Viva Brighton Issue #45 November 2016

JAZZ
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Charles Mingus
Andy Pickett on the angry jazz genius
Photo by Tom Marcello
You might have heard stories
about Charles Mingus.
Chasing a fellow musician
across the stage with an axe;
sitting on stage watching a
portable TV in protest at
an inattentive audience; the
23-women-in-one-night
thing; the breakdown and
temporary withdrawal from
music; the multiple marriages;
the fallings-out with
bandmates, etc.
But ‘jazz’s angry man’
was also a hugely talented
bandleader and composer.
His work somehow blends
the feeling of avant-garde
chaos with a joyous catchiness.
It’s brilliant. And when I interview Andy
Pickett, from the Mingus Underground Octet, he
seems to be steering me, rightly, away from the
dramatic-life-story stuff, and towards discussion
of the music itself.
“It’s very easy music to like,” Andy says. “Not
easy to play, but it’s easy to like. You’ve got these
different influences, the rootsiness of the gospel
music, the church music, the sophistication of Ellington
and his classical background, the bebop,
the hard bop… There’s vaudeville elements as
well, I think, with some of it.
“It’s very political music. I think in a way it’s a
reflection of who he was as a person. He’s not
easy to categorise, he’s a very troubled, complex
person, and I think the music reflects that. It’s
easy to get into, and yet there’s very complex elements,
very angry elements as well.
“It was radical in the sense that he was doing stuff
that nobody else was doing. Although he was very
much in the tradition as well. For me, there’s a lot
of stuff that’s in common with
Duke Ellington’s music.
“But he was very much
ploughing his own path. You
look at the music scene as
it is today, one of the things
perhaps you could trace back
to Mingus is the idea, the collective
side of improvisation.
There was a time when a lot
of jazz followed the same format,
where you have a theme,
then the musicians take solos,
and then you play the theme
out. Now there seems to be a
lot more arranged music, with
much more of a collective
dimension to it.
“You know, it is on record
that he was very difficult to work with. There’s
lots of incidents of him falling out with musicians,
to the point where he’s become physically
violent. There’s a famous incident of him busting
[trombonist] Jimmy Knepper’s teeth, and throwing
cymbals and that sort of stuff. But at the same
time, the music was so great and so exciting,
musicians wanted to work with him, despite that
reputation.
“Let’s not forget that, as well as being a composer
and bandleader, he was a phenomenal bass player,
with an energy and drive in his playing which is
very much part of the music as well. So I’m sure,
once you started playing, you’d just be being
caught up with that energy, that collective thing.
It must have been very exciting.”
Steve Ramsey
The Mingus Underground Octet were formed in
2014 to perform the music of Charles Mingus.
They play the Ropetackle Arts Centre, Shoreham,
Wed 16th, 8pm, £10. mingusunderground.co.uk
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