Charles mingus biography musicians union
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Bassist and composer Charles Mingus (1922-1979) was a brilliant, witty, and difficult person. His letters are typically very rich, and layered with jokes and rambling tangents. This was even true when he wrote something for publication, although he had presumably edited it carefully beforehand. For an example, see his “Open Letter to Miles Davis” in Downbeat magazine, 1955.
Here is a long typed letter, never before shared anywhere, that he wrote in 1963 to the American Federation of Musicians (AFM), and cc’d to his producer at Atlantic Records, Nesuhi Ertegun. There are over 240 local branches of the AFM in the United States and Canada, and Local 802, now on West 48th Street in Manhattan, is the famous New York City flagship chapter. We musicians refer to the AFM as “the musicians’ union,” or “the union,” and to the local branch as “802.”
The letter is addressed to Gilbert “Gil” Rogers, who was the AFM president’s Assistant on Symphony Affairs. At th
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Charles Mingus
One of the most important figures in 20th-century American music, CHARLES MINGUS was a virtuoso bass player, accomplished pianist, bandleader, and composer. Born in Arizona and raised in Watts, California, he studied double bass and composition in a formal way (five years with H. Rheinshagen, principal bassist of the New York Philharmonic, and compositional techniques with the legendary Lloyd Reese) while absorbing vernacular music from the great jazz masters, first-hand. His early professional experience, in the '40s, funnen him touring with bands like Louis Armstrong, Kid Ory, and Lionel Hampton and brought him to New York where he played and recorded with the leading musicians of the 1950s - Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Bud Powell, Art Tatum, and Duke Ellington. One of the few bassists to do so, Mingus quickly developed as a leader of musicians, and recorded over a hundred albums and wrote over three hundred scores.
After his death in 1979 from Amyotrophic Lateral
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Mercurial and gifted bassist and band leader Charles Mingus is considered by many to be one of the jazz greats of all time, and one of the 20th Century’s most important Black composers. He worked and recorded with jazz legends such as Miles Davis, Art Tatum, Eric Dolphy, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Max Roach. With the latter four, he played bass in the famous recorded live jazz concert “Jazz at Massey Hall” in May 1953.
Mingus was born in 1922 in Nogales, Arizona, where his father was stationed as a U.S. Army sergeant. His mother died shortly after he was born. He was raised in Watts, California. In his loosely autobiographical Beneath the Underdog
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(1971), he wrote of not fitting in with whites because he was black, and not fitting in with blacks because he was so light-skinned. He confronted Southern racist attitudes of the time as reflected in his composition about segregationist Governor Faubus of A