he had a hard time laughing. And I'd make him laugh. You never really heard Mingus laugh, the belly laugh. It would stay in his throat. Even when he was really tickled."

Mingus loved Ellington; he also adored Parker and when he had Charles McPherson, Lonnie Hillyer, and Jaki Byard in his band they did some heavy bopping. They also did a parody of corny bands with a sendup via "Cocktails for Two." One night at the Five Spot (the second one, at the corner of St. Mark's Place and 3rd Avenue), a drunk was pestering Mingus for "Melancholy Baby" or something akin to it. When the quintet quavered into "Cocktails" the drunk lurched up to the bandstand and, thinking they were honoring his request, pressed two ten-dollar bills into Mingus's hand. Mingus immediately took his other hand from the neck of the bass, efficiently tore the bills in two and dropped them on the floor. Instantaneously, a nearby waiter dove unceremoniously under the tightly packed front tables to retrieve the pieces as we watched incredulously, then broke up, and the band played on. Mingus never cracked a smirk.

"My story," Celia summarized, "is when I stopped laughing is when I left. Things were getting too serious. Not good. Not happy. I blamed him at the time but it wasn't his fault. It was the situation. At that time all I felt was 'In order to stay with him I'm going to have to give up my own life.' And I even thought about it. I had met Paul Muni's wife and she had totally turned her life over to being whatever it was he needed. I said 'I don't want to do that. I can't do that.'"

Late in 1957 Mingus's original prophecy was nearing fruition. Celia was pregnant with their son, Dorian. "Before I had Dorian, I left," she explained.

"Things were so chaotic with Mingus that I moved out. I was due to deliver anytime. I got a little apartment. My mother came out and Dorian was born on December 30. Then I went to stay with Bill and Roddie Coss. Mingus was calling and we did go back together briefly. But it wasn't working out. It was totally accidental, but I left New York on April 2, 1958."

Celia and Mingus had signed a separation agreement when they were in their off-and-on-again period. She stayed in Fresno for six months and then Bill Coss told her to "call this guy Saul Zaentz." At that time Zaentz was sales manager for the Weiss brothers who owned Fantasy Records in San Francisco. She went to work as Saul's secretary and eventually married her boss.

Why had Debut faltered? One reason was the universal difficulty of small, independent labels getting proper distribution and being paid, on time or at all, by the distributors that handled their records.

"That was part of it," Roach confirmed. "The other part was that Mingus and I still were involved with our musical careers which takes a great deal of time. We soon learned that it's almost impossible to carry on the two. You had to lead a band, and compose and perform, and also run up to Boston to deal with distributors; or go down to the docks here in New York and see your records sitting there because you hadn't made the right connections with the unions to ship the stuff to Europe; or to struggle with the fact that many distributors did not have the space to handle your records, for one thing, and have money to publicize that you have a new record out, etc. Just a number of things that befall small businesses and especially two musicians who were doing everything, with Celia and Mingus, of course, keeping books. It was too much. I think, as far as both of us were concerned, being musicians dominated most of our time, even though in Brooklyn, when I had this Putnam Central Club and studio, where we recorded Kai and Jay, and many of the things we recorded, and where we stored most of our records at that stage of the game, it was a matter of working and playing at night and during the day trying to sell records.

"We all thought that Debut going with Fantasy was a good move because we didn't have the time or the wherewithal to deal with distributors, and Fantasy already had been set up and everything was in place for that."

By the time Debut gave up the ghost Roach, like Mingus, had become an established leader and was far more active than he had been in 1952.

"I'd gone to the West Coast, hooked up with Clifford Brown and began recording for Mercury records," Max explained. "And everything else is history, so to speak.

"It was really something. We'd have to go to places and threaten small one-stops with 'Either give us the money or give us our product back.' It wasn't easy. We never had 'hot, heavy hits,' so we were always beating on somebody's desk. It was frustrating.

"But Debut Records also served as a springboard for both Mingus and myself and some of the other artists to sign with major labels. And Debut recorded some of the most interesting people, musicians, who are now really just legends in their own time."

Celia Mingus Zaentz, back in her native California and at Fantasy, continued her link to Mingus through Debut, but the ties would have been there even if the label had been sold to another company. The man and his music would always be in her mind and heart.

"Mingus was very romantic," Celia reflected. "After my marriage to Jon, I didn't want to get married [again] but I saw it was important to him. He talked to me about his first marriage and said that God had given him a second chance. He used to play bass for me. In small hotel rooms. He always played. Later on the piano.

"When he was working in the post office, we led a very simple life. We didn't have a lot of money at that time, and we had real simple pleasures. When he was waiting out his card he got into cooking and he was a really good cook. I'd come home from work and he'd have dinner made. He'd be trying something new. A gumbo. He'd make a special eggnog for the holidays. Or we'd have Percy Heath and his wife over for dinner and that would be a very special occasion with very special foods.

"In the evenings — we used to play rummy. It was really fun. We didn't have to play for money. And we'd listen to the radio. We had our favorite programs. Every half hour. I don't even know what they were now. But that was enough. We didn't go to hear music for that period of time.

"It was a very small apartment. We got an upright piano, and the piano was the division between the living room and the kitchen. That piano was important to him. There was never a time when he wasn't writing music. He carried a notebook. He'd even write down titles of compositions. He really did live, breathe, and think music.

"In the latter part of his illness he had stopped talking. Before he died in Mexico [on January 5, 1979], I went down there to see him. He insisted on coming to the airport with Sue to meet me and it was not an easy thing with the wheelchair and everything. She had gone to see about the dogs which had also come in on a plane and were being quarantined. Mingus and I were in the car, and he was sitting there for a long period of time, and he looked at me and he sang-a thing and said, "What do you think of that?" I said, 'It's beautiful.' And I thought, 'God, he hasn't stopped. It's still going on.' Music was just part of him in a way that I have never seen with anyone else — the place that it occupied in Mingus's life."

It's still going on thanks to the Mingus Dynasty band, with Sue Mingus's hand at the managerial tiller; projects such as Epitaph; and the vast body of music on records, on paper, and in people's minds, to which this box is such an important addition.

Mingus filled the Debut catalog with a cornucopia of sounds, styles, and people that rarely failed to stimulate. He was not afraid to give new players a forum, to try different combinations, and to put himself into challenging situations as sideman and leader. Both as a bassist and a composer he reflected his background and influences, and pointed the way to future decades as an influence of his own.

Other musicians before Mingus had tried their hands at running record companies, notably Mezz/ Mezzrow with KingJazz and Al Hall with Wax, both in the Forties (in his early Fifties collaboration with Dave Usher at Dee Gee, Dizzy Gillespie had little to do with the day-today operation of the company); and some have come behind Mingus, but none have matched the breadth and longevity of his label.

Debut was an experiment that left a rich alluvium from which Mingus himself, and countless others, continued to grow.”

Ira Gitler writes monthly columns for JazzTimes (U.S.), Swing Journal (Japan), and Jazz Express (England), and contributes to Musica Jazz (Italy). A Guggenheim Fellow, he has annotated countless albums from 1951 and is also an author, educator, and producer. His most recent book was Swing to Bop (Oxford University Press, 1985).