Charles Mingus was born on April 22, 1922, in Nogales, Arizona. He was the son of Charles Mingus, a retired sergeant in the United States Army, and Harriett Sophia Philips. His mother died five months after he was born. Mingus was raised in the Watts district of Los Angeles by his father and stepmother.
Mingus's first major musical influence was the black gospel music of the Holiness Church. By the age of eight, Mingus played the trombone, and in junior high, he began to play the cello. At Jordan High School he switched to the string bass and began private studies with bassist Red Callender. Next, he took classes in piano, theory, and composition with Lloyd Reese. In 1943, he began five years of lessons with Herman Rheinschagen, a former bass player with the New York Philharmonic. Mingus's formal education was not successful. As a light-skinned black man, Mingus was the brunt of racial prejudice from whites and darker blacks alike. His sensitive nature was already in a state of rebellion. Only his high IQ saved him from going to Boyle Heights, a school for problem children.
In 1942, Mingus worked in a band led by Barney Bigard. This led to a job with Louis Armstrong, but in 1943 he was fired just before a tour of the southern United States. Mingus was so vehement in his refusal to stand for racial prejudice that Armstrong was afraid he would be murdered. He joined the Lee Young Sextet (1943) and then helped form the Strings and Keys trio (1944). In 1945, he played informal jam sessions with the genius of bebop, Charlie Parker. Interestingly, Mingus at first was not impressed. Mingus toured with Lionel Hampton (1947 - 1948) and then with the Red Norvo trio (1950 - 1951), which he left when a white bassist took his place just before a television broadcast. In 1951, Mingus moved to New York City, where he played with Miles Davis and then Charlie Parker. In 1952, he helped form one of the first musician-owned record companies, Debut Records. In January 1953, he joined one of his most admired musical and compositional influences, Duke Ellington. But on February 3, he was fired. During an intermission at a concert at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem, trombonist Juan Tizol made racial slurs about Mingus's musicianship. A fight broke out and Tizol, holding a bolo knife, chased Mingus across the stage; Mingus grabbed a fire ax, chased Tizol, and chopped his chair into splinters. In 1953, Mingus booked perhaps the best bebop band of all time, with Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, Max Roach, and himself, for a concert at Massey Hall in Toronto on May 15. This was recorded and issued on Debut Records. By this point, he had played with the leading figures of jazz and was recognized as a major performer and innovator on string bass. Still playing, Mingus moved more toward composition. In 1954, he helped to form the earliest cooperative group of the modern jazz era, the Jazz Composer's Workshop. By 1955, he was the leader of the Charles Mingus Jazz Workshop, which essentially played only his music. Beginning with the recording of Pithecanthropus Erectus in January 1956, Mingus extended the frontiers of jazz composition by the use of varying tempos, extended form, pedal points, and collective improvisation. The music, with its intense passions, had an unmistakable Mingus sound. One of the reasons was that Mingus preferred to sing or play not write down parts for his players. Mingus reached new artistic heights in 1959 with the LPs Blues and Roots (Atlantic) and Mingus Ah Um (Columbia).
The latter contained two of his most popular pieces, "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat" and "Better Git It in Your Soul. " A musical debacle occurred on October 12, 1962, at an improperly prepared concert at Town Hall in New York City. Longtime associate trombonist Jimmy Knepper refused a music-writing assignment, and Mingus punched him in the mouth. Knepper instituted legal charges. Inept recording engineers added to problems the night of the concert. Undaunted, on January 20, 1963, Mingus recorded what many believe to be his finest album, Black Saint and the Sinner Lady (Impulse). In the spring of 1966, Mingus was evicted from his apartment on the Lower East Side in New York City. This low point in his life was captured in the documentary film Mingus (1968), by Thomas Reichman. Soon afterward, he suffered a nervous breakdown and was sent to Bellevue Hospital. For most of the period 1967-1968, he was professionally inactive. He began a slow return to the world of performance in 1969. But Mingus was not himself: he took no solos, he did not talk to the audience, he let musicians read music, and his bass playing was not assertive. In 1971, Mingus was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for composition. His imaginative and at times semi-pornographic autobiography, Beneath the Underdog, edited by Nel King, was published in 1971. He played at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1972. At a recording session, arranger-collaborator Sy Johnson said, "He's his old self. He just yelled at the band. " At the end of the year, he was elected to the Down Beat Hall of Fame. During his remaining years Mingus traveled extensively with his band and continued to compose music for large ensembles; especially important is "The Shoes of the Fisherman's Wife Are Jive Ass Slippers, " recorded on Let My Children Hear Music (Columbia). In 1979, he collaborated with pop singer Joni Mitchell on her album Mingus (Asylum). In November 1977, medical tests revealed that Mingus had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, better known as Lou Gehrig's disease. On June 18, 1978, he was a guest of honor at a jazz party at the White House. In pursuit of a spiritual healer he and Susan then went to Cuernavaca, Mexico, where he died. In accordance with his wishes, his widow flew to India with his cremated remains and scattered his ashes in the Ganges River.
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Nearly as well known as his ambitious music was Mingus's often fearsome temperament, which earned him the nickname "The Angry Man of Jazz". His refusal to compromise his musical integrity led to many onstage eruptions, exhortations to musicians, and dismissals. Although respected for his musical talents, Mingus was sometimes feared for his occasionally violent onstage temper, which was at times directed at members of his band and other times aimed at the audience. He was physically large, prone to obesity, and was by all accounts often intimidating and frightening when expressing anger or displeasure.
Mingus was married five times. He was first married when he was only sixteen, but the union was quickly annulled. He married Canilla Jeanne Gross on January 3, 1944; they had two children and were divorced in 1947. He married Celia Nielson on April 2, 1951; they had one child. She left him on their anniversary in 1958. He married Judy Starkey in the early 1960's; they had two children. By 1966, he was living alone. In 1975, he married his manager, Susan Graham Ungaro.
