mingus2

SM: Just that you are hearing Mingus. When he was dying, we had a Jamaican nurse who was not familiar with jazz at all. For the last six months, Charles listened to one particular piece of his, Toda Modo, a quite complex, very classical kind of piece. She heard it so frequently, that she would be working and humming melodies from his work. And Charles said, "You see, if they played this on the radio all the time people would hum us like the Beatles."

UD: What did Mingus not have time to do? To finish?

SM: (Laughing)I think he did everything. It wasn't a question of time with Charles. It was a question of not being appreciated by the society he lived in. He said had he not been black maybe he would have been the first bassist in the New York Philharmonic. Who knows? You never know how much contradiction and oppostition can ultimately be a creative force. He once wrote a letter of thanks to his enemies for the creative opposition.

His master work, Epitaph, was never performed in his lifetime. He said, with his usual irony, that he wrote it for his tombstone. He was prophetic, as he often was, and we premiered it in 1989, ten years after his death.

UD: At Lincoln Center.

SM: Yes. If he had been able to have that work performed when he tried in 1962, it would have changed his life; there would have been far more opportunites opening up for him.

A few years ago I came across a tape that was made a week after this incredible disaster and defeat, this attempt to get his music played at Town Hall. It was thwarted by a record company that moved the date up three months. There was simply not time to prepare the music. They were copying the music on stage, there were two tables on stage with copyists while they were trying to perform. It was a disaster.

I listened to this tape I'd found of Charles with a quintet (at Birdland I think it was), five musicians doggedly playing the same music he'd written for thirty-three. And I thought, that is a sign of incredible courage and belief in himself. Just dealing with reality, he went right on doing what he had to do in the context of what was offered to him. He couldn't get this whole, incredible two hour work played, but he played one of these very difficult pieces (we play it now, Started Melody). It was written for six trumpets and he had one trumpet. And they played the hell out of it! So, all his life, he wrote the music he wanted to write and he performed the music he wanted to perform and he recorded what he wanted to record.

I've heard people say: "Oh, it's too bad, Mingus died before he had any success." What can be more successful than doing exactly what you want to do?