Charles Mingus at 100

 

I have long advocated for April 22 to be designated a national holiday. It is Charles Mingus’ birthday, and this year marks the 100^th anniversary of his birth.

 

Why recognize Mingus in this way? Why not Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Louis Armstrong, John Coltrane, Charlie Parker?  The evasive answer is that they all deserve it too. Of course it’s absurd to even consider that a holiday would be set aside for this artist’s birthday, no matter how deserving. The more specific answer is that it’s both intuitive and personal. 

 

Mingus is to me all things American. The good and bad, the achingly beautiful and coarsely ugly. He could be tender, sweet, loving, and mercurially harsh and abusive. His own ethnic heritage was African, Asian, and European. He was the great melting pot. 

 

I believe America is a country of immense potential, often great optimism, and crushing letdowns and ugliness. Mr. Mingus isn’t as bad as the latter, but it could get bad. Jimmy Knepper once said something to Mingus that made Charles so mad, that he punched Jimmy in the face and knocked crown out. Jimmy said he lost part of his embouchure and the top octave of his range on the trombone. And yet, they worked together again later. Charles was serially unfaithful to his girlfriends and wives.

 

These things fade into the distance as the people are gone, but the work continues to thrive. His transgressions pale in comparison to, say, those of Bill Cosby. Cosby is unredemptive and irredeemable, and any positive work he may have made will always be tainted by his private behavior. Mingus’ behavior wasn’t serially criminal, and while sometimes bad, is understandable. He had reasons to be angry. And he was a hothead.

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I don’t know if you can picture this, but there’s Ben Opie, aged 13 or so, in his corner room in an old farmhouse in Pleasant Valley, PA. Yes, Pleasant Valley. I had started playing clarinet in the 5^th grade (I liked how it looked) and picked up my first tenor saxophone in the 9^th. My father had a nice collection of records, which I listened to often, but had a far larger collection of 7.5” reel-to-reel tapes. This was before cassettes were commonplace. 

 

Dad taught at Louisiana State University from 1965-1970. We lived in an historic plantation house in Port Allen/West Baton Rouge. That’s a story for another time. 

 

Dad would borrow records from anyone, students and teachers alike, and dub them to those reel to reel (R2R) tapes, usually at slow speed. He could slap on a tape in his painting studio, and let it play for an hour while he worked. I had one of his old portable R2R players in my room, and would go exploring through his collection.

 

I don’t remember the order, but I discovered some great stuff in that collection of tapes: Cream, the first Led Zeppelin records, and more importantly, a tape entirely of the original Mothers of Invention.

Aside from the Mothers and Hot Rats, one tape really caught my attention. It opened with Mingus Ah Um: no song titles, just the artist and album title . That record turned me on my ear. The opening gospel cries of “Better Git It in Your Soul” sounded instantly catchy. I was drawn in. Follow that up with the dryly, sadly lyrical “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat”, and I was hooked. (That one note with the two saxophones a half step apart!) Turns out, Dad had a physical copy (now in my possession) which led me to know the composition titles.

 

I consider it to be the single greatest record ever recorded. It’s a concept record before such a thing existed. Every piece is some reference to another artist or style, even in jape (“Fables of Faubus” is both my favorite work on the record, and a huge middle finger to the racist governor). So much of what I am today as a musician, comes back to the tapes of Uncle Meat and Mingus Ah Um I studied in my youth. 

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I taught at CAPA High School (High School for the Creative and Performing Arts) in Pittsburgh from 1998-2008. During one of those early years, I was asked (told) to run the school jazz band for a single period (45 minutes +/-) after wind ensemble once a week. There was a hole in the schedule and it needed to be covered. This was basically an impossible task; run a dedicated ensemble for so little time each week?

 

The Charles Mingus: More Than a Fakebook had been published prior to that, and I thought, let’s just do a Mingus deep dive. The multi-part pieces translated to a big band easily. 

 

As we were digging into the repertoire, one of the trombonists asked me a question rehearsal. He was rather formal: “Mr. Opie, why does Mr. Mingus write so many wrong notes?” I had to stop for a moment to respect the question. “Maybe he isn’t writing the wrong notes,” I said, “Maybe you just haven’t heard what he’s doing yet.”

 

At the end of academic year, we played an entire Mingus program, and I insisted we do “Better Git It in Your Soul” entirely from memory. That was the Mingus way. 

 

I salute you Mr. Mingus. Despite your flaws, the world is a better place from you having been in it. I hope that those who follow me can say the same. Thank you.