Double Bass and Composition | 1922-1979

Charles Mingus was raised in Watts, Los Angeles in a household where his stepmother permitted only church music, and heard Duke Ellington for the first time through his father's crystal set in secret. He moved from trombone and cello to double bass in high school, studied with Red Callender and former New York Philharmonic bassist Herman Reinshagen, and began composing under Lloyd Reese. He played with Louis Armstrong and Lionel Hampton before his 1953 stint with Duke Ellington ended when Ellington fired him after an altercation with trombonist Juan Tizol. He co-founded Debut Records with Celia Mingus and Max Roach in 1952 and the Jazz Workshop in 1955, and spent the following decade recording at a rate that produced some thirty albums across Debut, Atlantic, Columbia, Candid, United Artists and Impulse!, each one built on the Jazz Workshop's working method of dictated composition and collective improvisation rather than written charts. The Atlantic albums of the late 1950s and early 1960s, particularly "Blues and Roots" (1959), "Mingus Ah Um" (1959) and "Oh Yeah" (1962), reached across gospel, blues and bebop simultaneously. "The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady" (Impulse!, 1963), composed as a suite and recorded with Bob Hammer's orchestrations, is widely regarded as his masterwork. Eric Dolphy appeared on the most adventurous sessions of the early 1960s; Don Pullen and George Adams powered the final great quintet through the 1975 Atlantic sessions. Mingus died on January 5, 1979, in Cuernavaca, Mexico, aged 56.