[8] Due to a poor education, the young Mingus could not read musical notation quickly enough to join the local youth orchestra.

He studied for five years with Herman Reinshagen, principal bassist of the New York Philharmonic, and compositional techniques with Lloyd Reese.

He toured with Louis Armstrong in 1943, and by early 1945 was recording in Los Angeles in a band led by Russell Jacquet, which also included Teddy Edwards, Maurice James Simon, Wild Bill Davis, and Chico Hamilton, and in May that year, in Hollywood, again with Edwards, in a band led by Howard McGhee.

[12] Also in the early 1950s, before attaining commercial recognition as a bandleader, Mingus played gigs with Charlie Parker, whose compositions and improvisations greatly inspired and influenced him.

He was also conflicted and sometimes disgusted by Parker's self-destructive habits and the romanticized lure of drug addiction they offered to other jazz musicians.

After the event, Mingus chose to overdub his barely audible bass part back in New York; the original version was issued later.

The two 10" albums of the Massey Hall concert (one featured the trio of Powell, Mingus and Roach) were among Debut Records' earliest releases.

One story has it that Mingus was involved in a notorious incident while playing a 1955 club date billed as a "reunion" with Parker, Powell, and Roach.

Powell, who suffered from alcoholism and mental illness (possibly exacerbated by a severe police beating and electroshock treatments), had to be helped from the stage, unable to play or speak coherently.

Allegedly, Parker continued this incantation for several minutes after Powell's departure, to his own amusement and Mingus's exasperation.

[citation needed] Those who joined the Workshop (or Sweatshops as they were colorfully dubbed by the musicians) included Pepper Adams, Jaki Byard, Booker Ervin, John Handy, Jimmy Knepper, Charles McPherson, and Horace Parlan.

The title song is a ten-minute tone poem, depicting the rise of man from his hominid roots (Pithecanthropus erectus) to an eventual downfall.

Even in a year of standout masterpieces, including Dave Brubeck's Time Out, Miles Davis's Kind of Blue, John Coltrane's Giant Steps, and Ornette Coleman's The Shape of Jazz to Come, this was a major achievement, featuring such classic Mingus compositions as "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat" (an elegy to Lester Young) and the vocal-less version of "Fables of Faubus" (a protest against segregationist Arkansas governor Orval Faubus that features double-time sections).

In 1961, Mingus spent time staying at the house of his mother's sister (Louise) and her husband, Fess Williams, a clarinetist and saxophonist, in Jamaica, Queens.

[17][18] Sixty years later, in 2014, the late American character actor Reg E. Cathey performed a voice recording of the complete guide for Studio 360.

[21] In 1964, Mingus put together one of his best-known groups, a sextet including Dannie Richmond, Jaki Byard, Eric Dolphy, trumpeter Johnny Coles, and tenor saxophonist Clifford Jordan.

In 1974, after his 1970 sextet with Charles McPherson, Eddie Preston and Bobby Jones disbanded, he formed a quintet with Richmond, pianist Don Pullen, trumpeter Jack Walrath and saxophonist George Adams.

Mingus espoused collective improvisation, similar to the old New Orleans jazz parades, paying particular attention to how each band member interacted with the group as a whole.

[citation needed] Because of his brilliant writing for midsize ensembles, and his catering to and emphasizing the strengths of the musicians in his groups, Mingus is often considered the heir of Duke Ellington, for whom he expressed great admiration and with whom he collaborated on the record Money Jungle.

[16] According to Knepper, this ruined his embouchure and resulted in the permanent loss of the top octave of his range on the trombone – a significant handicap for any professional trombonist.

The film also features Mingus performing in clubs and in the apartment, firing a .410 shotgun indoors, composing at the piano, playing with and taking care of his young daughter Carolyn, and discussing love, art, politics, and the music school he had hoped to create.

being performed and reinterpreted by the Mingus Big Band, which in October 2008 began playing every Monday at Jazz Standard in New York City, and often tours the rest of the U.S. and Europe.

He had once sung lyrics for one piece, "Invisible Lady", backed by the Mingus Big Band on the album, Tonight at Noon: Three of Four Shades of Love.

With the help of a grant from the Ford Foundation, the score and instrumental parts were copied, and the piece itself was premiered by a 30-piece orchestra, conducted by Gunther Schuller.

According to Ashon Crawley, the musicianship of Charles Mingus provides a salient example of the power of music to unsettle the dualistic, categorical distinction of sacred from profane through otherwise epistemologies.

[37] Crawley offers a reading of Mingus that examines the deep imbrication uniting Holiness – Pentecostal aesthetic practices and jazz.

Mingus recognized the importance and impact of the midweek gathering of black folks at the Holiness – Pentecostal Church at 79th and Watts in Los Angeles that he would attend with his stepmother or his friend Britt Woodman.

Of all his works, his elegy for Lester Young, "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat" (from Mingus Ah Um) has probably had the most recordings.

[citation needed][weasel words] The song has been covered by both jazz and non-jazz artists, such as Jeff Beck, Andy Summers, Eugene Chadbourne, and Bert Jansch and John Renbourn with and without Pentangle.

New York Ska Jazz Ensemble has done a cover of Mingus's "Haitian Fight Song", as have the British folk rock group Pentangle and others.