For my friends in the Wasatch Cruisers I thought I’d put up a post about the bass player Charles Mingus. Listen to that bari saxophone starting it all off…

This song, Moanin’, I call “Out of Cloud Chaos Comes Structure.” It gets pretty crazy there, lots of voices, and out of the chaos comes structure (a “song”) and bam, does it rip…

Mingus is one of my favorite jazz musicians of all time; the folder I put these songs in is called ‘fat soul,’ which is about how I describe Mingus… He weighed a couple hundred pounds, “a real heavy weight,” and was way out there. Huge heart, kind of narcissistic and wild at the same time; wanted everyone to know what he was doing but at the same time he hardly cared what anyone thought… Sort of reminds me of my old man a little actually.. I think he was even an outwardly known Communist by the time he died in the late 70′s when we were at war with Russia in Afghanistan and it was not cool to be a Commi in the slightest. He also had big bouts with depression that would lock him up for months or even years, yet he was still one of the most productive jazz players out there with a new record once a year or even more often. Some time in the late 60s he tried to open a music school. It never panned out for whatever reason (probably because he was a little nuts) and he was living in the space surrounded by huge piles of tons and tons of junk — literally waist-high piles of it — and the whole place was little paths around and through it all. When it didn’t pan out he was getting evicted for shooting a gun through the wall into a neighbor’s apartment and there is a great hour long documentary of the process of it all. He was even arrested at the end of it all. His little daughter is meandering around the room with him while they’re waiting for the cops to come as he’s banging out a couple jazz songs on the piano for her. It’s a great lead-up and story about the life and craziness of the Mingus and how nuts he was…

From all that weight he had tons of physical power. His wikipedia page almost immediately makes reference to his nickname “The Angry Man of Jazz” because he would repeatedly get into brawls with other players, sometimes even on stage. He was supposedly the only person to ever personally be fired by Duke Ellington because of it. There were even rumors he used to beat the shit out of some of his players when he was running jazz workshops in the late 50′s with a plethora of young aspiring killer/future jazz musicians, mostly in Brooklyn I believe; guys like 20-year-olds who played on his Live at the Bohemia recording, literally playing killer jazz music out of fear… Messed up, uh? This is, coincidentally, one of my favorite albums (I mentioned it in an earlier post too) so I guess in this crazy situation it actually worked. And again, this is messed up.

Check out these photos of him and his fat fingers; look at the action of the strings (distance of the strings to the wood of the bass) — way way far so it took a lot of strength to get the strings down to play each song. No one sets up their bass like this. Even then, he played sort of like a torrent or a hurricane; one of the fastest players out there at the time, playing rippin’ intricate, complex lines….

Check out this pic, he’s even smoking a cigar. This is 1976 in New York City. He would die 2 or 3 years later…

Again, look at those fat, powerful fingers… When I played jazz saxophone in high school, though we were pretty advanced, I tried to play quite a few Mingus songs. But they really bounce around, weird keys, quick changes, and are really really hard to carry even though these are some of my favorite jazz tunes. I frankly could never play most of them. Again, one more testament to the complexity and skill of Mingus.

And finally speaking of saxophones, this first song has the young aspiring Pepper Adams (and a slew of other horn players; literally a slew) who is one of my favorite baritone sax players, single-handedly from this song and this album. He just rips it up. Really played that big old accessory sax like a lead instrument, as you can tell from these songs, even has a solo at the end. This is about as difficult as a guy choosing to solo who plays the tuba. The baritone sax (thanks for posting this photo [on another forum] DMC!) is the black one, third ‘deepest’ sounding. Little did I know he would be “widely considered one of the most significant and influential baritone saxophonists in jazz. Nicknamed “The Knife” for his sound on the horn, his hearty tone and driving rhythmic sense” according to his Wikipedia page.

The bari sax is actually the largest saxophone I’ve personally seen in person. I knew about a bass sax (the one to the left of the black one) but had never heard of a contra bass sax; the one the guy is holding. Dear lord!

And I really dig this era of Mingus, a little wild, a little crazy. Church influenced.. You can hear Mingus yelling in this one… Real ‘Blues and Roots‘ (the name of the album these songs were on).