Mingus Ah Um

Charles Mingus was a legendary bassist and composer in the world of jazz. He was born in 1922 in Arizona and grew up in California. Mingus was inspired by church music and artists like Duke Ellington. He studied the double bass and piano and played with famous jazz musicians like Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington. He formed his own recording companies and produced over 100 albums. His best-selling album, Mingus Ah-Um, was recorded in 1959 and showcased his unique blend of jazz styles. The album included songs dedicated to other jazz composers. Mingus's music was often performed by ballet companies, and he toured extensively until 1977. Today, I am joined by Hannah Moses, Zach King, and my buddy, Miles Buddy. Now, this is the Jazz Podcast. Today we are going over legendary bassist and composer Charles Mingus. He was born in 1922 in Arizona, but he grew up a Cali baby, and he died in Mexico in 1979. Hannah, if you could, tell me a little bit more about this legendary jazz musician. Charles Mingus was born in 1922 and grew to become one of the greatest composers known to free jazz. His music was mainly produced during the 50s and 60s. During Mingus's reign in jazz, he came in contact with many different talented jazz artists, some of whom he ended up recording with. Mingus was born in 1922 in Arizona, but ended up being raised in Los Angeles, California. His mother died four months after he was born, and having a father from the military was hard on Mingus. Music became his biggest escape and inspired him to make his own. His biggest inspiration for his music came from his church, the choir and group singing. Mingus admired the melodies and how different each song sounded after the harmony had been added. Duke Ellington playing through the radio when Mingus was eight years old also contributed to his musical interests. Mingus studied the double bass and learned to play the instrument alongside the principal bassist of the New York Philharmonic Group. By the time Mingus started to play music, he was well-versed in playing the double bass and piano. His early experience in music in the 40s included Mingus touring with Louis Armstrong and Lionel Hampton. Eventually, Mingus moved to New York, where he recorded music with jazz players Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Bud Powell, Art Tatum, and Duke Ellington. By the mid-50s, Mingus had formed his own publishing and recording companies to record music and produce albums. He also founded the Jazz Workshop Group, which helped new music producers have their music performed in concerts and recordings. During Mingus's career, he recorded over 100 albums and wrote over 300 songs. These albums include The Clown, Mingus Dynasty, Tijuana Moods, Mingus Ah-Um, The Black Saint and the Center Lady, Let My Children Hear Music, and so many more. Mingus's music was often performed by ballet companies. In 1972, Alvin Ailey produced an hour-long choreographed program called the Mingus Dances. Mingus's first concert piece he wrote, called Half-Mass Inhibition, was written when he was 17 years old, but not recorded and produced until 22 years later. In 1971, his autobiography, Beneath the Underdog, was published. Charles Mingus toured and played his music throughout Europe, Japan, Canada, South America, and the United States until the end of 1977. Although all of the work Mingus composed was genius, Mingus Ah-Um was Charles Mingus's best-selling album he had ever produced. What Mingus accomplished in Mingus Ah-Um gave a form to freedom and tied in many other styles of jazz music heard throughout jazz history. This album was the first of Mingus's to be recorded and produced by Columbia Records. By including jazz styles and music from the past, Mingus's music reached more ears than just his regular listeners. Out of his nine songs, Mingus dedicated four of his composed songs to other jazz composers he played with throughout his life. His composers included Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington, Lester Young, and Jelly Roll Morton. Thank you, Hannah, for that beautiful introduction. That's right. Mingus's Mingus Ah-Um was in the famous year for jazz, 1959, and these tracks, this group of songs, was truly revolutionary and game-changing for the history of jazz. Getting into the track list here, we're starting off with a really energetic, preachy piece called Better Get It In Your Soul. We start out with this very breakneck speed chorus with saxophones and horns playing in unison with this blend of blues and gospel played on the pentatonic scale. Sax solos coming into play later in the song, and there are bluesy piano licks kind of just playing all over this thing with vocal ad-libs and saxophone lines that sound like a preacher preaching energetically to his congregation. Mingus was influenced very heavily by his experiences growing up going to black churches. So, Better Get It In Your Soul is a phenomenal opener to this album. Let's play it, Hannah. ["Better Get It In Your Soul"] ["Better Get It In Your Soul"] ["Better Get It In Your Soul"] ["Better Get It In Your Soul"] ["Better Get It In Your Soul"] ["Better Get It In Your Soul"] ["Better Get It In Your Soul"] ["Better Get It In Your Soul"] ["Better Get It In Your Soul"] ["Better Get It In Your Soul"] ["Better Get It In Your Soul"] ["Better Get It In Your Soul"] ["Better Get It In Your Soul"] ["Better Get It In Your Soul"] ["Better Get It In Your Soul"] ["Better Get It In Your Soul"] ["Better Get It In Your Soul"] ["Better Get It In Your Soul"] ["Better Get It In Your Soul"] ["Better Get It In Your Soul"] ["Better Get It In Your Soul"] ["Better Get It In Your Soul"] ["Better Get It In Your Soul"] ["Better Get It In Your Soul"] ["Better Get It In Your Soul"] ["Better Get It In Your Soul"] ["Better Get It In Your Soul"] ["Better Get It In Your Soul"] ["Better Get It In Your Soul"] ["Better Get It In Your Soul"] ["Better Get It In Your Soul"] ["Better Get It In Your Soul"] ["Better Get It In Your Soul"] ["Better Get It In Your Soul"] ["Better Get It In Your Soul"] That was Better Get It In Your Soul. A track that blends seamlessly into our next song here, Goodbye Pork Pie Hat. Although this transition is very smooth, we do end up going for a significant change of pace here with a sad, slow, bluesy lament that is played in memory, composed in memory of legendary saxophonist Lester Young, another homage on this album to the history of African American music. And we have this typical Mingus bebop kind of refrain followed by solos, followed by a refrain. Very slow and sad with this staggered saxophone blowing kind of technique that we saw in Better Get It In Your Soul returning here. It's a very interesting effect. Let's listen to it for ourselves, this very expressive piece. ["Better Get It In Your Soul"] ["Better Get It In Your Soul"] ["Better Get It In Your Soul"] ["Better Get It In Your Soul"] ["Better Get It In Your Soul"] ["Better Get It In Your Soul"] ["Better Get It In Your Soul"] ["Better Get It In Your Soul"] ["Better Get It In Your Soul"] ["Better Get It In Your Soul"] ["Better Get It In Your Soul"] ["Better Get It In Your Soul"] ["Better Get It In Your Soul"] ["Better Get It In Your Soul"] ["Better Get It In Your Soul"] ["Better Get It In Your Soul"] ["Better Get It In Your Soul"] ["Better Get It In Your Soul"] ["Better Get It In Your Soul"] ["Better Get It In Your Soul"] ["Better Get It In Your Soul"] ["Better Get It In Your Soul"] ["Better Get It In Your Soul"] ["Better Get It In Your Soul"] ["Better Get It In Your Soul"] ["Better Get It In Your Soul"] ["Better Get It In Your Soul"] ["Better Get It In Your Soul"] ["Better Get It In Your Soul"] Well, that brings a tear to my eye. This next one... This next one, Boogie Stop Shuffle, brings the pace back up again with this very frantic tone kind of returning. This up-tempo song that does seem to shuffle. I guess shuffling is really the best word to describe it here. As the title suggests, we have a boogie-woogie bass harmony here with notes again recognizing the history of jazz and the contributions to the genre that made what he does possible. Our main melody features these really squawking saxophones and the solos continue this frantic, tense mood that puts the listener on edge and it's accentuated by this recurring staccato theme in the saxophone that goes... Anyway, yeah. This song is actually my personal favorite along with Pork Pie Hat, the previous track. Hannah, let's give it a listen. ["Pork Pie Hat"] ["Pork Pie Hat"] ["Pork Pie Hat"] ["Pork Pie Hat"] ["Pork Pie Hat"] ["Pork Pie Hat"] ["Pork Pie Hat"] ["Pork Pie Hat"] ["Pork Pie Hat"] ["Pork Pie Hat"] ["Pork Pie Hat"] ["Pork Pie Hat"] ["Pork Pie Hat"] ["Pork Pie Hat"] ["Pork Pie Hat"] ["Pork Pie Hat"] ["Pork Pie Hat"] ["Pork Pie Hat"] ["Pork Pie Hat"] ["Pork Pie Hat"] ["Pork Pie Hat"] ["Pork Pie Hat"] ["Pork Pie Hat"] ["Pork Pie Hat"] ["Pork Pie Hat"] ["Pork Pie Hat"] ["Pork Pie Hat"] ["Pork Pie Hat"] ["Pork Pie Hat"] ["Pork Pie Hat"] That was Boogie, Stop, Shuffle. You won't forget that one. And for our fourth track here, we have Self-Portrait in three colors. This one is a slower piece. Again, we are building tension and then ongoing with these slow songs. We have this fast tempo, slow tempo kind of alternating pattern at the beginning of the tracklist here. And this is a very memorable piece because it actually is told in three voices that are kind of telling three separate stories on this track. The three colors, if you will, described in the title, are two saxophones and a trombone that are playing these almost unison but not quite rhythms that are harmonizing very beautiful together all over this thing. And while Mingus has been playing at breakneck speed with a very virtuosic technique before, his bass playing on this song is very slow and deliberate, giving a lazy, restrained feeling to the song that blends well into the next track, Open Letter to Duke, the Duke on this title, obviously being the legendary Duke Ellington, again, with Mingus recognizing the history of jazz in this album. He really believed that genres and these schools of jazz are permanent. He recognized that they're not out of style and if they didn't exist, then there would be no Charles Mingus. So that's really what the theme of this album is, is the permanence of the people that came before him in jazz. And so, Open Letter to Duke is this multi-phase song with a variable tempo and feel. We get some Latin influence harmonies and rhythms, and it is a very danceable track, so I rather enjoy this one. But far more memorable, I think, is the sixth track on here, which is called Bird Calls, with Bird, again, Mingus's predecessors coming up here, with Bird being a reference to Charlie Parker, the virtuoso alto saxophonist that was the founder of the School of Bebop. This is a fast alto sax melody with some call-and-response themes here in the melody. And in addition to being in honor of Charlie Parker, this song tries to imitate birds, literal birds, in general. And so we get these very dissonant, really breakneck-speed melodies that sort of start and stop on this song. And again, this is Mingus saying that these styles, while they might have fallen out of style right now, we have to look at these bygone eras as more permanent, and we have to recognize what they've done for jazz today. Let's cue up Bird Calls right now. I think we should hear this one. 🎵 The final track I want to talk about here is Fables of Faubus. This is a lyrical piece on this album, played only by saxophone, with a derisive mocking quality, as Charles Mingus was composing this song in protest of segregationist policies, and specifically Governor Faubus of Arkansas. This is the most storied piece of music on this album, and one that I definitely recommend listening to, the instrumental and lyrical version, which was released independently later on. Alright, thanks Miles for that in-depth analysis of the songs. Now I'm going to kind of talk about who all was actually performing in the band. So we had, of course, Charles Mingus on the bass, Booker Irvin on the tenor sax, John Handy on the alto and the tenor sax, and playing the clarinet as well. We had Shafi Hadid on the alto and tenor sax, Jimmy Knepper and Willie Dennis on the trombones, and we had Horace Harlan on the piano, and Danny Richmond on the drums. And the album cover actually featured a painting by the legendary artist, Neil Fichita, and I feel like one of the most important aspects we need to talk about is that the whole album and this type of music was the Harbaugh style, and this is one of the four small topics we discussed in class and everything. And even though Miles already touched on this, we need to kind of restate that it was influenced by black church music and this gospel Harbaugh slash soul type music, and really kind of took a lot of aspects from that when he recorded, and you can hear that throughout all the songs. And with all that being said, I just want to thank you guys for tuning in to listen to the GOAT, Charles Mingus, and yeah, thank you guys for listening.