Leon Lu - 2019 Near Scholar

2018-19 JOHN NEAR GRANT Recipient Soul of the Jazz Resistance: Charles Mingus and the Civil Rights Movement Leon Lu

Soul of the Jazz Resistance: Charles Mingus and the Civil Rights Movement

Leon Lu 2019 John Near Scholar Mentors: Ms. Meredith Cranston, Ms. Carol Green, Ms. Susan Nace April 12, 2019

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Charles Mingus: an activist, artist, and intellectual all bundled tightly together into the package of a jazz musician. In 1959, Mingus released one of his seminal musical works, titled Mingus Ah Um, which contained nine tracks with a total runtime of just over fifty minutes. 1 Despite the brevity of Ah Um, Mingus conveys a flurry of messages, emotion, and ideas in these fifty minutes that range from musically attacking a U.S. governor (“Fables of Faubus”) to engraving his devotion and admiration of one of his teachers and idols, Duke Ellington, in the permanent ink of music (“Open Letter to Duke”).

There lies a profound contrast between the topics of music and politics, however. In order to bridge the gap between the intricacies of Mingus’s music and the historical contexts during the time in which he composed these tunes, this essay contains both musical and historical analyses for each tune discussed. Several musical elements in the tracks of Ah Um are tied to the beginnings of the Civil Rights Movement in America as well as Mingus’s prevailing sentiments on the topics of racism and the black struggle for freedom, so the two types of analyses are often closely connected. An analysis of the music itself without historical information provides an incomplete picture of the man behind the music of Ah Um; conversely, solely a historical analysis fails to adequately explore the minutiae of Mingus’s music that made it so unique and effective in conveying his emotions and ideologies regarding civil rights.

Charles Mingus's 1959 album Ah Um reflected the pride in culture and hatred for the prejudice African-Americans experienced at the onset of the Civil Rights Movement through expression of musical forms and techniques. In “Open Letter to Duke,” “Self-Portrait in Three Colors,” “Better Git It in Your Soul,” and “Fables of Faubus,” Mingus reveals his views on the

Brian Priestley, Mingus: A Critical Biography, repr. ed. (London: Quartet Books, 1984), 107; Charles Mingus, Mingus Ah Um, performed by Booker Ervin, et al., produced by Teo Macero, Columbia, 1959, compact disc, recorded May 5, 1959.

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state of jazz and civil rights in America, which in turn reveal personal elements of his life that intertwine with his discourse on these topics.

“Open Letter to Duke”: Race, Jazz, Connections—Ellington and Mingus To examine Mingus’s musical style and ideas in the 1950s and 1960s, one must observe first the stylistic metamorphosis of one of his idols, Duke Ellington, as his musical career progressed through the big-band based Swing era of jazz into eras of change in Bebop and postBop. In Aesthetics of Resistance: Charles Mingus and the Civil Rights Movement, jazz researcher Mario Dunkel argues that “[Ellington] was a role model for Mingus in at least three different ways: as a musical pioneer, a writer of political music, and as a spiritual guide.” 2 As Ellington’s compositions shifted from prototypical swing towards a more reflective, raw writing style, his music began to mirror his views on the state of jazz and African-American life. In a tune titled “Open Letter to Duke” on Mingus Ah Um, Mingus pays tribute to Ellington’s guidance and career, but musical discrepancies between Ellington’s typical swinging style during the 1930s and the more political Ellington in the 1940s reveal Mingus’ displeasure with discrimination during the 1950s and 1960s, a period of racial change in America. 3 In the 1930s, Ellington appeared to cater disproportionately to the predominantly white audiences for whom he played, a phenomenon resulting from the socioeconomic situation jazz musicians found themselves in during the swing era. 4 Ellington wrote little politically charged or controversial music during this period of time out of fear of losing financial security, and a

Mario Dunkel, Aesthetics of Resistance: Charles Mingus and the Civil Rights Movement (Zurich: LIT-Verlag, 2012), 49.

2

Krin Gabbard, Better Git It in Your Soul: An Interpretive Biography of Charles Mingus (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2016), 35-36.

3

Christian McBride, interview by the author, Montclair State University Music Department, Montclair, NJ, August 8, 2018.

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combination of racial and financial factors forced Mingus to work as a mailman at the beginning of his solo career in the 1950s, since the revenue he accrued from teaching and composing was not sufficient to support himself and his first wife Celia. 5 The perils of financial insecurity in the profession of jazz and the power that large firms (like Columbia Records, the publisher of Ah Um) had over many jazz musicians—including Mingus—cannot be more strikingly illustrated than what Ellington says to Mingus during a 1962 recording date for Money Jungle: “If Columbia Records had spent that kind of money [on a Christmas Billboard Magazine full-page ad] on promoting me, I would still be with them today.” 6 As Ellington’s career progressed into the 1940s, he began to incorporate more elements of dissent against racial segregation in his music by changing the fundamental structures of his pieces. For example, in his 1952 album Ellington Uptown, the piece “A Tone Parallel to Harlem (The Harlem Suite)” is a symphonic work that represents a musical embodiment of Harlem, 7 and the listener views through a window Ellington’s Harlem: a passionate, dissonant, tense appeal towards resolving cultural conflict and the fight for African-American rights. In essence, Ellington saw the racial problems that pervaded society through the lens of the jazz clubs and streets of Harlem, and fittingly Ellington wrote jazz to reflect the injustice of prejudice, using music widely considered American to illustrate racism, an element of the underbelly of American society. Mingus combines the flavors of 1930s Ellington with 1950s Ellington and then infuses his own ideas into “Open Letter to Duke,” creating an amalgam of musical ideas that reveals Ellington’s influences on Mingus and, conversely, how Mingus expanded on Ellington’s legacy.

5

John Goodman, Mingus Speaks (Berkeley: Univ. California Press, 2013), 49.

6

Duke Ellington, Music Is My Mistress, repr. ed. (New York: Da Capo Press, 1990), 244.

7

Ellington, 189.

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When Mingus, through listening to the radio during his childhood, first interacted with Ellington’s music, he subjected himself to self-defenestration, claiming that his “first encounter with Ellington’s music was an epiphany that made him scream and almost jump [. . .] out of the balcony.” 8 As opposed to simply liking Ellington’s compositional style, Mingus expresses something much more profound in his reaction to first hearing Duke: that, at least to Mingus’s ears, there was something primal and turbulent about Ellington’s music, both in the earlier portions of Ellington’s career in jazz when his music was mostly based on audience-catering Swing as well as when his music became more political in tunes like “Tone Parallel to Harlem.” 9 Mingus infuses his own music with the essence of Ellington, which depends not as much on the style of music Ellington played as it does on the core feelings of pride in African-American culture and music that permeate all Ellington tunes, from “Mood Indigo,” a drifting slow blues, to Black, Brown & Beige, a musical suite representing the African-American experience throughout history. 10 It is this pride of his idol Ellington, and as a complement to pride, hatred for racism, that Mingus distills into his own musical creation process.

“I’ve always said that Mingus is like Ellington wearing a hoodie . . . [Mingus] is much more raw, much more street,” 11 jazz bassist and composer Christian McBride postulates. He supplements this analogy with a description of how Mingus draws chord voicings and musical texture almost directly from Ellington in some tunes, 12 an idea reinforced by the stylistic choices

8

Nat Hentoff, Jazz Life (London: Peter Davies, 1962.), 164.

9

Priestley, Mingus: A Critical Biography, 107.

10

Ellington, Music is My Mistress, 143.

11

McBride, Interview by the author.

12

McBride, Interview by the author.

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Mingus makes in “Open Letter to Duke.” The tune begins with a fast, bright swing section featuring a breezy saxophone line backed by drums, piano, and bass, somewhat reminiscent of Ellington’s swinging big band charts like “Take the ‘A’ Train.” 13 However, the instrumentation in “Open Letter” more closely resembles that of a Bebop-era combo, similar to those Mingus experienced during the beginning of his musical career. 14 In addition, the absence of a shout chorus in “Open Letter” marks a significant deviation from Ellington’s earlier works. Instead, the initial swing section leads into a drum solo, followed by a Latin section, followed by a ballad section. 15,16 These wild shifts in color and tempo reveal a distinct tension and discomfort in “Open Letter”—an example of the rawness that McBride argues differentiates Mingus from Ellington. Whereas Ellington’s protests against prejudice relied mostly on translations of life into music, Mingus’s music embodies prejudice, and within the soul of Mingus’s music lay the turmoil of racial prejudice in America. As evidenced by the succession of changing moods in “Open Letter,” Mingus’s advocacy for civil rights was intrinsic to his perception of the world itself, and it is especially notable that his hatred for prejudice rises to the surface in a tribute to Ellington, someone who he deeply respects and looks up to as a model for musical creation. 17 Interestingly, after many movements between unusual modalities, keys, and tempi, “Open Letter” culminates in the key of B-flat, one that many jazz tunes were set in during the Swing era when Ellington first rose to fame. 18 Mingus’s return to B-flat could represent a completion of his 13

Mingus, “Open Letter to Duke” from Mingus Ah Um.

14

Priestley, Mingus: A Critical Biography, 102.

Charles Mingus, "Open Letter to Duke," Box 19 Folder 4, Charles Mingus Rare Materials Archive, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 15

16

Mingus, “Open Letter to Duke” from Mingus Ah Um.

17

Charles Mingus, Beneath the Underdog (Edinburgh: Canongate, 2011), 85.

18

Mingus, “Open Letter to Duke” from Mingus Ah Um.

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picture of Ellington as a man who outwardly conformed but inwardly dissented from cultural norms, and the beginning and the end of “Open Letter” both reflect the stereotypical, swinging Ellington that jazz audiences overwhelmingly identify with when asked about Ellington.

However, the complete body of “Open Letter” presents a much more passionate and reflective Ellington, and Mingus emphasizes the importance of this facet of Ellington to a greater extent than he does the crowd-pleasing, bandleading Ellington.

“Self-Portrait in Three Colors:” Three Versions of Mingus 19 Mingus’s life was fraught with antagonism between African Americans and white Americans, an ongoing battle that began in his early life and extended throughout his musical career. In “Self-Portrait in Three Colors” on his album Mingus Ah Um, he reflects on deeply personal events, revealing the nature of his individual experiences with racism. Of specific interest in this discussion is the racial situation in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles during the late-1920s and early-1930s, where Mingus spent much of his childhood and adolescence.

According to a 1994 article from the Los Angeles Times detailing an overview of the history of Watts, the city “has suffered from poverty, racism and squalid living conditions” since the early 1920s, when African-Americans moved to Watts in increasing numbers as an entry point to Los Angeles and began to clash with the Latino and white populations there. 20 In an environment already riddled with racial conflict, Mingus possessed black, white, and Chinese heritage, isolating himself from virtually every racial group in Watts and positioning him as a likely target

19

Mingus, 1.

Robert J. Lopez, "City Times Cover Story: Watts: It Has Been a Battleground for Gutter Politics, an Easy Source for Exploitable Labor and Ground Zero for a Racial Explosion. Today, Watts Remains in the Grip of Its Troubled Past, the Place That Has 'Always Been Left Behind.,'" Los Angeles Times, last modified July 17, 1994, accessed January 14, 2019, http://articles.latimes.com/1994-07-17/news/ci-16690_1_watts-towers-watts-mexican-americanwatts-branch.

20

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for racist sentiment. 21 According to his autobiography Beneath the Underdog, Mingus details his experiences with the “pecking order like any average American community of working Negroes still too busy slaving as free men” during his formative years in Watts. 22 He suffered constant harassment for his mixed ancestry, and he emphasizes that he “dig[s] minds, inside and out,” 23 as opposed to focusing on their color. In Self-Portrait in Three Colors, however, Mingus’ criticism of civil rights acts as a background for the main musical theme: a pensive self-reflection on three incarnations of Mingus. 24 The piece begins with a sparse, free piano solo intro that solely consists of chords and leads to a flowing, whispering alto saxophone playing the melodic line.

The melody consists of intertwining sets of eighth-note pairs and triplets, which creates rhythmic variation characteristic of other Mingus compositions as well as a meandering feel that runs throughout the tune as other musical voices fade in and out to create different combinations of tone color. 25 Jazz researcher Krin Gabbard suggests in his interpretive biography of Mingus that one possible interpretation of the three repetitions of the composed melodic line for Self-Portrait in Three Colors is that they represent the three facets of Mingus’ personality as alluded to in his autobiography Beneath the Underdog and it appears significant that the three voices of the saxophone, trumpet, and trombone oscillate between consonance and dissonance as the tune progresses. 26

21

Dunkel, Aesthetics of Resistance, 6.

22

Charles Mingus, Beneath the Underdog, 65.

23

Mingus, 66.

24

Mingus, 1.

Charles Mingus, "Better Git It in Your Soul," Box 2 Folder 13, Charles Mingus Rare Materials Archive, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; Mingus, "Open Letter."

25

26

Gabbard, Better Git It in Your Soul, 148.

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Mingus categorizes the three facets of his personality by personifying each facet as a man, where he embodies each man at different times in his life: “the man who watches and waits, the man who attacks because he’s afraid, and the man who wants to trust and love but retreats each time he finds himself betrayed.” 27 Notably, two-thirds of Mingus lives in a world of dichotomies, while the other third is driven by careful observation and most importantly, waiting.

In a sense, in order to effectively express his feelings towards the oppression and prejudice against African-Americans, Mingus was forced to conquer the portion of himself that wished to act as merely a bystander. The other two-thirds of the man that Mingus describes himself as in “Self-Portrait in Three Colors” and his autobiography motivates his choice to transition from a passive to an active state in civil rights resistance, despite the potential repercussions of his personal revolution against prejudice. Interestingly, the internal struggle that Mingus underwent is not unlike the struggles that civil rights activists and representatives overcame to bring about greater racial equality between blacks and whites. For example, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was a major organization that assisted in the battle for public school desegregation in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. 28 Both activists and Mingus had to first overcome their doubts of fear and betrayal in order to supplant the dominance of a perpetual state of waiting with a state that requires urgency and action, and Mingus’s three versions of himself represent the battles that occurred in the minds of both himself and the wider activist community prior to the beginning of the American Civil Rights Movement.

27

Charles Mingus, Beneath the Underdog, 1.

28

Carson, "American Civil."

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To understand the trimodality that Mingus describes at the beginning of his autobiography, it is imperative to analyze noted NAACP founder and civil rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois’s concept of double consciousness. Du Bois argues that the black man suffers so deeply from the racism of whites that he begins to “measure [his] soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.” 29 Mingus subscribed to the idea of internal conflict between American and African ideals that Du Bois mentions, 30 but his mixed heritage exacerbated this conflict further during his childhood. In addition to his battles against white racism, Mingus was also forced to contend with the prejudice of blacks, since he was “not light enough to belong to the almost-white elite and not dark enough to belong with the beautiful elegant blacks.” 31 Nobody ever truly accepted him, an amalgam of ethnicities, and the Mingus he portrayed in “Self-Portrait” drifts in a similarly clouded and ambiguous sea, whose facets of personality occasionally come to musical agreement but often remain disconnected and distant.

While animosity towards white racism was prevalent among African-Americans in the 1950s and 1960s, a portion of the black jazz audience also displayed aversion towards politically charged music. 32 Heard through a political lens, Mingus’ “Self-Portrait” paradoxically displays the inherently dangerous nature of rebelling against the white social paradigm in conjunction with the emergence of moments of unification against prejudice in the African-American community. Similar to how Mingus’ second “man” attacks because he’s afraid, Mingus portrays the consolidation of black society in America as a result of the emotions African-Americans

W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (1903; reprint, New York: Knopf, 1993), 9. quoted in Krin Gabbard, Better Git It in Your Soul, 149.

29

30

Du Bois, 9.

31

Charles Mingus, Beneath the Underdog, 65.

32

McBride, interview by the author.

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experienced because of white racism. Even when this version of Mingus prepares to attack, the first version of Mingus wants to wait even longer. Despite the ripeness of the Civil Rights Movement in America, 33 Mingus reveals that there still remained, however infinitesimally, a portion of the African-American psyche that somehow felt that it was not yet time for the movement to occur. Clashes such as this disagreement between Mingus’s different sides shaped his “Self-Portrait,” and the musical introspection that Mingus depicts in this tune reveals his struggles within himself in a quest to solidify his stance against black prejudice while shaking away the grip of white societal norms in America.

“Better Git It in Your Soul:” A Return to African-American Musical Roots In contrast with “Self-Portrait in Three Colors” and “Open Letter to Duke,” where Mingus expresses individual sentiments about his personal relationships and their connections to civil rights, the track “Better Git It in Your Soul” in Mingus Ah Um finds Mingus expressing a more universal version of African-American pride, calling on traditional and spiritual elements of African-American music in the tune’s Gospel and Blues-influenced style. Notably, “Better Git It in Your Soul” is written in a triple meter (6/8), but the vivace speed at which the number is performed in Ah Um creates the illusion of a medium cut-time groove where the first and fourth beats of each 6/8 measure are emphasized and all other beats appear muted. 34 In addition to the peculiar time signature and rhythms of this tune, a call-and-response line between the bass and the rest of the band presents itself at the beginning of the tune, with the bass playing a sequence of notes in the F blues scale thrice in succession and the band responding with the main melodic line of the tune, which is in d minor—the relative minor of F. Both cut-time rhythms and call-

33

Priestley, Mingus: A Critical Biography, 111.

34

Mingus, “Better Git It in Your Soul” from Mingus Ah Um.

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and-response lines (usually between the preacher or leader and the congregation) are prominent staples of gospel tunes that originated in America as black church music, and the emotional nature of Gospel is reflected by Mingus with various shouts, moans, and harmonies between the voices of the saxophones and brass. 35 Listening carefully to the main melody, the sax lines resemble the different vocal parts of members of a gospel choir. Changing harmonies that shift between minor, major, and dominant reflect the improvisational nature of gospel singing, as each voice fluctuates for a while before landing on a tonic note. 36 As McBride notes, “Mingus was one of the few musicians who, as modern jazz started to become more esoteric, [he] never, ever, ever got away from the blues.” 37 This attachment to the Blues is especially present in “Better Git It in Your Soul,” and particularly notable is Mingus’s liberal usage of the flatted fifth in the tune, a staple of Blues music that presents itself in everything from the piece’s bass introduction to its saxophone melody to its piano comping. 38 In a period of time when jazz music became more and more harmonically experimental and various instrumentalists classified their own playing styles as avant-garde Jazz, Mingus’ own music paradoxically drew from the jazz tradition in America. 39 In fact, in an “Open Letter to the Avant Garde,” Mingus criticizes avant-garde musicians as those who “can’t play a straight melody and solo on it with the approximate changes, with any approximate changes.” 40 Mingus makes it Robert Darden, "A History of Gospel Music," interview by Michele Norris, NPR Music, last modified December 17, 2004, accessed January 21, 2019, https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4233793.

35

36

Mingus, “Better Git It in Your Soul” from Mingus Ah Um.

37

McBride, interview by the author.

38

Mingus, Mingus Ah Um.

Charles Mingus, "An Open Letter to the Avant Garde," June 1973, Charles Mingus Rare Materials Archive, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 39

40

Mingus, “Open Letter to the Avant Garde.”

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clear that he did not consider many musicians who claim an avant-garde style as jazz musicians.

He appears to harbor a certain sense of disdain for people who have no grasp of the fundamentals of Jazz and yet view themselves as pioneers of jazz music. However, Mingus’ music certainly does not adhere completely to traditional jazz style either, so the question naturally arises: to what extent did Mingus explore the avant-garde in his music, and from where does he draw his criticism for the avant-garde?

To answer this question, “Better Git It in Your Soul” can be analyzed as an example of Mingus’s experiments with new techniques, including shifting harmonic structure and incorporating multiple moods into a single tune. Simultaneously, the tune also retains elements of Mingus’s perceptions of the fundamental nature of jazz, which include its importance as an artform originally passed down through the African-American traditions of soul and gospel. In essence, one possible reason that Mingus emphasized the necessity of the blues in his music was that to him, jazz without the blues was a type of music that could not be classified as truly jazz.

Inherently, elements of civil rights also come into play here, as this view of Jazz implies that Mingus saw Jazz as an African-American genre of music, one that the white community could not hope to fully understand. In response to John S. Wilson, a white critic present at one of his performances at Lincoln Center who claimed that Mingus’ music lacked originality, Mingus asserted that “the black people know something you don’t about music.” 41 This retort substantiates the idea that Mingus felt that Jazz was black music, and his choice to include so many elements of the jazz tradition (and consequently elements of the blues and gospel) in “Better Git It in Your Soul” reflects his love and appreciation for the African-American musical tradition.

41

Charles Mingus, "Charles Mingus Answers John S. Wilson of the N.Y. Times," Changes (New York), 1972, 2.

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In addition, Mingus’ argument that the white man has difficulty understanding real jazz can be interpreted as a microcosm for his criticism of the interactions and relationships between the whites and blacks of America, where whites unjustly hold power over blacks without actually understanding the history and culture of African-Americans. His inclusion of the Blues scale and gospel-style rhythms in “Better Git It in Your Soul” reflect an inherent unwillingness to allow white culture to permeate or influence jazz, instead seizing upon the remnants of AfricanAmerican musical ideas to form bases for his music in a society dominated by whites. Even though some of Mingus’ contemporaries were “more atonal and farther out or weird or avantgarde,” 42 Mingus’ music in the 1950s remained firmly rooted in the American—or rather African-American, in Mingus’ terms—tradition of jazz.

The influences of Blues and Gospel on “Better Git It in Your Soul” are key towards recognizing the effects of these two musical styles on Mingus’ 1950s and 1960s compositions, but equally important is the presence of innovative ideas from Mingus in this particular piece.

While Mingus criticizes people who pose as avant-garde musicians as those who do not possess the skills to perform in a more traditional jazz setting, “Better Git It in Your Soul” contains several aspects that are unfamiliar to the typical jazz audience, including the presence of shouts of “oh yeah!” and other vocal ad-libs that become more and more incoherent as the tune progresses. 43 Here, Mingus modifies the tradition of gospel-based vocals in order to better suit his jazz-based tune, and it is notable that Mingus emphasizes a retention of the fundamental character of Gospel in his revisiting of this element of the African-American musical tradition.

Though Mingus represents a member of the jazz community, “Better Git It in Your Soul,” along

42

Goodman, Mingus Speaks, 14.

43

Mingus, “Better Git It in Your Soul” from Mingus Ah Um.

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with other Mingus compositions, draws from a reservoir of pride for black culture that Mingus internally possesses, an aspect of his music that transcends the jazz audience in order to communicate more widely his connections to the African-American community as a whole.

“Fables of Faubus:” Politics Through Music and Musical Activism No discussion of Mingus’ music in a political context would be complete without “Fables of Faubus,” a tune that represents one of Mingus’ most overt, sharp attacks against AfricanAmerican prejudice. As the title suggests, “Fables of Faubus” contained music and lyrics that expressly criticized governor of Arkansas Orval Faubus’ decision in September 1957 to prevent the integration of nine black students into the white-only Little Rock High School. 44 The lyrics to “Fables of Faubus” were so politically controversial that Columbia Records refused to publish them. 45 They run as follows: Charles Mingus and Dannie Richmond: Oh Lord, don’t let them shoot us!

Oh Lord, don’t let them stab us!

Oh Lord, don’t let ‘em tar and feather us!

Oh Lord, no more swastikas!

Oh Lord, no more Ku Klux Klan!

Mingus: Name me someone who’s ridiculous, Dannie.

Richmond: Governor Faubus!

Mingus: Why is he so sick and ridiculous?

Richmond: He won’t permit integrated schools.

Mingus: Then he’s a fool!

Together: Boo! Nazi Fascist supremists! Boo! Ku Klux Klan (with your evil plan). 46 From Mingus’ perspective, the actions of Faubus resemble what white supremacist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and the Nazi Party historically promoted. This reveals a fundamental aspect

44

Priestley, Mingus: A Critical Biography, 86-87.

45

Charles Mingus, "Fables of Faubus," Box 7 Folder 2, Charles Mingus Rare Materials Archive, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 46

Mingus, Fakebook 47, quoted in Dunkel, Aesthetics of Resistance, 19-20.

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of Mingus’ views on racial prejudice: that the racial tension between the blacks and whites of America escalated to a point where African-Americans were prepared to retaliate against their white oppressors. By openly criticizing Faubus Mingus poses a challenge to the social norms of white-dominated America. He refuses to remain compliant with the demands and segregation of whites, a sentiment that parallels the onset of the Civil Rights Movement in America when he published Mingus Ah Um. 47 According to Mingus’ drummer Dannie Richmond, the lyrics to “Fables of Faubus” were composed during live performance, as they “were playing [the song] one night and the line, ‘Tell me someone who’s ridiculous,’ just fell right in with the original [musical] line.” 48 The spontaneous nature of the origin of this tune’s lyrics implies a certain depth to Mingus’ retaliation against Faubus’ refusal to integrate Little Rock High School. In a broader sense, Mingus’ criticism of racism was something that he possessed innately, reflected naturally in his music as outbursts of emotion and anti-discrimination ideals that permeated his being and inspired his bandmates.

Curiously, as mentioned in the previous paragraph, Mingus’ publishing label in 1959, Columbia Records, omitted the lyrics to “Fables of Faubus” in their production of the first version of Mingus Ah Um, choosing instead to include only the music that Mingus composed for his diatribe against Faubus. 49 Christian McBride provides a possible explanation to Columbia Records’ decision: “Columbia Records was a major company [in the 1950s and 1960s]. They were putting out soundtracks from Leonard Bernstein, Tony Bennett, Dave Brubeck. They

47

Dunkel, 68.

48 Dannie Richmond, Letters to Roger Rowland, 12 July ‘1967’ [1970] quoted in Priestley, Mingus: A Critical Biography, 87.

49

Mingus, “Fables of Faubus” from Mingus Ah Um.

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weren’t about to put overt messages of civil rights on their albums.” 50 Yet, as McBride also points out, the fearlessness Mingus displays as a black man calling out Orval Faubus directly in his music attests to his willingness to speak strongly against the injustices he felt were prevalent in American society at the time. 51 This demonstration of active resistance present in Mingus’ “Fables of Faubus” also parallels the transitioning of the struggle for African-American civil rights into a period of greater activism in the late 1950s and 1960s, with activists such as Rosa Parks leading the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1956 in direct protest against racial segregation. 52 As the Civil Rights Movement began to pick up steam in the late 1950s, Mingus’ release of “Fables of Faubus” represented an alignment with the sentiments of the Civil Rights Movement, tying together his political and musical ideas into a piece that was firmly rooted in the present, attacking the state of affairs present in America that prevented the equal treatment of blacks and whites.

The musical structure of “Fables of Faubus” is equally significant to Mingus’ expression on the tune, and without the lyrics on the Columbia Records publication of Ah Um, one must look to the instrumentals in order to decipher the meanings of the tune. From an original holograph of “Fables of Faubus,” two aspects of the piece jump out immediately as points of interest: the extended introduction and the shifting of styles as the tune progresses. 53

50

McBride, interview by the author.

51

McBride, interview by the author.

Clayborne Carson, "American Civil Rights Movement," Encyclopedia Britannica High School Edition, last modified December 10, 2018, https://www.britannica.com/event/American-civil-rights-movement/Montgomerybus-boycott-to-the-Voting-Rights-Act. 52

53

Mingus, "Fables of Faubus." See appendix A for lead sheet excerpts.

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“Fables of Faubus” begins with a slow, sarcastic introduction that consists of long, slurred scoops from the saxophones and trombones that lasts for a full fifteen seconds. 54 Also present at the beginning of the piece is a leering, semi-walking bass line that stumbles off-rhythm every couple of beats, reminiscent of the gait of a clumsy, slow-witted animal. Perhaps one interpretation of this curious introduction revolves around the idea that this prelude to the main refrains of “Fables of Faubus” was a musical caricature of Orval Faubus—indeed, the mockingly slow and dull lines appear to closely reflect Mingus’s dim view of Faubus. Compared to the other tunes in Mingus Ah Um, “Fables of Faubus” represents the sole tune that has all of the brass play the same line in unison as an introduction, which particularly emphasizes the importance that Mingus placed on these first few lines of the tune. 55 In addition to the beginning of “Fables of Faubus,” the stylistic shifts in the tune act paradoxically; individually, each section of “Fables” is coherent in musical style, but collectively, the tune shifts between completely different styles so quickly that a picture of musical incoherence is formed. 56 The question of what Mingus attempts to express through this flurry of changing musical styles has an inconclusive answer, though one interpretation draws on McBride’s earlier idea that Mingus’ music is deeply rooted in the African-American musical tradition. 57 According to this stance, Mingus might have included blues, double-time, and swing forms in “Fables of Faubus” in order to express his faithfulness to elements of the jazz tradition,

54

Mingus, “Fables of Faubus” from Mingus Ah Um.

55

Mingus, “Fables of Faubus” from Mingus Ah Um.

56

Mingus, “Fables of Faubus” from Mingus Ah Um.

57

McBride, interview by the author.

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while also including more experimentalist musical ideas such as the airy saxophone solo line after the A melody section. 58 Another peculiar aspect of Mingus’ “Fables of Faubus” is the sheer tension present in the tune. Unlike any other track on Ah Um, there are several moments in “Fables” where the musical frame is completely thrown out the window, to be replaced with phrases of barely concealed emotion. The trombone player, Jimmy Knepper, deviates completely from the written score while playing behind the aforementioned saxophone solo and begins to play exaggerated, drooping falls that are nowhere near the key of the tune. 59 However, it is these outbursts that make “Fables of Faubus” truly effective in conveying its anti-racism message. As Dunkel posits, “If the tactics of the Ku Klux Klan and other racists are to scare people in order to silence them, then this song shows them and anyone else that they are failing miserably.” 60 In “Fables of Faubus,” the thinness of the veil—or in this case, Columbia’s refusal to publish the lyrics to the tune—that masks the full meaning of Mingus’ composition renders itself trivial, as even without any voices, the music itself speaks volumes about the oppressiveness Mingus felt from the racist, white-dominated American society, simply utilizing Orval Faubus as a musical scapegoat and figurehead for his attack on racism.

Mingus’ music in Ah Um was heavily impacted by his views on civil rights, and he achieved the difficult task of conveying through his music aspects of his personality that transcended simply music to include the personal, political, and even spiritual. Despite the dizzyingly complex nature of Mingus’ compositions in Ah Um, few efforts have been made to

58

Mingus, “Fables of Faubus” from Mingus Ah Um.

59

Gabbard, Better Git It in Your Soul, 63; Mingus, “Fables of Faubus.”

60

Dunkel, Aesthetics of Resistance, 23.

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unpack the nature of Mingus’ interactions with the atmosphere and events of the 1950s and 1960s, an aspect of Mingus’ character revealed in Ah Um that is central towards the observer’s understanding of both Mingus’ ideologies and motivations.

There is much more to explore about Mingus’ life and career, whether it be from a political, musical, or historical lens. Describing the accomplishments and work of a man so deeply conflicted within himself naturally induces an air of mystery and ambiguity, but perhaps the questions surrounding Mingus are of greater importance than the facts that are known about him. As a pioneer in jazz rooted in long line of tradition, and in his own right a musical trailblazer, Mingus was a musical icon unique in the ways that he fought for the ideals he championed, using music as a tool to fuse together activism and resistance against racial prejudice.

It is impossible to illustrate a complete version of Mingus solely with words. His music truly speaks louder than what anyone might write about him in praise or in critique, and without listening to some of Mingus’ tunes it is difficult to adequately express the extent to which Mingus successfully channeled his being into his music. For the reader to gain a better understanding of Mingus’s music, scores of Mingus’ tunes, when available, and audio recordings of the pieces as performed on the 1959 recording of Ah Um are provided in the appendix.

When the author first heard one of Mingus’ compositions (“Fables of Faubus”), he was struck by the sheer power of Mingus’ music and the enormous amount of passion that Mingus and his small combos of instrumentalists conveyed within the compact space of five to ten minutes of sound. He felt transported to Mingus’ era, empathizing with Mingus’ struggles and thoughts on culture, society, and music. The author encourages the reader to listen to a Mingus track from Ah Um, experiencing firsthand the raw, unbridled emotion present throughout the

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album, and he hopes that the readers will also relate with Mingus’ story after hearing his music.

Mingus Ah Um? Or Mingus I Am?

Appendix A: Musical Manuscripts

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Figure 1. Excerpt from Charles Mingus’s lead sheet (1959) of “Fables of Faubus.”

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Figure 2. Excerpt from Charles Mingus’s lead sheet (1959) of “Open Letter to Duke.”

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Figure 3. Excerpt from Charles Mingus’s lead sheet and blowing chorus (1959) of “Better Git It in Your Soul.”

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Appendix B: Personal Items

Figure 1. Charles Mingus (1973) and an article on his perceptions of avant-garde jazz.

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Figure 2. Front and back of a Charles Mingus traffic citation (1958) that he wrote various messages on.

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Bibliography Carson, Clayborne. "American Civil Rights Movement." Encyclopedia Britannica High School Edition. Last modified December 10, 2018. https://www.britannica.com/event/Americancivil-rights-movement/Montgomery-bus-boycott-to-the-Voting-Rights-Act. This primer for the American civil rights movement notes various events and figures during the 1950s and 1960s in America that pertain to civil rights activism, particularly for African-Americans. Individuals including Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., and W.E.B. Du Bois are discussed, and prominent events such as the Greensboro lunch counter sit-ins and the Montgomery Bus Boycotts are touched upon. This document serves as a useful guide for connecting civil rights with Mingus's compositions and provides an effective chronological basis for the paper as a whole.

Darden, Robert. "A History of Gospel Music." Interview by Michele Norris. NPR Music. Last modified December 17, 2004. Accessed January 21, 2019. https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4233793.

This interview by NPR Music's Michele Norris of Baylor University Professor and gospel researcher Robert Darden provides a primer on understanding gospel music's history and typical forms. Particularly, this resource complements Krin Gabbard's interpretative biography on Mingus as well as Mingus's composition "Better Git It in Your Soul" as a discussion that centers on the connections between the music and history of gospel.

Dunkel, Mario. Aesthetics of Resistance: Charles Mingus and the Civil Rights Movement.

Zurich: LIT-Verlag, 2012.

Mario Dunkel is a professor of musical history at TU Dortmund in Germany, and his research focuses upon jazz music and its relations to culture. His book Aesthetics of Resistance: Charles Mingus and the Civil Rights Movement details the interactions between Mingus's music and various social phenomenon that occurred in the 1950s and 1960s, including the connections between Mingus and the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Specifically, this book is useful because it provides analysis on how jazz music is not merely a means of protest but rather a whole ideology and representation of cultural ideas in African-American history.

Ellington, Duke. Music Is My Mistress. Repr. ed. New York: Da Capo Press, 1990.

Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington was a bandleader, arranger, pianist, and composer who rose to fame during the swing era of jazz and had a profound influence on Mingus during his adolescence, both musically and personally. His memoir Music Is My Mistress details information about several of his most notable works, including "A Tone Parallel to Harlem (The Harlem Suite)" in his 1952 publication Ellington Uptown, which represents a deviation from traditional swing-era compositions of his. This source provides a baseline to analyze Ellington's connections with Mingus and the influences he had on Mingus's compositional style and ideas.

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Gabbard, Krin. Better Git It in Your Soul: An Interpretive Biography of Charles Mingus.

Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2016.

Krin Gabbard is a professor of comparative literature and English at the SUNY Stony Brook. He has published a variety of works on ethnicity in jazz, and his most recent publication Better Git It in Your Soul: An Interpretive Biography of Charles Mingus provides an outside perspective on the life and music of Charles Mingus. Gabbard's focus on analyzing Mingus's introspection and push to craft his own racial identity is of particular importance in this interpretive biography, and this book's connections with Mingus's autobiography Beneath the Underdog assist readers in comparing Gabbard's and Mingus's biographies.

Goodman, John. Mingus Speaks. Berkeley: Univ. California Press, 2013.

John Goodman has a Ph. D. from the University of Chicago and the University of Wisconsin, and he has covered jazz, classical and rock music for nine years. In the set of interviews with Charles Mingus that make up Mingus Speaks, Goodman records everything from Mingus's personal and romantic life to how he defines his own music.

Split into sections that are based on common themes, this book provides further insight into Mingus's life and musical expressions of civil rights, supplementing his autobiography Beneath the Underdog with additional primary information.

Hentoff, Nat. Jazz Life. London: Peter Davies, 1962.

Nat Hentoff was a jazz critic for United Media, and his book Jazz Life details the sceneries and atmospheres of the jazz world in the 1950s and 1960s. The section on Mingus in Jazz Life provides an alternative, music-based biography of Mingus when compared to Priestley's biography or Gabbard's interpretative biography, and much of Jazz Life is written from the perspective of the jazz musician as opposed to that of the historian. The novel is useful in setting the scene for understanding Mingus's world from a musical perspective.

Lopez, Robert J. "City Times Cover Story: Watts: It Has Been a Battleground for Gutter Politics, an Easy Source for Exploitable Labor and Ground Zero for a Racial Explosion. Today, Watts Remains in the Grip of Its Troubled Past, the Place That Has 'Always Been Left Behind.'" Los Angeles Times. Last modified July 17, 1994. Accessed January 14, 2019. http://articles.latimes.com/1994-07-17/news/ci-16690_1_watts-towers-watts-mexicanamerican-watts-branch.

This article by the Los Angeles City Times's reporter Robert J. Lopez details the history of Watts, from its beginnings as a city dominated by conflicting white authorities to the influx of African-Americans, Latinos, and other ethnic minorities in the 1930s, encompassing the time that Mingus lived there during his childhood. With the information that Lopez's article provides on Watts, connections can be made with Mingus's own experience in Watts, particularly encounters involving racism and ethnic conflict that Mingus experienced in his adolescence as described in his autobiography Beneath the Underdog.

McBride, Christian. Interview by the author. Montclair State University Music Department, Montclair, NJ. August 8, 2018.

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Christian McBride is a world-acclaimed bassist who performs with the eponymous McBride Trio. This interview with Mr. McBride was conducted in order for me to gain a better understanding of the musical dynamics during the 1950s and 1960s in America, particularly regarding Mingus's views on civil rights and how these views connect to his compositional styles during this period. Mr. McBride's insights provide a wealth of information on how Mingus interacted with his contemporaries and especially on the process of the development of Mingus's musical style.

Mingus, Charles. Beneath the Underdog. Edinburgh: Canongate, 2011.

Charles Mingus was a prominent jazz bassist and composer during the advent of the Civil Rights Revolution in 1960s America. His autobiography Beneath The Underdog represents a primary source in which he tells readers of his childhood in Watts, interactions with other famous musicians at the time, and his rise to fame as a bassist.

This piece is important since it reveals Mingus's own experiences and perceptions of the world around him, facilitating greater understanding of his state of mind during the time he composed Ah Um. Mingus's unique character and voice in this autobiography allow readers a glimpse into his viewpoints on racism in the United States in the 1950s and 60s.

———. "Better Git It in Your Soul." Box 2 Folder 13. Charles Mingus Rare Materials Archive.

Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. This manuscript is a direct transcription of the holograph (original music score) of Mingus's composition "Better Get It in Your Soul". It provides avenues for musical analysis of the piece by displaying the tune when it was originally published, and it is easier to decipher than the holograph itself since it is printed as opposed to handwritten.

———. "Charles Mingus Answers John S. Wilson of the N.Y. Times." Changes (New York), 1972.

John Wilson was a music critic who worked for the New York Times, and Mingus responds heatedly to Wilson's criticisms of one of his performances in this article. In this article, Mingus's argument incorporates elements of civil rights, avant-garde vs. tradition, understanding jazz and his music, and the misguiding nature of the press, and it is evidence of Mingus's reputation as someone who was quick to anger about ideas that he was passionate about.

———. "Fables of Faubus." Box 7 Folder 2. Charles Mingus Rare Materials Archive. Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. This manuscript of "Fables of Faubus" contains the general structure and format of the tune as penned initially by Mingus. It also contains the main rhyming lines of the vocal chorus, which was unpublished in the first rendition of the tune in Mingus Ah Um but was included in later recordings of the piece. The manuscript provides a foundation for musical analysis of the tune and how it might connect to Mingus's perceptions on civil rights.

———. Memorandum, October 23, 1958. Box 81. Charles Mingus Rare Materials Archive.

Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

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Charles Mingus wrote an incendiary, challenging set of statements on the flip side of a traffic citation that he received, in response to the New York Police Department's command that he appear in court for the violation. The statement is an example of the explosive, passionate individual that Mingus embodied, and it serves as evidence for his myriad of forays into both jazz and other pursuits. The traffic ticket will be included in the appendices for the viewing of interested readers.

———. Mingus Ah Um. Performed by Booker Ervin, John Handy, Shafi Hadi, Willie Dennis, Jimmy Knepper, Horace Parlan, and Dannie Richmond. Produced by Teo Macero.

Columbia, 1959, compact disc. Recorded May 5, 1959.

The original recording of Mingus Ah Um provides a primary source as a basis for musical analysis of tunes in the album. The version of Mingus Ah Um published by Columbia Records is particularly relevant since it was the first version of the album, and some of Mingus's written lyrics were omitted by Columbia Records due to their controversial nature.

———. "Open Letter to Duke." Box 19 Folder 4. Charles Mingus Rare Materials Archive.

Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. This is a holograph, or original copy of Mingus's composition "Open Letter to Duke". It is especially useful in conducting musical analysis, as it is a primary, reputable source that can be used as a basis for analyzing chord structure, and it reveals some of Mingus's intent in creating "Open Letter to Duke".

———. "An Open Letter to the Avant Garde." June 1973. Charles Mingus Rare Materials Archive. Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. From the Library of Congress's Mingus Rare Materials Archive, Mingus's "Open Letter to the Avant Garde" reveals his position on avant-garde music, written at a time when more and more musicians sold themselves as "avant-garde" for financial and publicity reasons. From Mingus's dim view of avant-garde players posing as jazz instrumentalists as described in the article, a relationship can be drawn between Mingus's usage of older elements of jazz music in his own innovative music and his criticism of those who deviate too far from the tradition of jazz.

Priestley, Brian. Mingus: A Critical Biography. Repr. ed. London: Quartet Books, 1984.

Brian Priestley is an accomplished pianist and music arranger who was a broadcaster for BBC and London Jazz FM and worked with the National Youth Jazz Orchestra (UK). He has written biographies for multiple members of the jazz community, including John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, and Mingus. This critical biography of Mingus presents a musical analysis of Mingus's rise to fame as well as the various factors (including the question of avant-garde versus tradition and Mingus's stance on the political situation in 1950s-1960s America) that appear in his music. This source is particularly useful since it provides a concrete, factual basis on which further investigation into Mingus's motives for his music can be conducted, describes Mingus's personality along with his work itself, and contains numerous musical examples and unusual chorus structures drawn from Mingus's music in its A and B appendices.

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