Over the next two years, the family moved to Atlanta, Washington, DC, and then Raleigh, North Carolina,[3][4][5] as Mugge's father finished his dissertation on Black Migration in the South[6] and began a career in state and federal government.
[7] Mugge attended John F. Kennedy High School in Silver Spring during its progressive period of the mid-1960s where he was encouraged to write poetry, perform in rock bands, compose a musical comedy, and publish an underground newspaper and yearbook.
[10][11][12] He then spent one year as a grad assistant and MFA candidate in Temple University's Documentary Filmmaking program but left without finishing in order to pursue his career.
[15] Other influences on his work (whether evident or not) included Ken Russell's passionate portraits of artists, dancers, and composers for the BBC, the surreal animation of Max and Dave Fleischer, the kaleidoscopic choreography of Busby Berkeley, the intimate documentaries of D.A.
[15][16] For approximately four decades, Mugge has worked as an independent producer-director-writer-editor, obtaining financing for his film and television projects from a wide variety of national and international funders.
[8] From 1976 through 2003, he was based in the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania area[13] where he produced many feature-length documentaries, most of them music-related,[17] for Britain's Channel 4 Television, BMG Video, Starz Entertainment Group, state governments, and assorted others.
[6][18] Robert Mugge's first documentary, directed in 1972 on a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities while he was a student at UMBC, was Frostburg, a 50-minute portrait of an Appalachian mining town in western Maryland.
[17] In 1986, with funding from Britain's Channel 4, Japan's Yomiuri Shimbun, Fantasy Records, and others, he directed Saxophone Colossus, a 101-minute portrait of jazz great Sonny Rollins.
[2][3] In 1992, with funding from BMG Video and others, he directed Pride And Joy: The Story Of Alligator Records, a portrait of Bruce Iglauer's contemporary blues label.
[23] In 1993/1994, with funding again from BMG Video and others, he directed three films simultaneously: the 101-minute Gather At The River: A Bluegrass Celebration;[5] the 71-minute The Kingdom Of Zydeco;[4] and the 86-minute True Believers: The Musical Family Of Rounder Records.
In 2004/2005, while working for MPB's Foundation for Public Broadcasting in Mississippi, he directed Blues Divas, a 2-hour film and 8-hour TV series starring Morgan Freeman, Odetta, Mavis Staples, and many others.