Date
Jazz Greats: Charles Mingus
Charles Mingus was a jazz bassist, composer, and band leader. He was born in
1922 in Arizona, and was raised mostly
in the Watts area of Los
Angeles, California.
When he was a child, his mother allowed
only church
music in the home, and gospel later became a
major
influence on the way he played and wrote music.
Mingus studied trombone, and later cello. He
was not able to play the cello professionally because
there were almost no African-American musicians in
classical music at the time. He began learning to play
the bass in the late 1930s.
He received a poor education and could not even
read music notation when he began playing. Still, he began
writing music in his teens. His music was far more complex than
might have been expected from a teenager, and he earned a
reputation as a bass prodigy. He toured with the legendary Louis Armstrong in 1943. By 1945, he was
recording with well-known Los Angeles bands. He began to receive
praise and acclaim, and played
with
the likes of Charlie Parker in the early 1950s. Mingus had a
terrible temper, though, and his on- and
offstage fights got him fired from several bands and groups.
In 1952, Mingus helped found a record label so he could play his music as he saw fit. He formed
the Jazz Workshop, a mid-sized ensemble of rotating musicians
. He pushed his musicians to reach new
heights of excellence and innovation. The decade
that followed was his most productive. He was a part
of ten record releases over the next ten years. He began
suffering from a degenerative muscular disease
in the 1970s and was unable to continue to play bass
or piano, but he composed and led bands right up
until his death at the age of 56.

3. What can you infer about Charles Mingus continuing to compose and lead bands right up until he
died?