Introducing a Charles Mingus decade – the flowering of a jazz genius

He was born 22 April 1922 at a US Army base in Nogales, Arizona and grew up in Watts, Los Angeles, where his mother fed him a diet of church music and his grandmother took him to a Holiness church in Watts where he was exposed to the crying, moaning and singing of the church people.

He told Nat Hentoff about this musical background: “All the music I heard when I was a very young child was church music. My family went to the Methodist church; in addition, my stepmother would take me to the Holiness church and other such churches.

“The blues was in the churches—moaning and riffs and that sort of thing between the audience and the preacher.”

In his genes he carried a wide cultural mix of Chinese, English, Swedish and African American, but the blues seem to have been central to his music over the years. It comes out in almost everything he recorded in one form or another.

From a relatively early age he became interested in jazz, most especially the musician who for most of his life was his idol, Duke Ellington. In 1943 he toured with Louis Armstrong and later played in Lionel Hampton’s band, in a trio with Red Norvo and Tal Farlow before joining, for a brief and shining moment, the orchestra of his idol, Ellington. Here his tempestuous temper led to his being allegedly the only musician (although Sidney Bechet might also have been) to be fired by the Duke.

Mingus increasingly demanded respect for his music, becoming intolerant of audiences who did not pay sufficient attention to the music. He once said to a nightclub audience when the clinking of ice in glasses was distracting him: “Isaac Stern (the great classical violinist) doesn’t have to put up with this shit!”

His famous temper led him into many difficulties with club owners, fans and even fellow-musicians. He once famously hit trombonist Jimmy Knepper in the mouth, causing damage to Knepper’s embouchure and leading to a court case.

Mingus was a larger-than-life personality who could inspire both awe and fear. He also struggled all his life with a weight problem, shedding and re-gaining weight regularly.

He contracted amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease) which is caused by the degeneration of the motor neurons, those nerve cells in the central nervous system which control voluntary muscle movement. The loss of muscle activity leads to atrophy of all the muscles and the loss of the ability to initiate and control voluntary movement. The body wastes away, while the mind is still unimpaired, so patients can literally watch themselves slowly die.

Even after he was unable to play, Mingus continued to compose and supervise recording, but was unable to complete a project with Joni Mitchell.

He died in Cuernavaca, Mexico, in 1979, where he had gone with his wife Sue in search of a cure or at least a palliative for the disease that was so cruelly taking away everything he had lived for as a musician.