Better Git It in Your Soul: An Interpretive Biography of Charles Mingus - Rilegato

Gabbard, Krin

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 0520260376 ISBN 13: 9780520260375

Casa editrice: Univ of California Pr, 2016

Riassunto

Charles Mingus is one of the most important—and most mythologized—composers and performers in jazz history. Classically trained and of mixed race, he was an outspoken innovator as well as a bandleader, composer, producer, and record-label owner. His vivid autobiography, Beneath the Underdog, has done much to shape the image of Mingus as something of a wild man: idiosyncratic musical genius with a penchant for skirt-chasing and violent outbursts. But, as the autobiography reveals, he was also a hopeless romantic. After exploring the most important events in Mingus’s life, Krin Gabbard takes a careful look at Mingus as a writer as well as a composer and musician. He digs into how and why Mingus chose to do so much self-analysis, how he worked to craft his racial identity in a world that saw him simply as “black,” and how his mental and physical health problems shaped his career. Gabbard sets aside the myth-making and convincingly argues that Charles Mingus created a unique language of emotions—and not just in music. Capturing many essential moments in jazz history anew, Better Git It in Your Soul will fascinate anyone who cares about jazz, African American history, and the artist’s life.

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Informazioni sugli autori

Krin Gabbard retired after thirty-three years of teaching at Stony Brook University, and he now teaches in the jazz studies program at Columbia University. His previous books include Hotter than That: The Trumpet, Jazz, and American Culture and Jammin’ at the Margins: Jazz and the American Cinema. He lives in New York City with his wife, Paula, and he is busy playing his trumpet and writing a memoir about his parents. 

Krin Gabbard retired after thirty-three years of teaching at Stony Brook University, and he now teaches in the jazz studies program at Columbia University. His previous books include Hotter than That: The Trumpet, Jazz, and American Culture and Jammin' at the Margins: Jazz and the American Cinema. He lives in New York City with his wife, Paula, and he is busy playing his trumpet and writing a memoir about his parents. 

Dalla quarta di copertina

'Krin Gabbard is one of the finest stylists writing about jazz today, and Better Git It In Your Soul finds him at the top of his game. The writing is crisp, charming, and funny, a pleasure to read. The author's love of this immensely rich body of music comes through on every page.''thomas Brothers, author of Louis Armstrong: Master of Modernism

'One of the reasons that the great musician Charles Mingus is not better known is that the raw complexity of his life and the scale and sweep of his work seem to demand a whole team of artists and scholars to fathom and explain his importance in several different arts. Finally, Krin Gabbard'biographer, musician, film scholar, and literary critic'steps in with a book worthy of this twentieth-century master, and one that will surprise even those familiar with his legacy.''John Szwed, author of Billie Holiday: The Musician and the Myth

'Gabbard conveys the complexity of Mingus's life and his changing representation in an engaging and accessible book. A fascinating and thought-provoking read, this book is a must for anyone interested in jazz.''tony Whyton, author of Beyond 'A Love Supreme' and Jazz Icons

Dal risvolto di copertina interno

“Krin Gabbard is one of the finest stylists writing about jazz today, and Better Git It In Your Soul finds him at the top of his game. The writing is crisp, charming, and funny, a pleasure to read. The author’s love of this immensely rich body of music comes through on every page.”—Thomas Brothers, author of Louis Armstrong: Master of Modernism

“One of the reasons that the great musician Charles Mingus is not better known is that the raw complexity of his life and the scale and sweep of his work seem to demand a whole team of artists and scholars to fathom and explain his importance in several different arts. Finally, Krin Gabbard—biographer, musician, film scholar, and literary critic—steps in with a book worthy of this twentieth-century master, and one that will surprise even those familiar with his legacy.”—John Szwed, author of Billie Holiday: The Musician and the Myth

“Gabbard conveys the complexity of Mingus’s life and his changing representation in an engaging and accessible book. A fascinating and thought-provoking read, this book is a must for anyone interested in jazz.”—Tony Whyton, author of Beyond “A Love Supreme” and Jazz Icons

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Better Git It in Your Soul

An Interpretive Biography of Charles Mingus

By Krin Gabbard

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

Copyright © 2016 The Regents of the University of California
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-520-26037-5

Contents

INTRODUCTION. Charles Mingus Changed My Life, 1, 
PART I. A Circus in a Bathtub, 11, 
PART II. Poet, Lyricist, Autobiographer, 113, 
PART III. Third Stream Music and the Rest of Jazz History, 159, 
PART IV. On and Off the Bandstand with Richmond, Dolphy, and Knepper, 201, 
EPILOGUE. Mingus in the Movies, 235, 
Acknowledgments, 247, 
Discography, 251, 
Notes, 255, 
Bibliography, 285, 
Index, 297, 

CHAPTER 1

PART I A Circus in a Bathtub

You had to see how difficult it was to cram himself into the confines of black or white American society. It was like putting a circus into a bathtub.

Janet Coleman, Mingus/Mingus

MODERNISM YEAR ONE

Charles Mingus was born in 1922, the same year that James Joyce's Ulysses and T. S. Eliot's "The Wasteland" appeared in print. On the basis of those two literary behemoths alone, Kevin Jackson has written an entire book about 1922, which he calls "Modernism Year One." Joyce and Eliot displayed so much erudition that even serious graduate students in English departments have failed to master their works. But without question, Joyce transformed the novel just as Eliot remade lyric poetry. In the same year, another modernist icon, Franz Kafka, published "The Hunger Artist," the allegorical tale of a circus performer whose death-defying art audiences ignore. Mingus's seminal recording from 1957, "The Clown," carries a similar message. Also in 1922, Marcel Proust published a section of Remembrances of Things Past, yet another novel that transformed the genre. Mingus, the shape-shifter, the genre-buster, and author of the most captivating autobiography by a major jazz artist, was born just as a new day was dawning in Western literature.

Mingus was also born in the same year that the tomb of King Tutankhamen was opened in Egypt's Valley of the Kings. It was the year Benito Mussolini seized power in Italy and Joseph Stalin was appointed general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The Ottoman Empire was abolished in 1922, and construction began on Yankee stadium. The presidency of Warren G. Harding was upended by the Teapot Dome scandal, and Christian K. Nelson patented the Eskimo Pie. At the movie houses, Americans could see the first important documentary film, Robert J. Flaherty's Nanook of the North, a view of the primitive life of an Inuit tribe. With life in the "civilized" world suddenly becoming faster, louder, and more mechanized, the world of Nanook must have offered pleasures both reassuring and nostalgic.

More significantly for the career of Charles Mingus, 1922 was the year that Bert Williams, possibly the most popular black entertainer of his day, who performed in a tattered tuxedo with black shoe polish on his face, passed away. Also that year, a new era in African American art began when Louis Armstrong left New Orleans for Chicago, where he joined the Creole Jazz Band and his idol, King Oliver. Less than a year later, Armstrong and Oliver went into a recording studio for the first time, and Jelly Roll Morton and his orchestra also made their first recordings. Many consider the music that these artists committed to vinyl in 1923 to be the first "real" jazz records.

But even without these epochal recordings, Mingus was born into the "Jazz Age," a term introduced by F. Scott Fitzge

Dettagli dell?edizione

• Editore: Univ of California Pr
• Data di pubblicazione: 2016
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 0520260376
• ISBN 13: 9780520260375
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero edizione: 1
• Numero di pagine: 323
• Contatto del produttore: non disponibile
• Persona responsabile: non disponibile