MP3 Exclusives New Arrivals   Alt-Country Alternative Blues Electronic Jambands Jazz Metal Pop Punk R&B Rap/Hip Hop Reggae Rock   Top Downloads Features Archive Contests Control Panel MUSICBLITZ Alert!   METALBLITZ REGGAEBLITZ BLUESBLITZ Musician's Friend   Alt-Country Alternative Blues Electronic Jambands Jazz Hip Hop Metal Pop Punk R&B Reggae Rock   Getting Started Free Players	Welcome !      Charles Mingus He was a prickly personality who played complex, demanding music, but there’s no getting around the genius of Charles Mingus. Jazz’s best-known bassist, Mingus was also one of the music’s most important composers and arrangers, and created a body of work that has influenced artists from well outside its borders. An Arizona native born in 1922, Mingus got his first musical inspiration from his strict religious upbringing, studying trombone and cello before switching to bass so he could join his high school band (which also included sax great Dexter Gordon). His most important early gig was with Louis Armstrong’s band in the early 1940s, and he spent the decade bouncing from group to group, occasionally as a leader but more often working for musicians like Dinah Washington and Lionel Hampton. He joined Duke Ellington’s orchestra in the early 1950s, and got canned because of his bad temper, but played a part in the legendary 1953 Massey Hall concert, which featured Bird, Diz and most of the bop greats. During the ‘50s he also started his own label, Debut, and set up a Jazz Workshop where he could test his growing body of compositions, some of them extended suites that had the feel of the free jazz coming into bloom. Those works were featured on classic albums like 1959’s Mingus Ah Um, which featured the standards “Goodbye Pork Pie hat” and “Better Git It In Your Soul,” displaying Mingus’ ferocious intelligence and ability to draw on blues and gospel to give his music added power. He led perhaps his finest band in the early ‘60s, featuring sympathetic saxman Eric Dolphy, but his other ventures -- trying to form another label, and starting up a Jazz Artists Guild to keep musicians from getting the shaft -- ended in failure, and a broke Mingus laid low for several years. He did return in 1969, playing live again, getting a Guggenheim Fellowship and publishing his long-awaited and controversial autobiography. But Lou Gehrig’s disease hampered his comeback, and by the time of his late-70s collaboration with Joni Mitchell, Mingus, the weakened legend had to contribute from his wheelchair. He died in 1979, but not before receiving official recognition from President Carter at the White House; since then, his considerable legacy has only grown in stature.     Charles Mingus So Long Eric PlayJ Jazz Get ready to sit a spell for this ultra-extended live jam from jazz legend Charles Mingus. There’s plenty here to absorb, but Charles is definitely in charge!
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