| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 88.4

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 88.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Myself When I Am Real: The Life and Music of Charles Mingus. By Gene Santoro. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. x, 452 pp. $30.00, ISBN 0-19-509733-5.)

This biography leaves no doubt that Charles Mingus was a major figure in the history of jazz and American music. He was a bassist without peer, a seminal influence on contemporary musicians, and the leader of a number of legendary jazz workshops, combos, and big bands. A composer often compared to Duke Ellington, Mingus is known for protest songs such as "Faubus Fables," "Haitian Fight Song," and "Meditations on a Pair of Wire Cutters"; for tributes such as "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat" for Lester "Pres" Young and "My Jelly Roll Soul" for Jelly Roll Morton; for celebrations of African American culture such as "Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting"; and for his caustic wit, as in "The Shoes of the Fisherman's Wife Are Some Jive Ass Slippers." He provided the music for John Cassavetes' classic Shadows (1959) and other films. He sometimes offered a bit of theater of the absurd on the bandstand, actually smashing his bass before rock stars took up the fad, yelled and screamed while performing his multilayered compositions, experimented with extended musical forms, and utilized Eastern and European as well as black and Afro-Latin themes. . . .

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