Mingus

REVINYLIZATION

- FRED KAPLAN

In the annals of jazz, Charles Mingus—bassist, pianist, composer, bandleader, unique, headstrong, and deeply influential in every category—occupies the transit point between Duke Ellington and the post-’60s avant-garde, a station he carved out deliberately. He venerated Ellington—his sophisticated rhythms and tonal colors, but also his attention to melody, harmony, and structure—and went beyond him (careened down a different path) in expressing emotion, chaos, and anger; it’s these elements that the avant-gardists took from him, while abandoning (to a degree that intrigued but also discomforted Mingus) Ellingtonian form. Critic Gary Giddins described Mingus as the “most persistently apocalyptic voice” in jazz—“the best example we have of disciplined turmoil.”