Charles Mingus
The Clown

THE REVIEW

“I am three. The first one is always in the middle, without worries, without emotions; it observes and waits for the opportunity to express what it sees to the other two. The second is like a frightened animal that attacks out of fear of being attacked. And then there is a person full of love and kindness who allows others to enter the most sacred cell of the temple of his being, and lets himself be insulted, and trusts everyone, signs contracts without reading them, and lets himself be convinced to work under cost or for free, and when he realizes what has been done to him, he feels like killing and destroying everything around him, including himself to punish himself for being so stupid. But he can't do it: and instead closes himself off...”

Reading this excerpt from the autobiography (“Beneath the Underdog”-worse than a bastard), one understands how relevant was the definition given of Mingus by the eminent critic Nat Hentoff: that of “a cauldron of emotions.” Mingus always suffered from a painful sense of marginalization, as a “yellow negro,” not even a pure black, but a “dirty hybrid,” with a bit of Native American blood in his veins. Blacks and Native Americans combined in his DNA, practically the two cultures most brutalized by the civilized white American man. Polillo defined him as “... a difficult, unpredictable man... maladjusted to the limits of psychosis... victimizing and exhibitionist, honest like few others, naive... brutally sincere, pathologically unable to control himself, often unjust and ungrateful.” Bob Thiele, his Impulse record producer, compounded the dose by describing him as “a modern Doctor Jeckyll-Mister Hyde.”

Charles Mingus was, after Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk, the greatest composer that jazz has produced. And he was also the greatest bassist.

Together with his impressive technique, built with fanatical dedication, and with a touch of exhibitionism, Charlie possessed an innate melodic disposition, and an improvisational instinct in line with his impulsive and schizophrenic personality. Mingus's compositions were the ideal bridge between the two great postwar jazz revolutions: the bebop of the '40s and the free jazz of the '60s, refining the first language and anticipating the second. But his music was never the mirror of a well-defined current; on the contrary, Mingus makes history on his own.

In him, improvisation and writing are so intertwined as to be inseparable. Mingus avoided intensive use of the musical staff, instead choosing to sit at the piano and illustrate the pieces to his musicians, focusing on key points of the composition and explaining the dynamics, or rather, the feeling, something a musical staff could never do in its place. As in the Commedia dell'Arte, soloists were given complete improvisational freedom, respecting the previously established framework. The compositional method of Mingus is in a certain sense complementary to that of Duke Ellington, one of the figures he most loved and respected, who had in this his main foundation: composing the piece thinking of the soloist's feeling (making a piece “tailored” for Johnny Hodges, for example). On the contrary, Mingus decided first the feeling he wanted to achieve in the piece, and then explained it to the musicians, who were at least in part chosen for their adaptability.

In '57, a year after the release of “Pithecanthropus Erectus”, his first masterpiece, Mingus gave birth to another milestone, “The Clown”.

The first track, “Haitian Fight Song”, is one of the masterpieces of all jazz. The music begins with a brief bass prelude, which soon launches into an overwhelming rhythmic riff, followed by the gradual addition of other instruments in a legendary crescendo of sounds and dynamics. One almost finds it hard to believe that it is only a quintet, given the sound impact achieved. The solos of trombonist Jimmy Knepper, pianist Wade Legge, and alto saxophonist Shafi Hadi are absolutely adherent to the warrior-like spirit of this “protest” piece, and the faithful drummer Dannie Richmond masterfully underscores the progression of the musical flow. Mingus's solo, one of the most enjoyable, articulated, and structured bass solos documented on record, takes off. The world of sounds he manages to extract from the instrument, the logic behind the choice of each note, and above all his resolution in playing them are exemplary. Mingus himself comments: “... it could also be titled Afro-American Fight Song... The solo I take in this piece is full of concentration. I can't play it the right way if I don't think of prejudice, hatred, persecution, and how unfair all this is.” It closes after 12' a great masterpiece.

The album closes with “The Clown”, a long experimental narration improvised with musical commentary, interpreted by Jean Sheperd, dealing with the troubled psychological mechanisms of a clown. In my opinion, the weak point of the record, not up to the very high average level of the other tracks.

Nevertheless, it would be unfair to penalize this essential album with a rating lower than 5.

BUY IT.