Notes from Charles Mingus: Triumph of the Underdog

Interesting film about the jazz legend ([Netflix](http://www.netflix.com/Movie/Charles_Mingus_Triumph_of_the_Underdog/1192049))

> Mingus’s personality ran like the color spectrum, from hot to cold. From beautiful to, well, you take it from there – John Handy, 6:00

> Charles was just testing people, to see how far he could go. And he went very far; most people did not confront him. – Sue, 7:45

The importance of finding “your component”–someone who can match with you.

> If I could find my component–you see, like you take a light and screw it into a socket, you dig? Well this [light bulb] ain’t nothing by itself, but you screw it in the socket, it lights up, dig? – 9:00

His wide-ranged personality translated into a wide range of music:

> His music is one of the widest-ranging sets of music you can find composed by one single human being – Gunther Schuller, 11:00

> He was not victimized by a style. – Wynton Marsalis, 12:30

Like Thelonious Monk (“I like all kinds of music”), he denied giving things names, categorizing it – 13:00

Struggled a lot to join an existing ethnic group, but with a black and Swedish father, a Chinese-black mother, and a black-Indian stepmother he didn’t fit in with any of them. – 18:00

Studied European composers Schoenberg, Stravinsky, and Bartok before playing a lot of jazz – 19:00

> I had a right to love Duke [Ellington] because everyone has a right to tune into something they love. – 20:45

Once told a loud audience, “Ok, you won’t shut up. How about doing fours with us? We’ll play four bars, and you shut up, then you can do whatever you want for four bars, and we’ll accompany you.’ “And it worked, and they loved it.” – Eddie Bert, 30:30

> We have a straight line, like a railroad track, but we don’t play a straight line–we suggest the line [by playing notes around it]. – 33:00

> Charles said, ‘Well, I like what you’re doing, but you must remember that your playing is the same as a conversation. When you walk in the room, you don’t just say “Hellowaywhoahyeah!!”…first you say ‘hello’, take a breath, ‘how are you’…and you take another breath. And it’s like a graph, you start here and go round and round and it gets larger and larger, and at the same time you have to come back to where you started. – Dannie Richmond, 34:30

He’d write parts that were a little harder than what you last played–and harder than you thought you could play–to help the group grow. – 37:45

> He wrote parts…that were a little out of the range of most of the instruments, because he liked the sound of the struggle – Lew Soloff – 37:00

Even when he was paralyzed by ALS, he would still sing into a tape recorder to compose new music. – 1:02:45