Count Basie by Alun Morgan - Part 1

© -  Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

The writing of the esteemed British author and critic Alun Morgan featured earlier on these pages when we posted an interview he conducted with Stan Levey during the drummer’s 1961 stay in London as part of a quartet backing singer Peggy Lee appearance at The  Pigalle Club, a supper club and music venue in Piccadilly, St. James’ in the West End that was first published in the September 1961 edition of Jazz Monthly.

The editorial staff at JazzProfiles has been searching for a cogent and coherent treatment of Count Basie and his music; not surprisingly it found one from the pen of Alun which will be presented to you as a segmented blog feature in the coming weeks.

Born in Wales in 1928, Alun Morgan became a Jazz fan as a teenage and was an early devotee of the bebop movement. In the 1950s he began contributing articles to Melody Maker, Jazz Journal, Jazz Monthly, and Gramophone and for twenty years, beginning in 1969, he wrote a regular column for a local newspaper in Kent. From 1954 onward he contributed to BBC programs on Jazz, authored and co-authored books on modern Jazz and Jazz in England and wrote over 2,500 liner notes for Jazz recordings.

His writing style is succinct, accurate and easy to read and understand. It’s an honor to have Alun Morgan featured on these pages.

Chapter One

“'Count Basie isn't just a man, or even just a band,' remarked singer Lena Home one night at Birdland, 'he's a way of life'. Just as Duke Ellington enjoyed a number of parallel careers, so Count Basie succeeded in leading his band, playing the piano and, perhaps most important, creating an environment in which many young soloists developed into highly talented individuals. Basie referred to himself as a 'non-pianist' but he played the piano in a way which brought out the very best in all his fellow musicians.

He also had the ability to spot talent and remember the comparative unknown years later when he needed to restock his band or replace a sideman. Above all he enjoyed working. 'It's not because of the public that he's on the job before we are most nights' once remarked guitarist Freddie Green. 'It's to hear the band for his own kicks. He'll never stop playing.’ In fact he struggled on against a heart attack and a combination of debilitating illnesses until cancer finally cut him down. The end came on April 26, 1984 at his home in Hollywood, Florida.

The beginning was nearly 80 years earlier. William Basie was born in Red Bank, New Jersey, on August 21, 1904 and brought up as an only child. (A brother died young.) Bill's mother gave him his first piano tuition but it was across the Hudson River, in New York, that he picked up his most valuable lessons. He wanted to be a drummer at the outset but 'Sonny Greer cut me loose from that! He used to fill in on gigs and take over'. There were plenty of keyboard idols in New York at the time, the ragtime pianists such as James P. Johnson, Luckey Roberts and Willie 'The Lion' Smith but for Basie there was one man above all others. 'Fats Waller was my guy, right to the end' he told Charles Fox years later. And it was Waller who introduced him to the pipe organ. 'The first time I saw him, I had dropped into the old Lincoln Theatre in Harlem and heard a young fellow beating it out on the organ. From that time on, I was a daily customer, hanging on to his every note, sitting behind him all the time, fascinated by the ease with which his hands pounded the keys and his feet manipulated the pedals. He got used to seeing me, as though I were part of the show. One day, he asked me whether I played the organ. "No", I said, "but I'd give my right arm to learn". The next day he invited me to sit in the pit and start working the pedals. I sat on the floor, watching his feet, and using my hands to imitate them. Then I sat beside him and he taught me'.

New York teemed with places of entertainment providing work for pianists; cabarets, saloons, theatres, dance halls and the like to say nothing of the regular 'rent parties' put on to help those less fortunate than their fellows. On a good night Basie would earn ten dollars at such a party which helped in the payment of his own rent.

Through his friendship with Fats, Basie took Waller's place in a touring show, Katie Crippin And Her Kids, which was touring the vaudeville circuit. As Nat Shapiro has explained, such vaudeville shows 'played everything from big houses in Chicago, St. Louis, Memphis and New Orleans to store-front and tent theatres in the most rural areas of the Deep South'. Most of the shows were handled by TOBA (Theatre Owners Booking Association), known to many as Toby Time or, more impolitely, Tough On Black Asses for TOBA handled Negro entertainers while the Keith Orpheum circuit was responsible for the rest. Basie travelled hundreds of miles on circuit with shows such as 'Hippity Hop'. He also worked with blues singers such as Clara Smith and Maggie Jones and also played in trumpeter June Clark's band in a Fourteenth Street dance hall. Around 1925 he joined a road show presided over by Gonzelle White and stayed for the best part of two years until an event occurred which, though innocuous in itself, was to have a lasting effect on his subsequent career. 'I'd travelled west from New York with a touring vaudeville show' he recalled later. 'I was just a kinda honky-tonk piano player with the show and we had more than our share of troubles. We didn't have any 'names' in the cast and we didn't do much business. So about the time we reached Kansas City, the unit was in pretty bad shape and then came the inevitable folding. When we folded, I was broke and didn't have any way to get out of town'.

He took a job playing piano in a silent cinema called the Eblon Theatre. The house director was James Scott, a leading ragtime composer and performer in the previous decade. It was Scott who wrote Grace and beauty, Climax rag and Frog legs rag but it seems very doubtful that Basie had any musical connexion with Scott during the period when, as he remarked later, he played for the better part of a year, 'all sorts of pictures, anything from a Western melodrama to a crime thriller or one of those passion plays'. Then in 1928 he joined Walter Page's Blue Devils. According to Jimmy Rushing, Basie had first heard the Blue Devils a year before when the Gonzelle White show was still in being. 'Basie was playing piano in the four-piece band and even acting the part of a villain in one of the comedy skits. It was on a Saturday afternoon and both bands were "ballyhoolin" from horse-drawn wagons.

The Blue Devils were trying to entice customers to the Southern Barbecue, an open-air beer garden and Basie's band was advertising the White show. We were playing a piece called Blue Devil blues and up comes Basie and sits himself down at the piano. Man, but he played!' The precise chronology of those early days in Kansas City is difficult to determine not only because of the passage of time but also because of the hectic life lived by so many KC residents at the time. Years later Basie was still enthusing over his early days in Kansas City and referred to it as a 'wide-open city. That's where life began! You could do anything, go anywhere!' Others have described Kansas City in similar terms during what became known as the Pendergast Era. Tom Pendergast was the leader of the Democratic Party in Kansas City from 1927 until 1938, when he was eventually convicted on a charge of income-tax evasion.

Pendergast encouraged gambling and all forms of nightlife. For a time he owned a 'wide-open' hotel, the Jefferson, and arranged for it to have police protection. Whatever one may think of Pendergast's dubious role as a leading light in KC, it is true to say that all the significant musical developments, including the formative work of Basie, Jay McShann, Charlie Parker etc., took place when Pendergast ran the city his way, with dozens of excellent bands playing at the many places of entertainment.

When Basie joined the Blue Devils the band was already rated very highly in the Southwest. Bill Basie joined a band which had Hot Lips Page, Buster Smith, Eddie Durham and Jimmy Rushing in its ranks. It was Walter Page's ambition to do battle with Kansas City's leading band of the day, Bennie Moten's orchestra. Frank Driggs has reported that 'Kansas City newspapers of the time indicate that Moten did battle with Page in 1928 at the Paseo Hall, and Page is said to have blown Moten out'.

So fiercely partisan was the following for bands in those days that such a defeat could strongly affect business and it is said that Bennie Moten made an offer to take over the Blue Devils, keeping Walter Page as the leader but using Moten's name at the front. Page would not agree but after he had a run of bad luck with bookings, Moten was in a strong position to make offers to individual Blue Devils. He enticed Basie and Eddie Durham away in the early part of 1929 then, later that year, won over Rushing and Hot Lips Page. The Blue Devils broke up in 1931 when Walter Page himself joined Moten and the only factual evidence we have of what was claimed to be a band which was better than Moten's are two 78rpm sides, Blue Devil blues (with a vocal by Rushing and a trumpet solo from Lips Page) and Squabblin', a riff composer-credited to Basie and with solos from the Count himself and Buster Smith. (The discographies list these two Vocalion sides as dating from November, 1929 but Jimmy Rushing's claim that they were made the previous year is more likely to be correct.)

Basie remembered that with Moten 'I guess we played just about every jazz spot in Kansas City. The ones that are foremost in my mind are the Reno Club, the Tower and Main Street Theatres, the Fairland Park and Pla-mor Ballrooms and the Frog Hop Ballroom in St. Joseph, not far from Kansas City'. With the infusion of talent from the Blue Devils, Moten's band began to take on a new character. It now had a five-man brass section, (bigger than that of any other KC band at the time) and the written arrangements by Eddie Durham and Basie demanded a higher standard of discipline within the brass and reed sections.

During 1931 Bennie Moten took the band East on a tour, bought about 40 new arrangements from Benny Carter and Horace Henderson and at the end of the year effected more personnel changes. Walter Page (on bass now; the tuba had been rejected), Eddie Barefield, Ben Webster and, for a time, trumpeter Joe Smith came into the band. With Durham, Basie and Barefield all writing for the band and tunes such as Moten swing and Toby enriching the book, the Moten band achieved a sound which, judged from the recordings made for Victor in December, 1932, was the genesis of the later Count Basie orchestra

But, as Frank Driggs has made clear in his essay 'Kansas City And The Southwest', these changes were not to the liking of the public who wanted Moten to go on serving up the mixture as before. They looked upon the smoother sound of the band as foreign to the tenets of Kansas City music and Moten suffered a humiliating defeat when he played at the annual Musicians' Ball at Paseo Hall where he was pitted against bands such as those led by Andy Kirk and Clarence Love. But it was a new band, the Kansas City Rockets led by ex-Moten trombonist Thamon Hayes, which wiped out Bennie. Morale in the Moten ranks was at a very low ebb and in 1934 Count Basie and a group of Bennie's men actually left to play under Count's leadership in Little Rock, Arkansas. (It is rumoured that both Buddy Tate and Lester Young were in this breakaway group.) But at that time Basie's name was not sufficient of a draw and Moten had no difficulty in coaxing the renegades back into his employ. By the end of 1934 Moten's brand of music was back in favour and although a booking at Chicago's Grand Terrace failed to materialise, the band went into the Rainbow Gardens in Denver, a prestigious locale for units in the 1930s.

As Frank Driggs reports, 'Bennie himself stayed behind for a minor tonsillectomy. He was said to have had a cold at the time and he was unable to take ether, necessitating a local anaesthetic. He was a nervous person and had put off the operation for a long time, until it became necessary for his health; and he apparently moved at a crucial moment, so that the surgeon's scalpel severed his jugular vein. Bennie's surgeon was a prominent man in the Midwest, and he was forced to give up his practice and move to Chicago as a result of the accidental death. Irreparable damage was done to the morale of the men on the job in Denver, and they were unable to finish the engagement. Walter Page and 'Bus Moten each tried to rally the men and keep the band together, but it was no use; they disbanded for good in the summer of 1935'.

Basie did not 'take over' the Moten band on Bennie's death. Instead he formed a group of his own and succeeded in getting a booking at Kansas City's Reno Club, an establishment owned by 'Papa Sol' Epstein, one of Pendergast's men. The hours were incredibly long, often twelve hours at a stretch, and Count was paid twenty-one dollars a week with eighteen each for his sidemen. 'But we were all young then' said Basie years later 'and we couldn't wait to get to work. It was fun! And after work the guys went further up on 12th Street and jammed all morning. He recalled the names of the men in that first Reno Club band when talking to Leonard Feather as 'three saxes, Buster Smith and another alto player, and Slim Freeman on tenor; three trumpets - Dee "Prince" Stewart, Joe Keyes and Carl (Tatti) Smith; plus Walter Page on tuba, myself and the drummer Willie (Mac) Washington'. Hot Lips Page was also working at the Reno at the same time; he acted as Master of Ceremonies and sometimes sat in with the Basie brass. Surprisingly the Reno had broadcasting facilities over a local Kansas City station, W9XBY, which was then carrying out experimental transmissions.

Each Sunday night the Reno Club band went on the air and for those occasions, Jimmy Rushing sat in with Basie. Lester Young heard one of the broadcasts and, by all accounts, sent Count a telegram saying that the band sounded fine except for the tenor player. Basie took the hint and brought in Lester as a replacement for Slim Freeman. The Reno was not exactly an impressive establishment. The signs outside advertised domestic Scotch at ten cents, imported Scotch at fifteen cents and beer at five cents. Hot dogs were ten cents each and hamburgers fifteen. The girls lounging outside were tacitly advertising the services they could offer on the floor above the dance hall. Musicians came and went in a fairly casual manner. 'I don't mind saying that it was a mad scuffle with that band' recalled Count. 'In fact, we were in and out of the Reno Club for about a year before things even started to look up'. There is often little point in conjecture but it would be interesting to know what form Basie's career might have taken if one single event had not occured. Radio, the medium which had been instrumental in bringing Doctor Crippen* to justice, was about to play its part in altering the course of jazz.”

To be continued.

[*Born in Michigan in 1862, Hawley Crippen gained international fame in 1910 when he fled England with his lover after murdering his wife, Cora. Authorities apprehended him after learning by telegram he was on a boat to Canada, making him the first criminal to be caught with the aid of wireless communication.]

Pops - A Remembrance of Louis Armstrong by Milton Hinton

© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

I’ve been around the Jazz world for 60 years.

In that time and in that world, no one has been more revered than Louis Armstrong.

The following story by the superb bassist Milt Hinton may help to explain why Pops was lionized by musicians and fans alike from all over the world.

It is excerpted from Milt’s autobiography, Bass Line (1988; with David G. Berger).

“On our next to last night at the Bandbox with Basie, I got an offer to go out on the road with Louis Armstrong. Joe Glaser, who handled Louis, sent one of his people—a guy named Frenchy Tallerie — down to the club to ask if I wanted the job. It was as simple as that.

I was really taken by surprise. I told Frenchy I needed time to talk about it with my wife and that I'd call Joe in a couple of days.

In the old days around Chicago, Joe Glaser had a reputation for being a real tough guy. From what I heard, he came from a middle-class family but he was the black sheep. I think his mother owned the building on the South-side which the Sunset Cafe was in. That's the place a lot of famous entertainers, including Cab, got their start. Evidently, at one point after Joe had gotten in some kind of serious trouble with the law, she'd helped him become an agent and manager.

Louis and Glaser got together in 1935. As the story goes, for years there was never a written contract between them. They shook hands one time and that was it. For some reason, right from the start, they hit it off. Joe had the connections and got the bookings. Louis had that wonderful, friendly personality and, of course, the musicianship. Their careers just took off together.

Louis's name was well known around Chicago when I was growing up. Along with Eddie South, he was one of my two boyhood idols. As a kid I'd seen him perform in theaters, but as I got older and more involved playing music, I was around guys who knew him personally. In fact, I remember watching him rehearse and I can recall many times when I'd run into him talking with a group of guys on a street corner or in a bar. And later, when I worked with Zutty, Louis's close friend, I really got an opportunity to spend some time with him.

Deciding whether or not to go with Louis was very difficult. My month-long commitment to Basie was over, but I was getting good freelance jobs. And even though I couldn't be sure how much I'd be making from week to week, the pay was getting better. When I left Cab, I said I'd never go back on the road for any length of time, but the thought of playing with a legend like Louis made the idea of traveling more acceptable.

I knew I wanted to go, but with my family to support, money became a real issue. Mona and I figured I might earn a little less with Louis than freelancing, but it would be a steady salary. Besides, if I got paid expenses on the road, I'd be able to save much more. We decided if the money was right, I'd take the job.

Everyone knew Pops didn't discuss money. Joe dealt with those kinds of things. But before I called him, I figured I should try and get an idea about what other guys in the band were making.

I got ahold of Cozy, who'd been with Pops for a while. He told me he'd just given notice and was planning to form his own band. Of course, I was disappointed. We were close back in the Cab Galloway days and I'd been looking forward to spending time with him again. He filled me in on the personalities in the band and Joe's people. Then we talked about money.

When Frenchy had approached me at the Bandbox, he'd told me the pay would be seventy-five a night. But when I mentioned that figure to Cozy he said, "That may sound good to you, but I'm makin' one twenty-five and I don't see why you can't get that too."

A couple of days later, I sat down with Joe and Frenchy to talk about money. Joe was a thin, dapper-looking guy with pretty sharp features, who walked pigeon-toed. Frenchy was just the opposite. He was sloppy and fat. He didn't like anyone and you couldn't believe a word he said. Everyone knew he hated Louis and Louis couldn't stand him. In fact, some people said that's why Joe made him road manager. He knew if Louis did something wrong, Frenchy would report him, and if Frenchy tried to steal, Louis would do exactly the same thing.

For some reason, just before the conversation began, Louis walked in. I started out real bold. "Look, I gotta have one twenty-five a night." At that point I wanted the job and I was hoping they wouldn't say no when I gave them my price.

"Get the hell out of here!" Joe screamed, "We don't even know your work."

I kept cool. "Louis's known me for years. He can tell you how I play," I said.

"I don't pay one twenty-five to nobody just startin' out. I'll give you a hundred. If you work out, I'll give you more," Joe answered.

I stood my ground. "No," I said. "I gotta get one twenty-five."

Joe shook his head, which was his way of saying, "Forget it."

There was dead silence for a couple of seconds and then Louis spoke. "I know this boy, give it to him." It was settled, as simple as that.

A week later I went out with the band and for a while we mostly did one-nighters. Cozy was still there along with Trummy Young playing trombone, Barney Bigard on clarinet, and Marty Napoleon on piano. We also had Velma Middleton as a vocalist.

At one of those early gigs something incredible happened.

It was at an outdoor concert in Washington, D.C., near one of the big malls, right on the Potomac. The stage and dressing rooms were set up on a big barge which was docked at the edge of the river, and the audience sat on the long, wide grass bank in front of it. I remember we had to walk down a ramp to get on the barge so we could change clothes and get set up. But the facilities were very comfortable.

In addition to us, Lionel Hampton and Illinois Jacquet's bands were on the program. Jacquet was scheduled to play first, from six to seven, and Hamp was to follow from seven to eight. Then, after an intermission, Louis would come out and do the finale.

We had worked in New Jersey the night before and drove down from there in a private bus. We arrived at five-thirty, a half hour before show time. There was about a thousand people in the audience, but no sign of Jacquet's band.

We unloaded our suitcases and instruments and moved everything over to the barge. By the time we'd changed into our tuxedos, it was six-thirty. Jacquet should have gone on at six, but he still hadn't arrived. To make matters worse, Hamp hadn't either.

Standing backstage, we could sense the audience was getting restless. Every couple of minutes they'd start applauding and chanting, "Start the show," and "We want music."

About fifteen minutes later one of the producers went to Frenchy and asked if Louis would go on first. Louis was a star, but he didn't care about billing or protocol. He was usually understanding and cooperative.

So we went out and started playing. After waiting so long the audience gave us an unbelievable reception. They applauded every solo and when we finished a tune they'd stand and cheer for a couple of minutes.

We played about an hour and then took our bows. But the people wouldn't let us off the stage. They screamed for encores and we kept doing them. Louis knew there was no act to follow us. And he was content to stay out there and keep everyone happy until help arrived.

Finally, during our fifth or sixth encore, we saw a bus pull up and unload. As soon as Louis knew it was Jacquet's band, he told us, "This time when we end, walk off and stay off."

As soon as we finished, we headed for the dressing rooms and changed. Then we packed up our instruments and hung around backstage talking to some of the guys from Jacquet's band.

Trying to follow a performer like Louis really put Jacquet in a difficult position. To make matters worse, the audience knew he'd been scheduled to play first and had kept them waiting. So when he came out on stage, he got a lukewarm reception.

Jacquet had eight or nine good musicians with him. They started with a couple of standards, but there was no response. They even featured the drummer, but that didn't seem to rouse the audience either. Then Jacquet must've figured he had nothing to lose, so he called "Flying Home," the tune he'd made famous with Hamp's band.

It took a couple of minutes before the audience recognized the tune and started to react. By then Jacquet was soloing and he gave it everything he had, building, honking, screaming, and dancing. All the moves, chorus after chorus. By the time he finished, he had the audience in the palm of his hand, the same way Louis had them an hour before.

The audience screamed for an encore and Jacquet did another couple of choruses of "Flying Home." But right in the middle, Hamp's bus pulled up. Hearing someone else play a tune he was known for and seeing the fantastic audience reaction must've made him furious. Everyone backstage saw what was going on and knew Hamp would want to somehow outdo Jacquet. Louis was watching and he got interested too. I remember we were set to get on the bus, but Louis turned to a couple of us and said, "Wait, we have to see this."

Jacquet finished and after the stage got set up, Hamp came out. He began with "Midnight Sun," one of his famous ballads. But after Louis's performance and Jacquet's finale, the audience was in no mood for it. He did "Hamp's Boogie Woogie," and a couple more numbers. He even played drums and sang, but he still didn't get much of a reaction.

I was standing in the wings with Louis and a couple of other guys and we could see how hard he was working. But time was running out. He looked frustrated and desperate and he finally called "Flying Home."

The band started playing but there wasn't much response from the audience. Hamp wouldn't give up. He put everything he had into his solo, starting out soft, then building to a crescendo. When he finished, sweat was dripping off every part of him, and a handful of people cheered.

I guess Hamp sensed he was making some headway with the crowd. So while the band continued, he went back to Monk Montgomery, who was playing Fender bass, and told him, "Gates, you jump in the river on the next chorus, I'll give you an extra ten."

Monk must've agreed because when the band got to the next crescendo and Hamp raised his mallets, Monk jumped over the railing. The audience went crazy.

The band kept playing and a few minutes later Monk came out on stage

soaking wet. Hamp walked over to him and said, "Another ten if you do it again."

Monk made it back to his bass and played another chorus. Then when the band came to the same crescendo and Hamp raised his hands, he went over the side again.

By this time the people were in a frenzy and Hamp knew he'd accomplished what he'd set out to do.

Louis turned to us and said, "Start up the bus. We can go now."”

Ted Gioia on Charles Mingus - "The History of Jazz"

“..., viewed cumulatively, Mingus's efforts from the late 1950s represent a landmark accomplishment. His mature style had now blossomed into full-fledged artistry, and was evident in the music's exuberance, its excesses, its delight in the combination of opposites. Here, the vulgar rubs shoulders with royalty: a stately melody is bent out of shape by sassy counterpoint lines; a lilting 6/8 rhythm is juxtaposed against a roller-coaster double time 4/4; the twelve-bar blues degenerates into semi-anarchy; tempos and moods shift, sometimes violently.”

- Ted Gioia, The History of Jazz, p. 328

Whatever the format – CD compilation, book or TV documentary – why in the world would anyone attempt a history of Jazz?

At minimum – as producer Ken Burns found out when he did his PBS documentary on the subject – one is certain to be excoriated by Jazz fans as much for what one leaves out than for what one includes in such a survey.

I ask myself this question each time I pick up Ted Gioia’s superb book, The History of Jazz, and each time I come away amazed at his concise, yet comprehensive treatment of the subject.

Take for example the excerpts that make-up the following feature on the career and music of bassist, composer and arranger, Charles Mingus.

I can think of few subjects that are more significant in the history of Jazz than Charles and his music.  I can also think of fewer still that are any more complicated and convoluted.

But after reading the section that Ted’s book devotes to him, one comes away with a detailed understanding of, and appreciation for, Mingus and his music.

Ted’s writing on the subject of Jazz makes for brilliant reading.

In a recent correspondence, Ted indicated that a revised and expanded Second Edition of The History of Jazz would be available from Oxford University Press [OUP] in May/2011. You can locate information about how to pre-order the 2nd Ed. of the book by going to Amazon.com via this link.

Ted along with his editor and publicist at OUP have graciously allowed JazzProfiles permission to use the expanded and revised chapter on Charles in the following profile.

The photographs of Charles that populate this feature are not included in the original text.

At the end of this piece is a video tribute to Charles and his music developed by the crackerjack graphics team at CerraJazz LTD.

The sound track is Charles’ composition Gunslinging Bird.

It was recorded by The Metropole Orchestra at its “Mingus Tribute” concert which took place in the Muziekgebouw aan‘t IJ, Amsterdam, The Netherlands on April 25, 2009.

John Clayton was the guest conductor and Randy Brecker [tp], Conrad Herwig [tb] and Ronnie Cuber [bs] were guest soloists. Martijn Vink is the drummer and the arrangement is by Gil Goldstein.

Sue Mingus was also on hand to provide background and commentary for each of Charles’ compositions that were performed that evening.

She emphasized that Mingus would have been especially pleased ay the inclusion of strings in the presentation of his music.

Reprinted with permission from THE HISTORY OF JAZZ by TED GIOIA published by Oxford University Press, Inc. © 2011 Oxford University Press, 2^nd Edition.

“Like many jazz bandleaders who came to prominence in the 1950s, Charles Mingus drew inspiration from the hard-bop style, albeit transforming it into his own image. He drew heavily on the same ingredients that had proven successful for Blakey and Silver: an appreciation for African American roots music such as gospel and blues; a zest for hard-swinging, often funky playing; a rigorous schooling in the bebop idiom; a renewed emphasis on formalism and the possibilities of jazz composition; and a determination to exploit the full expressive range of the traditional horns-plus-rhythm jazz combo. Despite these similarities, few critics of the period saw Mingus as part of the hard-bop school. Yet his mature musical explorations rarely ventured far afield from this ethos. Had Mingus recorded for Blue Note and drawn on the services of other musicians affiliated with that label, these links would have been more evident. As it stands, he is typically seen as a musician who defies category—more a gadfly, skilled at disrupting hegemonies rather than supporting the current trends in play. Mingus is remembered as a progressive who never really embraced the freedom principle and a traditionalist who constantly tinkered with and subverted the legacies of the past. Yet for all these contradictions, his ouevre has stood the test of time and has grown in influence while others more easy to pigeonhole have faded from view.

This convergence of conflicting influences was a product of Mingus’s development as a musician. His early biography is the history of a heterogeneous series of allegiances to a variety of styles. Known as a steadfast advocate of modern jazz, Mingus had actually been late to the party. Under the sway of Ellington, the younger Mingus had denounced bebop, going so far as to claim that his friend Buddy Collette could play as well as Bird. But when he changed his mind, he did so—in typical Mingus fashion—with a vengeance. “Charles Mingus loved Bird, man,” Miles Davis later recalled, “almost like I have never seen nobody love.”²⁰ Later Mingus passed through a phase where cool jazz was a predominant influence, and even aligned himself for a time with the Tristano school. His relationship with the free players was even more complex, with Mingus vacillating from disdain to extravagant praise. These various strata were underpinned by Mingus’s early study of classical music, diligent practice on the cello, and rapt listening to Bach, Beethoven, Debussy, Ravel, and Strauss, among others. This was an odd musical house of cards, in which Strauss’s Death and Transfiguration and the Duke’s “East St. Louis Toodle-oo” were precariously balanced against one another.

The miracle of Mingus’s music was that he could develop a coherent and moving personal style out of this hodgepodge of influences. A generation later, such eclecticism—the “style without a style”—would increasingly become the norm in the jazz world. Jazz players would aspire to be historians, using the bandstand as a lectern, the bells of their horns quoting a series of textbook examples. Alas, only a fine line often separates these histories from mere histrionics: hearing many latter-day players struggle to tie together the various strands, most often serving only awkwardly to regurgitate the past, makes it all the more clear how extraordinary was Mingus’s ability to ascend and descend through the various roots and branches of the jazz family tree. Then again, Mingus had the advantage of learning these styles firsthand—he was among a select group who could boast of having worked as sideman for Armstrong, Ellington, and Parker, the three towering giants of the first half-century of jazz, not to mention having served alongside Tatum and Powell, Norvo and Hampton, Dolphy and Getz, Eldridge and Gillespie. This was jazz history of a different sort, imbibed directly and not learned in a school or from a recording. Perhaps because of this training, perhaps merely due to his sheer force of personality, Mingus managed not only to embrace a world of music but to engulf it in an overpowering bear hug. Despite these many linkages to jazz history, his music sounded neither derivative nor imitative. Whether playing a down-home blues, a silky ballad, an abstract tone poem, a New Orleans two-step, or a freewheeling jam, his work was immediately identifiable, bearing the unique imprimatur of Charles Mingus.

A few months after his birth in Nogales, Arizona, on April 22, 1922, Charles Mingus lost his mother, Harriet, to myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart. The child was raised mostly in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles by a prim and devout stepmother who advocated spiritual flagellation, and an abusive father, Sergeant Charles Mingus Sr., who simply handed out earthly whippings. Around the age of six, Mingus began learning to play a Sears, Roebuck trombone. Studies on the cello followed, and for a time Mingus performed with the Los Angeles Junior Philharmonic. Lloyd Reese, who trained two generations of Southern California’s finest jazz talent, helped transform the youngster from a classical cellist into a jazz bassist; his efforts were supplemented by other teachers including jazz bassist Red Callender and classical bassist Herman Rheinschagen. With diligent practice and a clear goal—to be the world’s greatest on his instrument—Mingus developed quickly into a solid player in a Jimmy Blanton mold.

From the start, composition also fascinated Mingus. While still a teenager he wrote “Half-Mast Inhibition” and “The Chill of Death”—works he proudly revived and recorded decades later. He learned traditional jazz at the source, gigging with Kid Ory in 1942 and Louis Armstrong in 1943. His late initiation into the world of bop came, oddly, when he joined an LA band of white would-be boppers, including Parker’s most fanatical disciple, Dean Benedetti (who later gave up performing to trail Parker from gig to gig, a portable recording device in tow, aiming to capture the altoist’s solos for posterity). In time, Mingus was jamming with Bird and immersing himself in modern jazz. Yet his early recordings show that other jazz styles continued to be a source of inspiration. Tracing a lineage through these efforts is not easy: the shadow of Ellington looms over many early recordings (and would never entirely be absent from Mingus’s music); his trio work with Red Norvo and Tal Farlow from the early 1950s was, in contrast, bop of the highest order; Mingus’s ensuing projects for the Debut label also included noteworthy modern jazz sessions, but of a much different flavor, especially on the dazzling Massey Hall concert recording with Parker, Gillespie, Roach, and Powell; these efforts coexisted with a series of involvements with various cool players, ranging from Getz to Tristano. Indeed, the cool style, for a time, seemed like it might become a decisive influence. The bassist’s 1954 Jazzical Moods, for example, reveals a cerebral and restrained Mingus very much at odds with the hot-blooded extrovert of a few years later.

It was not until the late 1950s that these different allegiances began to be subsumed into a more distinct, personal style. These years constituted a prolific and exceptionally creative period for Mingus, as documented by a number of outstanding projects, including Pithecanthropus Erectus from 1956, Tijuana Moods, East Coasting, and The Clown from 1957, and Blues and Roots and Mingus Ah Um from 1959. Some of Mingus’s finest music from this period was not released at the time. As a result, his impact on the jazz world of the late 1950s may have been diluted compared to what it might otherwise have been. Yet, viewed cumulatively, Mingus’s efforts from the era represent landmark accomplishments. His mature style had now blossomed into full-fledged artistry, and was evident in the music’s exuberance, its excesses, its delight in the combination of opposites. Here, the vulgar rubs shoulders with royalty: a stately melody is bent out of shape by sassy counterpoint lines; a lilting 6/8 rhythm is juxtaposed against a roller-coaster double-time 4/4; the twelve-bar blues degenerates into semi-anarchy; tempos and moods shift, sometimes violently.

As a jazz composer, Mingus is often lauded for his formalist tendencies, for the novel structures of his works. Yet, just as pointedly, these are pieces stuffed to the brim with content. Even the name Jazz Workshop, which Mingus favored for his bands, evokes this image. The impulses of the moment are primary. Compositional structures change and adapt to meet the dictates of the here and now. The rough-edged counterpoint that sometimes takes over Mingus’s most characteristic music, a surreal evocation of Dixieland, often makes his approach sound like a subversive type of anti-composition.

Fans had at least one guarantee: Mingus’s work never was boring. A visceral excitement radiated from the bandstand at his performances and lives on in his recordings. Pieces such as “Better Git It in Your Soul,” “Jelly Roll,” and “Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting” may recall the jazz tradition, but do so in a way that is tellingly alive, that could never be reduced to notes on a page—hence it comes as little surprise that Mingus delighted in teaching his pieces by ear. “Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting” bore an all-too-fitting title. Mingus’s music was an aural equivalent of the sanctified church, delighting in a loosely structured give-and-take, electrified with evangelical zeal. This was a musical speaking in tongues, accompanied by hand clapping, shouts, exhortations, improvised narrative, and other spontaneous outbursts. Yet these unpredictable elements of a Mingus performance also had their dark side: there were songs cut short in midflow, sidemen fired and rehired on the bandstand, denigrating asides and intemperate outbursts. With Mingus, whether onstage or off, even the moments of gentle introspection often merely marked a deceptive quiet before the storm.

Mingus was increasingly returning to the early roots of jazz music during this period. As with his idol Ellington, Mingus found the twelve-bar blues to be an especially fertile departure point. While most jazz musicians typically treat the blues form as a generic set of blowing changes, Mingus transformed the twelve-bar choruses into true compositions. Only a handful of jazz artists—Ellington, Morton, Monk—were his equal in this regard. Mingus’s “Haitian Fight Song” was an early indication of this approach, with “Pussy Cat Dues” and “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat” from Mingus Ah Um standing out as especially brilliant examples, the latter following a twelve-bar form that evokes a minor blues while deviating far from the standard progressions. All in all, Mingus’s 1959 recordings for Columbia present some of the most fully realized works of his career. But once again, the label hid Mingus’s light under a bushel, holding onto much of this material and releasing it in piecemeal fashion over a period of many years.

The early 1960s found Mingus standing on the outside of the free jazz clique, staring at it with a mixture of curiosity, envy, and disdain. Mingus’s roots in the jazz tradition and his impulses as a composer prevented him from fully accepting atonality and open structures, yet his fondness for new sounds motivated him to find some common ground with the avant-garde movement. His group with Eric Dolphy from this period was one of the most daring of his career, and the band is in especially fine form on a live recording made at the 1960 Antibes Jazz Festival and on the release Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus. “What Love,” an early Mingus composition revived during this period—in part because Dolphy noted its similarity to Ornette Coleman’s work—exhibits the bassist engaging in intricate free-form dialogues with Dolphy’s bass clarinet. The piece is loosely based on “What Is This Thing Called Love,” but the deconstruction is so complete that even composer Cole Porter may have failed to recognize the linkage.

The traditional side of Mingus’s music resurfaced the following year when his band featured, for three months, multireed player Roland Kirk (later known as Rahsaan Roland Kirk). Kirk was an ideal sideman for Mingus. A stellar soloist, he could play with authenticity and forcefulness in any jazz style, from trad to free, and on a host of instruments—not just conventional saxes and clarinets but pawnshop oddities such as manzello, stritch, siren whistle, and nose flute. Kirk’s arsenal of effects was seemingly endless, ranging from circular breathing to playing three horns at once. This versatility came, in time, to be a curse. Had he focused on a single instrument, he would have been acknowledged as a master. Instead he was too often dismissed as little more than a jazz novelty act. While with Mingus, Kirk invigorated the 1961 Oh Yeah release with a handful of penetrating solos, including an extraordinary “old-timey” outing on “Eat That Chicken.” A dozen years later, Kirk rejoined Mingus for a Carnegie Hall concert and stole the show with his sly maneuvering inside and outside the chord changes. The small body of recordings featuring these two jazz masters in tandem is a cause for much idle speculation as to what might have been had they collaborated more often.

Mingus’s recordings for the Impulse label in the early 1960s continued to find him in top form. His 1963 The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady stands out as his strongest and most structured extended piece. Mingus apparently composed many of his works in snippets, with some of the bits and pieces (such as the bridge on his early “Eulogy for Rudy Williams”) showing up in several different efforts. With The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady, Mingus was able to fine-tune the composition after it was recorded, using splices and overdubs, to create a more unified artistic statement. Not all of Mingus’s efforts from this period held together so well. His 1962 Town Hall Concert is most often remembered as one of the great fiascos in the history of jazz. Scores were still uncompleted at curtain time, with two copyists continuing to work after the curtain was raised. Years later Gunther Schuller would struggle valiantly to realize Mingus’s original vision for the Town Hall concert, but despite his best efforts, the music remained a series of fragments, only loosely tied together.

This is no criticism of Mingus. Fragmentation was a recurring curse as well as a blessing of the twentieth century. After all, this was an age that began with physicists contending that continuity was merely a statistical illusion—a premise that artists of all sorts quickly embraced. “These fragments I have shored against my ruins,” Eliot proclaims toward the end of “The Waste Land.” “I cannot make it cohere,” announces Ezra Pound near the conclusion of his massive Cantos. These assertions, with their measured fatalism, could stand as mottos for the modernist agenda in jazz as well. In fact, Mingus was the closest jazz has come to having its own Ezra Pound. And as with Pound, Mingus’s life too often mimicked the dissolution of his art. Psychological troubles plagued him throughout his career. In 1958, Mingus even tried to refer himself to the Bellevue mental hospital. In naive fashion, he had knocked on the door. Looking only for counsel, he soon found himself confined.

This was the same man who enlisted his analyst to write liner notes and who named a song “All the Things You Could Be by Now if Sigmund Freud’s Wife Was Your Mother.” The 1960s were tumultuous years for the bassist. Before the Town Hall concert, Mingus’s temper exploded during a meeting with trombonist Jimmy Knepper, who was working as a copyist. Mingus punched Knepper, who eventually took him to court on assault charges. The most memorable moment from the documentary Mingus, filmed in 1966, was not of music making, but of the movie’s subject being evicted from his apartment for nonpayment of rent. When the Mingus at Monterey recording was released a short while later, it included a personal note from the bassist, soliciting donations to compensate for “the misfortunes I have suffered.” But such was the instability in Mingus’s life that, by the time the record hit the stores, he could no longer be reached at the post office box listed in the liner notes. By the close of the 1960s, Mingus was barely visible in the jazz world, performing rarely, recording not at all.

It comes as little surprise that Mingus had such trouble summing up his chaotic life in a proposed autobiography. When a publisher contracted him to write his life story, Mingus intimated that he was putting together a fifteen-hundred-page manuscript. When Beneath the Underdog finally appeared in 1971, it was only a fraction of that length. And those looking for a point-by-point exposition of Mingus’s career as a musician were likely to be disappointed by the text. Musical activities play a subsidiary role in the proceedings. Instead, the work is a patchwork of braggadocio, real or fantasized sexual exploits, pop psychology, fanciful dialogue, and odd anecdotes. Mingus the man, like his alter ego the musician, appeared to be an accumulation of the most disparate fragments. All the same, the book makes for compelling reading, brimming with excesses even in its abbreviated state.

On the heels of this literary effort, Mingus saw his musical career rejuvenated. He signed with Columbia, and—in a telling irony—recorded “The Chill of Death,” a piece that same label had shelved back in 1947. Mingus’s 1970s band with saxophonist George Adams and pianist Don Pullen, joined by longtime Mingus drummer Dannie Richmond, was a powerful unit that could hold up under the inevitable comparisons with earlier Jazz Workshop ensembles. This was also one of the most energized bands Mingus had ever fronted: Pullen’s slashing piano style combined dissonant tone clusters, percussive chords, and biting single-note lines; Adams’s tenor offered a sheets-of-sound approach analogous to Coltrane’s. Both were capable of playing inside or outside of the structural foundations Mingus laid down on the bass. This band is well represented on a series of recordings for the Atlantic label, including Mingus Moves, Cumbia & Jazz Fusion, and the two volumes of Changes. Mingus’s compositional skills continued to shine in diverse works, ranging from the constantly shifting “Sue’s Changes” to the unabashedly traditional swing ballad “Duke Ellington’s Sound of Love.” Three or Four Shades of Blue from 1977 found Mingus joined by electric guitar and leaning, ever so coyly, in the direction of jazz-rock fusion. Mingus was reportedly upset at the label for pushing his music in a commercial direction but softened his criticism after the release turned out to be the biggest seller of his career.

Around this time, Mingus sought medical treatment for a recurring pain in his legs. When in public, he could be seen using a cane. Toward the end of 1977, the doctors diagnosed amyotrophic lateral sclerosis—known more commonly as Lou Gehrig’s disease—a humbling disorder marked by a gradual loss of coordination and mastery over one’s body. Mingus continued to compose, singing into a tape recorder when he no longer had control over his fingers. He initiated projects, including one with pop diva Joni Mitchell, that he did not live long enough to see through to completion. In his final days, Mingus was feted as became a jazz legend: his fifty-sixth birthday was celebrated with a performance of his Revelations by the New York Philharmonic; a few weeks later he appeared at the White House as part of an all-star gathering of jazz musicians during the Jimmy Carter administration. His last days were spent pursuing alternative medical therapies in Mexico, where he died in Cuernavaca on January 5, 1979. His music continued to flourish posthumously. The Joni Mitchell tribute recording, Mingus, came out a short while after his death, introducing the bassist’s music to legions of new fans. A tribute band featuring former sidemen performed under the name Mingus Dynasty, while a similar continuation of the bassist’s influence was seen in a combo led by George Adams and Don Pullen. And over a decade after his passing, Mingus’s unwieldy two-hour long Epitaph—drawn from the music of the 1962 Town Hall concert described above—was pieced together by Gunther Schuller and performed and recorded to much fanfare.”