Vick 1

Mikey Vick

Mr. Yoha

English 3

3/31/23

Charles Mingus

Throughout history, there have been hundreds of legendary jazz musicians, from Duke

Ellington, Ray Brown, even the recently departed Wayne Shorter, but none ever wrote and

played music like Charles Mingus. Throughout American history, racism has fueled conflict and

political fighting from the initial signing of the Constitution to the entire history of the southern

American states. To fight this racism, African-Americans in the fields of the south developed the

blues, a musical style that talks about the hardships forced upon them, which later formed into

jazz, another musical genre that continues the idea of protest and pushing strong ideas and

fighting what is considered societal norm. Jazz later expanded to be a nationwide treasure for

America and still contained the emotional messages portrayed by the improvisation and beats

given by the Masters of Music that wrote them. Charles Mingus was one of the few men who did

not care what the general people thought of him and spoke his mind no matter the political

consequences. Being a very strong willed man, oftentimes he spoke outright against specific

people and specific actions in his music. This being so, his influence on generations after him

and even the world during his life was immense. Charles Mingus and his music changed the

American people and the course of the countries history because of his lack of care for society's

norms, his political protests within his music, the emotional aspects of his music that people can

relate to, and the interest in writing things that are not perfect musically.
 Vick 2

Charles Mingus had a long a trying youth starting in a military base based in Arizona then

immediately leaving to be raised in California. He grew up and stayed a religious man and his

music is a very obvious reflection of church gospel music mixed with the ever growingly popular

jazz music. As Mingus grew up, he listened to the radio hearing the eternal swing of Duke

Ellington and his Orchestra and noted at an early age that he wanted to take a life in music.

According to the Charles Mingus website, he was provided professional lessons from the

principal bassist of the New York Philharmonic and from the “Legendary” Lloyd Reese, but most

know Mingus as a man who learned on the job, either through failure at a gig or experimenting at

a recording session. Originally starting as a freelancing musician for the famous names of jazz,

Mingus’s success started with the recording of his first album, Pithecanthropus Erectus and the

music just flowed from there. Appearing on 85 albums, with 34 being all his own compositions,

his career spanned all sorts of sub-genres and influenced so many musicians years after his death

in 1979.

Charles Mingus did not care much for the societal and musical norms when writing his

music. Based on the music being produced around him, the idea of rehearsing and making music

sound perfect and simply pleasant to the ear with motivation of it just sounding good was no

good to Mingus. Charles McPherson (one of Mingus’s trusted alto saxophone players) told New

York Times, “When we would play his music, if we were too clean, he would say: ‘I do not want

it to sound processed. It’s too pristine.’ And if we weren’t as organized, then he would say, ‘Well,

that’s too raggedy.’ He would say, ‘I like organized chaos.’” (McPherson) Charles Mingus was

known to write with such dissonance but not so much where it sounds unpleasant to the ears.

Everything in his writing is usually improvised on the spot, but with enough structure where it
 Vick 3

will sound good to most ears listening. This is shown in the hit single Moanin’, when during the

third chorus, the tenor saxophones come in with a line that is a fourth above the main baseline

for a lot of the chorus. This song became one of Mingus’s biggest songs because of how the

improvisational chaos was reigned in by Mingus showing order in all the mess of instruments.

With the release of his magnum opus, Mingus Ah Um, Mingus released a new song

named Fables of Faubus, in direct reference to the corrupt and racist Arkansas governor Orval

Faubus. The song originally had lyrics which openly talked bad about not only governor Faubus

but that of also John D. Rockefeller and President Eisenhower, who at the time was the sitting

president. They said, “Name me someone who's ridiculous, Dannie. Governor Faubus! Why is

he so sick and ridiculous? He won't permit integrated schools,” and later on in the song added

some more names to his list by adding the lyrics, “name me a handful that's ridiculous,

Dannie Richmond. Faubus, Rockefeller, Eisenhower. Why are they so sick and ridiculous?

Two, four, six, eight: They brainwash and teach you hate. H-E-L-L-O, Hello.” (Bold being the

call from Mingus whilst italicized is the Columbia, the production company, could not allow this

version of the song in the final take on the album as they could not be shown to be openly against

the president. This was very powerful writing and it showed and talked about the atrocities that

were still happening in the south. The entire album that this song is on was described as a main

step in the path to change politically for Mingus and even in himself, seeing the split parts of him

and working to make himself whole. W.E.B. Du Bois once said that these split parts are “psychic

consequences of life behind the ‘veil’ within racially oppressive social order.” (Du Bois 12)

Mingus then spent the rest of his life fighting through music and sometimes simply speaking to

the press about public about the things he saw.

Mingus Ah Um was not a protest album as a whole. Although Fables of Faubus took to

quite the spotlight, the album also featured a total of three tribute songs, Goodbye Porkpie Hat

(Lester Young Tribute), Jelly Roll (Jelly Roll Morton tribute), and Open Letter To Duke ( Duke

Ellington tribute). Every song presented was in reference to musicians who greatly affected his

life and his development of music. According to the Charles Mingus fake book, edited by his

wife Sue Mingus, these songs were written with “conviction and passion” to portray the emotion

given to him when these great men were lost. Starting with Goodbye Porkpie Hat, written in by

Sue Mingus herself, Charles Mingus said to her later the year of Lester Young’s death, “…the

night we heard he died and we went to the bandstand and played a blues for Lester. I knew the

guys would never do that again. I went home and wrote a blues the way I thought they were

playing, with different types of chord changes - not just the regular blues - and it became a part

of the book” (Mingus 53). This group of people felt such a deep loss that they broke their rule of

not doing the simple stuff and played one of the most basic forms of jazz in his honor. The next

one, Jelly Roll, is a bit different than the other. Charles Mingus never studied the history of jazz

before his time and instead reveled in the stuff that was going on around him at the time and

learning from that. That being said, Jelly Roll was not a musical inspiration for the great bassist,

but was a life inspiration. Mingus knew of what it was like during the time of Jelly Roll Morton

and he aspired to be as much like him as possible. Going even to the lengths of playing piano on

a tribute song to him, just like Jelly Roll. The last one is probably the most straightforward.

Mingus wanted to write and compose like Ellington so he wrote a composition shouting to him

saying he respects him and was incredibly inspired by him. (Mingus 97) Ellington wrote epic

songs that were oftentimes very long and he did not follow an exact formula on how to do
 Vick 5

something. He did what he wanted and people loved him for it. Mingus felt the same way and

wanted to express that by writing the most him song imaginable and then dedicating it to one of

his biggest heroes and inspirations. The thing that links all these songs together is the emotion.

He did not just write a few songs and called it done, he wrote masterpieces and had reasoning

behind them. Some of those songs are his biggest work because musicians tend to know where

the music feels real. And id Mingus could do anything, it would be making his music real.

Although some people consider it nerdy and hogwash, the actual analysis of Mingus’s

music is incredibly important and insightful. It is widely known that Charles did things just

because no one else was, or because everyone else was doing the opposite. This is shown very

clearly in his music. Growing up and learning in a time where the goal of music was to sound

beautiful and majestic at all times opened him to working more with dissonant intervals and odd

chords. According to Andrew Homzy, the man who wrote the musical analysis’ of the Charles

Mingus fake book, Mingus never forced anything upon his musicians. They were all free to play

as they felt and to improvise and explore, within reason of course. This allowed weird stuff to

happen in his songs like a saxophone player playing a flat three on a major seven chord to then

resolve back to the minor tonic. (Nobody Knows 78) Some of the stuff Mingus wrote was

entirely dissonant to then only resolve at the end. Goodbye Porkpie Hat seems to have little

chord structure when listening to the chordal instruments combined with the soloist. But that is

how it is supposed to be. Playing the song without the intended dissonance would simply just

make the song sound terrible, and that is the genius in Mingus’s writing.

With all the evidence presented here, one can learn and begin to understand how Charles

Mingus was a major influence in the world of Jazz and in America. He and his music changed
 Vick 6

the American people and the course of the countries history because of his lack of care for

society's norms, his political protests within his music, the emotional aspects of his music that

people can relate to, the interest in writing things that are not perfect, and his influence on jazz

and music for years to come. Lots of musicians become great, at some point or another and for

many different reasons. But Charles Mingus became a legend for everyone in the jazz world. In

that world, it is very hard for someone to stand out and yet he did it effortlessly. And in doing so,

inspired generation after generation to continue the passion of music and to share thoughts and

ideas with music.

Works Cited

Brooks, Earl. “Charles Mingus, Rotary Perception, and the ‘Fables of Faubus.’” Sounding Out!,

16 Sept. 2019, https://soundstudiesblog.com/2019/09/16/22992/.

“Mingus Biography.” CHARLES MINGUS, https://www.charlesmingus.com/mingusbio.

Mingus, Charles. Beneath the Underdog. Canongate, 1971.

Mingus, Charles. Charles Mingus: More than A Fake Book. Hal Leonard, 1991.

Moore, M. J., & Russonello, G. (2022, April 21). The multifaceted Mingus. The New York
Times. Retrieved March 30, 2023, from https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/21/arts/
music/charles-mingus-centennial.html
 Vick 8

Pictures of Sources