Beneath the Underdog

The fictionalized autobiography of Charles Mingus is as fascinating as it is irritating. Since much of it is likely fictionalized or exaggerated (particularly the tales of pimping), it's a priceless testament to how a major figure in the history of jazz wanted to present his life story. Given the centrality of his attempts to display himself as a masculine figure, and the comparison of jazz musicians to prostitutes, Mingus unsurprisingly runs with the theme throughout the text. Jazz musicians, especially colored ones, are used and abused by the record labels, agents, critics, and club owners, mostly white. The black jazz musician is forced, by necessities of survival, to prostitute themselves, but their creativity and ability to support themselves is limited by their meager pay and the greater rewards to white jazz musicians. However, by becoming pimps and hustlers, black men were able to accumulate greater sums of cash than any honest work of the era available to them, and one presumes the various pimps (Billy Bones from Santo Domingo, a wealthy black pimp in San Francisco, included) provided an outlet for Mingus to reassert his manhood and dignity as an independent jazz musician. Yet, Mingus's ambiguous embrace of pimping and eventual abandonment of it suggests emotional growth. 

The best aspects of this autrebiography are the plethora of details of life in Watts and Mingus's upbringing. In fact, most of the book is centered on his upbringing and early career in California (LA, San Francisco) instead of New York, the jazz capital. Mingus regales us with details of growing up in a very different Watts. There were still whites living in the area, as well as Japanese, Mexican, Chinese, and blacks. Central Ave had its fair share of jazz and entertainment. Mingus's family were of mixed-racial origins, but he was neither light enough nor dark enough to find acceptance. Thus, as a child, he turned inward and to music, until he discovered love and sex. Surprisingly, he does not dwell too much on his early musical career in LA, although his friendship with Buddy Collette and other local musicians clearly shaped him. Just as learning the harsh realities of racism in pre-Civil Rights Movement Watts taught him important lessons, Mingus chooses to delve into personal details of his various attempts at finding happy romance, including an elopement with Lee-Marie that ends in tragedy. In terms of the music, Mingus also alludes in his own way to other budding talent in 1930s and 1940s LA, such as Eric Dolphy, plus visiting luminaries from New York (Charlie Parker, Art Tatum). Whether or not most of these tales of neighborhood roughs, early Watts Towers, or fantastic sexual escapades truly occurred is not the point.

Unfortunately, for those eager to find more about Mingus's life once he permanently relocated to New York, Beneath the Underdog skips around chronologically. We learn of his time in Bellevue, plus some other additional experiences with the irrational Jim Crow of the South, but nothing like a detailed account of his musical evolution. For instance, his welcome party to New York City sounds almost certainly fictitious, with Charlie Parker, Monk, Leonard Feather and other prominent figures in the jazz world attending a party in a home "Donnalee" received for Mingus through their work as prostitutes. Here and there, Mingus hints at his self-perception as a composer who wants to surpass the limitations of the jazz world. This, I assume, is due to Mingus's Third Stream inclinations and desire to elevate the status of jazz beyond the Jim Crow music industry's needs. Strangely, Mingus leaves out his attempt to establish an artist collective label with Max Roach, although such an initiative definitely links with his desire to escape the confines of the white man's world and assert his dignity. Nonetheless, I would have loved to learn more about various recordings and club dates of Mingus at the time, as well as his relationships with Eric Dolphy, Roach, Donnie Richmond, and others in the 1950s and 1960s. 

Ultimately, Mingus, who partitioned his being into at least 2 or 3 selves, and desired a raceless world, could never find solace from the squalid racial categories thrust upon him. While today his legacy as a composer and musician of the finest caliber is unquestioned, I am not certain how Mingus saw himself: as artist, man, composer, genius, pimp, black man, "racially ambiguous," or something else entirely? The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady? Corrupted by vices and pleasures, yet striving for something his faith and theistic belief encouraged? Is this representative of the jazz musician of the era, exploited, abused, underappreciated, ripped off, Jim Crowed, and creatively stifled? As Mingus allegedly explained to a British jazz critic, without the black jazz musician, none of the popular music of the world would be around today, but look at the conditions of life for jazz artists. Or, for that matter, the "underdogs" of the world, toiling at work unfit for humans, as Mingus states in reference to his brief attempt at skilled industrial labor in his youth. Perhaps the jazz musician was truly beneath the underdog.