Fran and Charles
Fran Lebowitz talks with Doug Doyle about her friendship with Charles Mingus (WBGO). With special appearances by Duke Ellington and an apple pancake.
Sue Mingus (1930–2022)
A keeper of a flame.
Mingus in Amsterdam
I long had a standard choice for a musical time machine (with a train ticket): 1928 or so, so that I could hear Louis Armstrong in Chicago or Duke Ellington in New York. At some point I added 1964 (with plane fare), to hear the Charles Mingus Sextet somewhere in Europe.
Mingus centennial
I cringed last night hearing an NPR tribute characterize Mingus — straight off — as “the angry man of jazz.” I find it difficult to imagine NPR referring to anyone as the angry man of chamber music, dance, film, painting, &c. Sigh.
Charles Mingus and Spider-Man
The theme for the 1960s cartoon series Spider-Man, by Bob Harris and Paul Francis Webster, sounds heavily indebted to Charles Mingus’s “Boogie Stop Shuffle.” Really.
Charles Mingus at Bremen
Both performances, all players, were and are lit, on fire and burning bright, in four hours of music that make most (so-called) jazz sound pedestrian and predictable by comparison.
Mingus and Brubeck
Charles Mingus and Dave Brubeck appear briefly in All Night Long (dir. Basil Dearden, 1962), a reimagining of Othello.
Chrissie Hynde plays Mingus
Chrissie Hynde offers an interpretation of Charles Mingus’s “Meditation on a Pair of Wire Cutters” (aka “Meditations on Integration” and “Meditations”).
Charles Mingus, Jazz In Detroit
The music herein is excellent, a mix of favorites (“Pithecanthropus Erectus,” “Peggy’s Blue Skylight,” “Celia,” “Orange Was the Color of Her Dress, Then Blue Silk”), some Ellingtonia (“C Jam Blues”), and three rarities (“The Man Who Never Sleeps,” “Noddin’ Ya Head Blues,” and the otherwise unrecorded “Dizzy Profile,” a delicate waltz written for Dizzy Gillespie).
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Coming in November: Jazz In Detroit / Strat Concert Gallery / 46 Selden , a 5-CD/5-LP set of Charles Mingus performances, recorded in 1973.
Ted Curson (1935–2012)
I know him best from his work with Charles Mingus.
Charles Mingus’s eggnog recipe
Aspirin not included.
Charles Mingus defies bomb threat
"Racism planted that bomb, but racism ain't strong enough to kill this music. If I'm going to die, I'm ready. But I'm going out playing 'Sophisticated Lady.'"
Review: Charles Mingus at Cornell
The best introduction to Mingus's music.
Ms. Mingus and Ms. Pepper
From Sunday's New York Times : It's a happy accident that two of the most self-absorbed legends in the history of jazz — the bassist Charles...
Charles Mingus in Norway
A 1964 performance with Eric Dolphy, on YouTube
I dream of Mingus
A dream with Charles Mingus in it: He and I are sitting in a dark room with floor-to-ceiling red drapes. There are bookshelves attached to ...