Charles Mingus celebration plans for Arizona birthplace
Charles Mingus was born on an Army post in Nogales, Arizona, where his father was stationed as part of a Buffalo Soldiers unit, on April 22, 1922.
The revered jazz bassist and composer was a toddler when his family settled in Los Angeles, where he was largely raised in the Watts neighborhood.
But each spring, Nogales holds a Charles Mingus Hometown Jazz Festival to honor his connection to the city.
This year’s celebration will include the dedication on Saturday, April 23, of a Mingus Memorial at the former entrance to Camp Little, where Charles Mingus Sr. served.
That day’s festival will also be the third and final stop of a tour of Southern Arizona commemorating the Mingus Centennial by the Mingus Dynasty Quintet featuring Jack Walrath with special guest Charles McPherson.
Both musicians worked extensively with Mingus.
On Thursday, April 21, the quintet will begin their tour with a concert at the Nash in downtown Phoenix.
On Friday, April 22, they’ll celebrate his actual birthday at Arizona’s newest major jazz club, the Century Room at Hotel Congress in Tucson.
The club’s name celebrates 100 years of Hotel Congress and the birth of a jazz legend in Nogales.
Establishing Charles Mingus Memorial Park
The tour was organized by Alan Hershowitz, whose late wife, Yvonne Ervin, was the driving force behind the festival and establishing Mingus Memorial Park in Nogales as chair of the Mingus Project’s board of directors.
“She was responsible for pretty much anything having to do with Charles Mingus in Arizona,” Hershowitz says.
Ervin’s efforts in Nogales started with “Jazz on the Border: The Mingus Project,” which featured the world premiere of a long-lost movement Mingus’s “Epitaph” conducted by Walrath in Nogales.
That was 1993.
“So we’ll be bringing it all full circle with the dedication of the memorial, which Yvonne regarded as her most enduring signature achievement,” Hershowitz says.
“And now with a plaque to her on it, it’s also her own epitaph. So it began with an epitaph and ends with one.”
Ervin, who also founded the Tucson Jazz Festival and expanded the Tucson Jazz Society, died in December 2018.
Her original vision for Mingus Memorial Park was a park where performances could be held.
“When selecting a site, they decided it made most sense to put it in the little triangle of land where the gates to the
camp originally were,” Hershowitz says.
“It’s a small plot of land. And the idea was to put up a wall and have art projects on it, including a portrait of Mingus, the history of Mingus and the history the Buffalo Soldiers, who have always been very much a part of the festival.”
How Charles McPherson joined Mingus’ band
McPherson was 20 when he started playing saxophone for Mingus, taking Eric Dolphy’s place in 1960.
“Eric Dolphy was the saxophone player at the time and Mingus also had a trumpet player named Ted Curson,” McPherson recalls. “Both of these musicians were leaving. And Mingus wasn’t that happy about it, especially the fact that Eric was leaving.”
It was Yusef Lateef who recommended McPherson and trumpet player Lonnie Hillyer as suitable replacements in need of a gig.
“So that’s how we got in the band,” McPherson says.
“And for at least about two weeks, Mingus had two saxophone players, Eric Dolphy and myself, and two trumpet players. After two weeks, both of those guys cut out. But that was the beginning of my career with him.”
The relationship lasted roughly 12 years, from 1960-1972.
“I learned a lot from Mingus, especially in terms of composition,” McPherson says. “His writing, in particular his ballad writing, was compelling for me. He was kind of a Renaissance man.”
He was also something of a complex individual.
Why is Charles Mingus significant?
“He was highly intelligent, very sensitive and everything else you may have heard about him,” McPherson says.
“He was volatile. He could be confrontational. There are a lot of moving parts with Mingus. However, all of that put together, all those little moving parts, is what made Mingus who he was.”
The complexity of Mingus was reflected in his music.
“Some people have a comfort zone,” McPherson says.
“But Mingus represented all the Muses. He could represent sadness. He could represent anger. He could represent empathy and tenderness,”
There were compositions inspired by erotic love but also agape, McPherson says —the unconditional love that one might feel toward God or a relationship that transcends the sensation of erotic love.
He also wrote his share of protest music.
“When I joined, it was the early ‘60s,” McPherson says.
“The world at that time was pretty much in flux. You had the civil rights movement, voting rights, the Vietnam War and all the protests about it. You had social flux going on. Social revolution.”
Being based in New York City put Mingus and his band right in the mix of all that social flux, McPherson says.
“And Mingus being not just a bass player or musician but a thinker, had his ways of thinking about what he thought was right, what he thought was not right. And he wrote about all of it. So it was a wild ride.”
The ability to express all those sides of the human experience in his music is part of what McPherson feels made Mingus so important in a way that went beyond his impact in the world of jazz.
“This, to me, should be the yardstick for all art and anybody participating in it,” McPherson says.
“Can you by way of your particular medium express all of the human condition? He pretty much could. That’s why he’s important an artist. And jazz is just a form of art.”
Another thing that made his music stand out to McPherson’s ears is that he drew on such a wide array of inspiration, from Duke Ellington to Charlie Parker, Jelly Roll Morton, Western classical music, gospel and Latin jazz.
Was Charles Mingus a good bass player?
He also had amazing technique as a bassist and composer.
“When you have technique and inspiration holding hands and communicating with each other, then you have great art,” McPherson says.
With regard to the volatile side of Mingus, McPherson was spared the fearsome temperament that led to Mingus being thought of as the Angry Man of Jazz.
McPherson credits a benefit concert they did for the bandleader’s friend Kenneth Patchen, a writer who’d fallen ill.
When the gig was over, Mingus went around and handed each musician $5 or $10.
“When he got to me, I said, ‘What’s $5 gonna do? Just give it to him This is why we’re doing it in the first place,’” McPherson recalls.
“He looked at me for three or four seconds, and I saw his eyes well up. He just stared. And then he said ‘Thank, Charles.’ From that moment on, he treated me differently than he did everybody else.”
He saw McPherson as a nice young man, which also meant he let him get away with things he never would’ve tolerated in those other players.
“I could be acting sort of goofy on the bandstand because I’m young,” McPherson says.
“And so, I’m acting like maybe you would expect some 20-year-old to act. And he wouldn’t look. He would just kind of not pay attention to it. As long as I wasn’t too ridiculous. If I were late, he would have a whole different kind of attitude toward me.”
It goes back to his complex personality.
“Along with him being angry and willing to physically fight at the drop of a hat, he had this other side,” McPherson says.