#3
Charles Mingus –
Beneath the Underdog
(Alfred A. Knopf, 1971 / Canongate Books, 1995)

“ ‘Don’t bullschitt me. You’re a good man Charles, but there’s a lot of fabrication and fantasy in what you say. For instance, no man could have as much intercourse in one night as you claim to have had.’
‘The hell he couldn’t! Maybe I did exaggerate some things like the weight-lifting and all that ‘cause I didn’t really know how much those bar bells weighted but only two other guys could pick ‘em up and their feet sank into the ground!’
‘You’re changing the subject, my friend. I was asking about the Mexican girls. Why is it you’re obsessed with proving you’re a man? Is it because you cry?’”


Most people will know Charles Mingus for his work as a composer, bandleader and bassist, and as the creator of some of the most consistently inspired, challenging and popular music to emerge from mid 20th century American jazz.

Anyone who’s read ‘Beneath the Underdog’ though will of course be aware that Charles Mingus was actually a champion bodybuilder, sexual athlete, psychic warrior, kung-fu master, black power revolutionary, millionaire pimp, doomed romantic, notorious lunatic and spiritual visionary, who occasionally found a spare moment to bang out some tunes.

An all-time classic of the “fuck the truth baby, this is ME” school of autobiography, ‘..Underdog’ is probably by far the best-known book on this list, having been an underground hit and perennial ‘oh man, you gotta read this’ volume ever since its first publication. Anyone who ever met him will wax lyrical about what a fiery and idiosyncratic personality Mingus was, but I’m guessing that few fans quite realised what a thoroughly twisted, king freak genius he actually was until this book appeared.

Somehow managing to be both grotesquely self-aggrandising and coruscatingly humble at all times, ‘..Underdog’ takes something of an out-of-control steamroller approach to recounting numerous obstacles Mingus faced up to in his life, and the very American methods in which he chose to overcome them, through excess, violence, chest-beating psychodrama, financial intimidation and all-purpose destructive psychosis. Seems to have worked ok, all things considered.

Beginning (after the above-quoted introduction which recounts Ming arguing with his therapist) with the decidedly unnerving conception of his birth, Mingus initially introduces himself as a kind of free-roaming, incorporeal intelligence that one day finds itself watching over the progress of a poor, mixed race LA family. When their two year old son smashes his head open on what’s described as “a Goodwill store old-fashioned second hand-me-down white folks’ bedroom-set dresser” and is rushed to the emergency room, this nameless intelligence enters the body of the dying toddler, instigating a miraculous last minute ‘recovery’, and thereafter assuming the identity of ‘Charles Mingus’, directing the activities and observing the emotions of the human body assigned that name from a kind of detached, third person point of view.

Proceeding to outline the childhood of ‘Charles Mingus’, this nameless observational spirit subsequently launches what is actually a very straightforward and affecting account of a troubled kid growing up in Watts in the ‘20s and ‘30s. The central obsessions that came to dominate his adult life are already strongly in evidence, but by and large it’s solid memoir type business. It’s only when we get to the grown up portion of the book that things start to get weird. And, communicated with Mingus’s breathless, almost violent need to unload and exaggerate, they get pretty weird pretty quickly.

In short, there’s no way to easily encapsulate what follows. As bilious and impossible to unpack as its author’s most confrontational music, and it’s too heavy for me to dive back into just for the sake of this post, but needless to say, it’s a hell of a read, full of hilarious anecdotes and wild gonzo imaginings that seem to frame his life as an ever-escalating landslide of decadence and turmoil.

I think the highlight of the book for me probably comes when Mingus reportedly finds himself chilling at the piano in his penthouse apartment, trying to compose an ode of deep spiritual love, but constantly finding himself interrupted by the three beautiful ladies who are violently competing for his attention – shrieking and tearing each others clothes, sprawling across his keyboard, pulling at his arms and the like. Tiring of this distraction, he immediately sets out to buy some easels and other art supplies, declaring that the women should all paint his portrait, and that the one whom he deems to have produced the most worthwhile work of art and captured his inner being most convincingly, he will put aside the time to sleep with.

You wouldn’t think a guy who rolls like that would find so much in life to complain about, but the tempestuous mixture of materialism, vanity and spirituality revealed in such stories seems to lie at the heart of Mingus’s view of the world, and any chuckles that may arise are undercut by a thorough ringing out of the racial identity crises, endless paranoia and deep-rooted sense of inadequacy that plagued Mingus throughout his life – issues that form the central pillar around which this ridiculous, psychotic, wonderful excuse for a memoir revolves, his basic plea for a post-racial, post-classist society in which individuals may be judged solely upon their achievements sounding out more reasonable and obvious than ever, for all the braggadocio and neurosis he surrounds it with.

Labels: books, Charles Mingus, jazz