Memories of Mingus from Joni Mitchell

by Marke Andrews
Vancouver Sun
July 13, 1979

Mingus was a song. 'If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger, There'd Be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats.' Sometimes I find myself sharing this point of view. He figured you don't settle for anything but the uniqueness."  
-Joni Mitchell, from the July 26, 1979 issue of Rolling Stone

IN TERMS of background, no two individuals could have less in common than Joni Mitchell and the late Charles Mingus. Mitchell, the blonde, blue-eyed folksinger from the tall-grass wheatfields of Saskatchewan; Mingus, the streetwise black kid from Watts, who occasionally led street-gang rumbles with his double bass in order to get to a jam session.

Mitchell spent her adolescence taking piano lessons, dancing, painting, writing songs. Mingus sneaked into jazz clubs and speakeasies after women got high with the boys in the band. But both their careers progressed, both artists showed similar traits: an impulsive individuality, a fierce restlessness toward society, confusion over mediocrity, and a stubborn refusal to dwell on past glories. Most important, both considered themselves composers first, musicians second.

About two years ago, Charles Mingus realized he was dying, suffering from a degenerative muscular disease commonly referred to as Lou Gehrig's disease. In early 1978, Mingus contacted Joni Mitchell and asked her to collaborate on a new record with her. A few months later, he presented her with several instrumental melodies, asking her to set lyrics to them for a new album. Mitchell worked and reworked the songs, showing the dying bassist her progress, resisting against the creeping disease that now confined the once-robust Mingus to a wheelchair.

She lost the race. On January 5, 1979, at the age of 56, Charles Mingus died. A few days later, Mitchell finished the final song for the album, which has been released under the title "Mingus" (Asylum XE6-505).

The project is Mitchell's most adventurous to date. Ever since her 1974 Court and Spark release, she has been moving away from pop music, gravitating more and more towards jazz. Her last album, Don Juan's Reckless Daughter, represented a personal artistic exploration of independence which startled critics and fans alike. Their reaction was, by and large, negative.

Mingus contains six tunes. Four of the compositions were Mingus-Mitchell collaborations, the other two were written solely by Mitchell. Between tracks are seques of Mingus's voice.

The album opens with a birthday celebration for the bassist, followed by Mitchell's composition, God Must Be a Boogie Man. The song captures Mingus's manic, humorous side, with the lines, "Blind faith to care/Blind rage to kill." Chair in the Sky deals with death (it follows a recorded conversation in which Mingus discusses his impending funeral) with Mitchell seeing Charlie's "soul on ice" journeying up the celestial staircase. Side closes with Mitchell's The Wolf That Lives in Lindsey, a chilling piece of music that overpowers a pack of howling wolves behind the stabbing bass of Jaco Pastorius.

The highlight of Side Two is Mitchell's vocalizing the classic Pork Pie Hat, Goodbye Pork Pie Hat, written in memory of saxophonist Lester Young. Except for a horn section on The Dry Cleaner From Des Moines, all the album's instrumental content is Mitchell's acoustic guitar, Pastorius' bass, Wayne Shorter's soprano sax, Herbie Hancock's electric keyboards, and percussion from Peter Erskine, Don Alias and Emil Richards. The Mingus melodies have been well-preserved, with melodies chiseled out from the instrumental eloquence to make the lyrics fit.

One intriguing riddle left unexplained in the liner notes is why Mingus sought out Mitchell for this final recording. Did he see in her a restlessness in her art which characterized his own? Was it because Mitchell shows no fear in laying bare her feelings at any given point in time (something which Mingus did only in short, confused bursts in his autobiography, Beneath the Underdog)? Or was it merely a hunch, the Mingus intuition gambling on a longtime chemistry between a folksinger from Saskatoon and one from Watts, could come together to make a memorable record?

Whatever the motivation, the gamble has paid off artistically. Mingus is not an easy to produce by any means, but it is a rare and timeless record.