Charles Mingus

“THE ANGRY MAN OF JAZZ”

∗ Born April 22, 1922 on Camp Stephen Little military base in Nogales, where his father was a “buffalo soldier”; family moved when he was 18 months old to the Watts section of Los Angeles, where he was raised

∗ Considered a bass prodigy early on, adapting cello techniques he learned in high school to the double bass; became a virtuoso bass player, accomplish pianist, bandleader; considered one of the 20th century’s most important jazz composers

∗ Moved to New York City in the 1950s; studied double bass for five years with H. Rhinshagen, principal bassist of the New York Philharmonic, and composition techniques with legendary Lloyd Reese

∗ Played and recorded with the leading musicians of the 1950s including Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Stan Getz, Bud Powell, Art Tatum and Duke Ellington

∗ Created works with unconventional structures and innovative harmonies, drawing on bop, New Orleans jazz, swing, Latin music, blues, modern classical and gospel, and by using ”collective improvisation” with his band

∗ Co-founded Debut Records in 1952 and established his own publishing company to protect and control his music as he developed; founded the Jazz Workshop, a group that enabled young composers to have their new works performed in concert and on recordings

∗ Presented Revelations, which combined jazz and classical, at the Brandeis Festival of the Creative Arts in 1955, establishing his reputation as a leading jazz composer

∗ Achieved breakthrough with 1956 album Pithecanthropus Erectus, a precursor to the “free jazz” movement of the 1960s

∗ Composed Epitaph, considered his masterpiece, beginning in 1962; complete version discovered after his death; has 4,235 measures and requires two hours to play; first performed in 1989

∗ Taught composition for a semester at the State University of New York at Buffalo; received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Smithsonian Institute and two from the Guggenheim Foundation; received honorary degree from Brandeis University

∗ Published autobiography Beneath The Underdog in 1971

∗ Displayed a often fearsome temperament, which earned him the nickname “The Angry Man of Jazz”

∗ Played the final concert of his career in Phoenix in 1977; diagnosed a few weeks later with nerve disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS or “Lou Gehrig’s’ Disease”), which confined him to a wheelchair

∗ Collaborated with Joni Mitchell on her 1979 album Mingus, his final musical project

∗ Recorded more than 100 albums and wrote more than 300 compositions; the Library of Congress houses the Charles Mingus Collection

∗ Died in 1979 of ALS in Cuernavaca, Mexico, where he had sought treatment; ashes scattered in the Ganges River in India

∗ Inspired the 1993 documentary film Weird Nightmare, directed by Ray Davies of the Kinks, and its companion album featuring Elvis Costello, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts  and Vernon Reid among others; honored with a U.S. Postal Service stamp in 1995; awarded posthumous Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997

∗ Inspired the annual Charles Mingus Hometown Music Festival in Nogales, held in Charles Mingus Memorial Park

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