In similar fashion, this Mingus milestone invites reflection on the multitudinous nature of his art. His 1971 autobiography, Beneath the Underdog: His World as Composed by Mingus, famously begins with a disorienting self-assessment: " In other words, I am three." Walt Whitman may have been the one to write "I am large, I contain multitudes," but Mingus physically and spiritually embodied the idea. An artist drawn to expressions both high and low. A sensitive soul given to alarming spasms of violence. on Apand raised in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, Mingus was a uniquely American creation, and a bramble of contradictions. This whole extraordinary scene - with its clash of pomp and defiance, its note of generational benediction and its collision of elegant design with a righteous, roguish impulsivity - is worth keeping in mind on the occasion of Mingus' centennial, which brings a clutch of commemorative releases and special events. In the street, Ellington stood in the waiting crowd just beyond the theatre's open doors, smiling." New Yorker writer Claudia Roth Pierpont has recalled that it also "became a protest song, as the performance just kept going on and on and getting hotter. But I'm going out playing 'Sophisticated Lady.' " And with that, he started into Ellington's ageless ballad, turning it into a solo rumination as everyone else filed out of the building. "Racism planted the bomb, but racists ain't strong enough to kill this music," he barked at a police captain.
Mingus, alone among his cohort, refused to budge.
At one point, Mingus joined an epic jam with five fellow bass stalwarts: Milt Hinton, Ray Brown, Slam Stewart, George Duvivier, and Ellington's bassist at the time, Joe Benjamin.Ī bit later, somebody called in a bomb threat, prompting authorities to start evacuating people from the hall. Ellington himself - the magisterial composer-bandleader, a prime source of inspiration to Mingus - was on hand to receive the first medal. "The Conservatory Without Walls," as this event was titled by its organizer, music professor Willie Ruff, was part of the kickoff for a Duke Ellington Fellowship Program at Yale. Fifty years ago this October, Charles Mingus was one of about three dozen major figures in Black American music honored during a convocation at Yale University.
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