Jazz Articles about Charles Mingus

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Charles Mingus: Epitaph's Return

by George Kanzler
April 19, 2007

Charles Mingus' place in jazz history was secured well before his death at fifty-six in 1979. He had made his mark as one of the music's great bassists, most uncompromising bandleaders and original composers. But an event that happened ten years after his death created a tsunami spreading throughout the jazz world, now known as Mingus Music.That event was the premiere of “Epitaph (available on the two-CD 1990 Columbia release of the same name), Mingus' sprawling, grand, two-hour-plus ...

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Charles Mingus: Thrice Upon A Theme

by Matthew Miller
February 24, 2007

The reissue/compilation has always held a tenuous position in the music world. At best, it can save a work from obscurity; at worst, it can take it out of historical context and unnecessarily clutter the market with music that has been safely anthologized. A reissue of a reissue, Thrice Upon a Theme, is nonetheless a welcome addition to Charles Mingus' vast discography. The two-disc set contains a pair of relatively obscure mid-'50s sessions that in one case ...

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Mingus's Fingus

by Rob Mariani
November 14, 2006

On a chilly November night the fog from the River rolled up Hudson Street rubbing against the big plate glass window of the Half-Note Café on the corner of Spring. Inside, things were warm and busy. Charlie Mingus's sextet was setting up on the bandstand on top of the two-sided bar. People were finding their tables in the half-dark room. Al, the waiter with the smart-ass New York accent, was delivering drinks and wise cracks to the regulars. ...

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Mingus Among Us: Music Written for Monterey 1965 Not Heard...; Live in Tokyo: At the Blue Note

by George Kanzler
November 4, 2006

Charles Mingus Music Written for Monterey 1965 Not Heard... Sue Mingus Music-Sunnyside 2006 Mingus Big Band Live in Tokyo: At the Blue Note Sue Mingus Music-Sunnyside 2006

Ghost bands play the music of a band whose leader is deceased, carrying it on as played when that leader was in charge. So ...

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Charles Mingus: At UCLA

by Samuel Chell
September 27, 2006

Charles Mingus At UCLA Sunnyside Records 2006

The actual title of this CD is Charles Mingus: Music Written for Monterey, 1965. Not heard...played in its entirety at UCLA. Vols. 1 and 2. The apparent overkill of the title prepares us for more of the same in the accompanying booklet, which contains three essays written for the present release along with some illegible artifacts provided by Mingus himself--the original liner notes, a sample of his ...

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Charles Mingus: Thrice Upon a Theme

by Kurt Gottschalk
August 28, 2006

In 1956, bassist, bandleader and composer Charles Mingus began an ascent that would carry him at least until the Town Hall debacle of 1962. The explosion of energy, passion and fury that he would exhibit over those six years could barely be predicted from the dozen or so records he'd already released--good records, but tame compared to the drive of Mingus Ah Um (Columbia, 1959) or the free roll of Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus (Candid, 1960). ...

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Thinking Mingus

by Bill Siegel
February 15, 2006

"But jazz is decadent bourgeois music," I was told, for that is what the Soviet press had hammered into Russian heads. “It's my music," I said, “and I wouldn't give up jazz for a world revolution." --Langston Hughes“No matter what LeRoi Jones says to the contrary, the essence of this music, this 'way of making music,' is not simply protest. Its essence is something far more elemental: an elan vital, a forceful vitality, an explosive creative energy as ...