Word: mingus
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...Charlie Mingus is a short, hulking, brooding man who for years has been recognized as the greatest jazz virtuoso ever to thump a bass fiddle. At the Monterey Jazz Festival last week, his Meditations for a Pair of Wire Cutters demonstrated that he must be ranked among the greatest of jazz composers...
...sweat beading his forehead, his orientally sinister mustache drooping. He leaned over his big bass and began to bow. The mournful, dolorous, lyrical introduction swelled into the horns' full statement of the theme. A flute skittered in. Suddenly a roaring, vibrant alto sax soared over the full horns. Mingus dropped his bow, began to thump. He danced out in front of his bass, bouncing up and down, swarming over the instrument, crashing together swift blocks of strident chords. Drums pounded accents like a Mingus rage coming on. Suddenly, the music was thunder; it was Dante's hell opened...
...Scared. For a moment, the audience was stunned. Then 5,000 jazz cats rose in a thunderous ovation that they had not accorded Ellington or Dizzy Gillespie, or even Thelonious Monk. Face dripping rivulets of sweat and all but in tears, Mingus embraced his men one by one. But as the applause thundered on, he just prowled back and forth across the stage. Never once did he look at the cheering crowd. "I couldn't, man, I was scared," he said later...
...wonder Mingus ever became a jazz musician at all. His stepmother, a member of the Holiness Church in Los Angeles, permitted only church music in the home, so Mingus was eight before he even knew jazz existed. One night he secretly turned on his father's radio and heard Ellington. He took to playing first the trombone, then the cello, till Veteran Bassist Red Callender got him to start on the bass...
...Mingus put all his massive energy into the bass. "I'd practice the hardest things incessantly. The third finger is seldom used, so I used it all the time. I concentrated on speed and technique, almost as ends in themselves. I aimed at scaring all the other bass players. One night, around 1940, all the pieces suddenly fit into place. It was suddenly me. It wasn't the bass any more...