Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #38516 in Books
• Published on: 1991-09-03
• Released on: 1991-09-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

Amazon.com
A wild, lyrical, and anguished autobiography, in which Charles Mingus pays short shrift to the facts but plunges to the very bottom of his psyche, coming up for air only when it pleases him. He takes the reader through his childhood in Watts, his musical education by the likes of Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Charlie Parker, and his prodigious appetites--intellectual, culinary, and sexual. The book is a jumble, but a glorious one, by a certified American genius.

Customer Reviews

The inner life of a jazz giant told autobiographicly, impressionisticly
The first page tells it: if you like that, read on.
He sets the stage by describing 3 parts of his psyche: the one who wants to love and be loved; the one who rages over mistreatment; and the detached, cool observer. These 3 interplay in the most vibrant revelation of a musician's inner life I've seen, and I've made a living with a guitar. Passionate, vulnerable alternating with macho, and confused alternating with crystal clarity, Mingus puts out his experience like an abstract painter might. it reminded me a bit of the biography of Malcom X and "Manchild in the Promised Land." This is nothing like the simple factual account by Miles Davis in his autobio. Beautiful, ugly, utterly personal, it put me both inside of Mingus and outside of society. It's one of the most touching books ever for this reader.

Great literature? No, but a revealing artifact anyhow
Those looking for anything like a conventional musical bio should go to "Mingus, a Critical Biography" by Brian Priestley; "Underdog" isn't that at all; it's an artifact of Mingus' peculiar world-view at a particularly hard time in his life.


Was he mentally ill? Well, Mingus, long noted for fits of depression (after finding his first substantial success in the music industry, he nevertheless worked for the post office for a while) and a volcanic temper, channeled it for art: he was probably the first musician ever to release an album with liner notes from his psychoanalyst, and in "Underdog", he recounts checking himself into Bellvue Hospital, in an ill-considered search for "some rest". That, too, yielded him a song, "Hellview of Bellvue/Lock 'em Up", an offer of a lobotomy, and raised the interesting question: if a half-black jazz musician in 1960's America believed that people were out to steal from him and oppress him, was he acutely paranoid, just observant, or both?

Sexually escapist, and scatological? Well, yes, but before feminism, or politcal correctness, and not without pay-back: the man who bragged of trying to bury his misery in [...] and dope never finds them to be a satisfactory release, and after all the orgies, writes a tune called "Half-Mast Inhibition". . .

So, listen to the music first. See the short b&w documentary. If you want bio information or critical analysis, go to the Priestly book. Then put on "Black Saint", "Mingus Am Uh", or "Blues and Roots", and read this.

Disappointing
I was looking for a book on his music. This book belongs in Fantasy. It is a play by play of Mr. Mingus' sex life. I have no desire to research him any further.