Charles Mingus

Charles Mingus was known for his intense on-stage rage. He is also believed to have had a violent personality.

He married Sue Graham Ungaro in 1966. However, he was married to four other women and claims to have been married to two of them simultaneously.

Apart from his marriages, he was involved in a number of sexual encounters with many women and is believed to have had over 31 affairs in his lifetime.

Charles Mingus Jr. was born in Nogales, Arizona. He is of Chinese-English-American descent and is also believed to be related to Abraham Lincoln through his grandmother.

When he was a young boy, his mother encouraged him to listen to only church music. However, he grew up listening to Duke Ellington and went on to study a number of musical instruments including the cello and the trombone.

In the late 1930s, he studied bass with Red Callender, but had very little means to afford a decent education. Due to his, he could not recite musical notations very quickly and this could not join musical orchestras.

From a very young age, he felt disliked in the world of music and these early experiences of racism were often echoed in his works much later.

In high school, he took up double bass and for five years, he studied with the principle bassist of the New York Philharmonic, Herman Reinshagen. He slowly began to gain recognition as a bass prodigy.

He learnt that in order to excel in his domain, he would have to settle in the Big Apple. He moved to New York in 1951 and worked as a sideman, performing with other jazz bigwigs such as Miles Davis and Charlie Parker.

In 1952, he co-founded Debut Records with Max Roach. In a few years, he formed an experimental musicians’ group called ‘Jazz Workshop’.

1956 proved to be a breakthrough year for Mingus with the release of ‘Pitecanthropus Erectus’, which is believed to be his major work, both as a composer and an effective bandleader. The next year, he released the album, ‘The Clown’, under Atlantic Records.

In 1959, Mingus and his jazz workshop musicians recorded one of his best-known works, ‘Mingus Ah Um’, which featured archetypal compositions such as ‘Goodbye Pork Pie Hat’ and ‘Fables of Faubes’. The subsequent year, he released ‘Blues & Roots’.

In 1960, he formed a foursome with Richmond, Ted Curson and Eric Dolphy. The same year, the quartet released their only album, ‘Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus’.

His debut record, ‘Pitecanthropus Erectus’, which released in 1956 is largely considered his magnum opus. Even today it is considered, ‘one of the truly great modern jazz albums and it was given a maximum four-star rating by the famous, ‘The Penguin Guide to Jazz’.