Charles Mingus is widely considered  the greatest bass-playing leader/composer in jazz.  He was born on a military base in Nogales, Arizona in 1922 and raised in Watts, California, his earliest musical influences came from the church-- choir and group singing. He first tried to learn the trombone at size and cello a little later, but switched to studying double bass and composition for five years with H. Rheinshagen, principal bassist of the New York Philharmonic, and compositional techniques with the legendary Lloyd Reese) while being heavyly influenced by vernacular music from many great jazz masters, first-hand.

Being a bass prodigy, Mingus performed with Kid Ory in Barney Bigard's group in 1942 and went on the road with Louis Armstrong the following year. Later he working with the Lionel Hampton band in 1947-48. He eventually settled in New York and played and recorded with many famous musicians of the 1950's -- Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Bud Powell, Art Tatum and Duke Ellington. Mingus quickly became one of the few bassiets to become a leader among the musician. In the  the mid-50's he had formed his own publishing and recording companies Debut Records in partnership with his then-wife Celia and Roach in 1952, seeing to it that the label recorded a wide variety of jazz from bebop to experimental music until its demise in 1957. He also founded the "Jazz Workshop," a groupwhich enabled young composers to have their new works performed in concert and on recordings.

Mingus soon found himself at the forefront of the avant-garde. Some of characteristics of Mingus of the time includes mixing in abrasive dissonances and abrupt changes in meter and tempo, introducing tremendously exhilarating accelerations and greatly accelerrated the development of the music. By the mid-1950s, he had worked out a new way of getting his unconventional visions across, dictating the parts to his musicians while allowing plenty of room for the players' own musical personalities and ideas. During this period he made numberous recordings including: Pithecanthropus Erectus, The Clown, Tijuana Moods, Mingus Dynasty, Mingus Ah Um, The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady, Cumbia and Jazz Fusion, Let My Children Hear Music. And it was with the release of Pithecanthropus Erectus that Mingus had distinguished himself as a composer and leader.

He irascible and demanding nature made himself a lot of enemies along the way, causing sometimes violent confrontations on and off the bandstand. A big man physically, he used his bulk as a weapon of intimidation, and he was not above halting concerts to chew out inattentive audiences or errant sidemen, even cashiering a musician now and then on the spot. At one of his concerts in Philadephia -- and a memorial to a dead colleague at that -- he broke up the show by slamming the piano lid down, nearly smashing his pianist's hands, and then punched trombonist Jimmy Knepper in the mouth. But he could be at time, as is evident in some of his music.

Mingus felt the lash of racial prejudice very intensely. When combined with the frustrations of making it in the music business on his own terms, he let out his frustration thru his music: some of his bizarre titles were political in nature, such as "Fables of Faubus" (referring to the Arkansas governor who tried to keep Little Rock schools segregated), "Oh Lord, Don't Let Them Drop That Atomic Bomb On Me" or "Remember Rockefeller at Attica." But he could humorous, the most notable example was "If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger, There'd Be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats" (later shortened to "Gunslinging Bird").

On top of this, Mingus was constantly in financial trouble that nearly undermined his sanity in the 1960s. He tried to compete with the Newport festivals by organizing his own Jazz Artists Guild in 1960 that purported to give musicians more control over their work, but that collapsed. Another, shorter-lived recording venture was Charles Mingus Records which suvived for barely a year, from 1964-65; the failure to find a publisher for his autobiography Beneath the Underdog, and other setbacks broke his bank account and his spirit. He quit music almost entirely from 1966 until 1969, resuming performances in June 1969 only because he desperately needed money.

By early 70s, however, things start to go his way. In 1971 Mingus was awarded the Slee Chair of Music and spent a semester teaching composition at the State University of New York at Buffalo. In the same year his autobiography, Beneath the Underdog, was published by Knopf, later his Debut masters was purchased by Fantasy.  In 1972 he also re-signed with Columbia Records. His music was performed frequently by ballet companies, and Alvin Ailey choreographed an hour program called "The Mingus Dances" during a 1972 collaboration with the Robert Joffrey Ballet Company. He toured extensively throughout Europe, Japan, Canada, South America and the United States until the end of 1977 when he was diagnosed with Amyotropic Lateral Sclerosisas, a rare nerve disease, . He was confined to a  wheelchair, and although he was no longer able to write music on paper or compose at the piano, his last works
were sung into a tape recorder. He died in Mexico on January 5, 1979. Both New York City and Washington, D.C. honored him posthumously with a "Charles Mingus Day."

After his death, the National Endowment for the Arts provided grants for a Mingus foundation called "Let My Children Hear Music" which catalogued all of Mingus' works.The Library of Congress also has acquired the entire collection of Mingus musical scores and memorabilia, a first for American jazz composition. Since his death, Mingus' importance and fame increased remarkably, thanks in large part to the determined efforts of Sue Mingus, his widow. A posthumous repertory group, Mingus Dynasty, was formed almost immediately after his death. In 1991 Mingus Big Band was formed, which has resurrected many of Mingus' most challenging scores. Mingus' masterwork, "Epitaph," was also discovered. With the help of a grant from the Ford Foundation,it was conducted by Gunther Schuller, in a concert produced by Sue Mingus at Alice Tully Hall on June 3, 1989, ten years after Mingus' death.