While the book is supposedly a fake book for musicians, it includes trio and quartet recordings by key members of the Mingus big band including Seamus Blake, the outstanding Thelonius Monk Award-winning saxophonist who doesn't yet have his own CD out. The two CDs is an excellent introduction to the music of Monk and holds up well on its own. Listen and enjoy and don't worry if you are NOT a musician.

An must-own for jazz players and Mingus fans. It's all here- stories behind the tunes, accurate transciptions (some in Mingus' hand) and plenty of great trivia, like the Mingus comic book promoting his anti-bootlegging project, and even his booklet on toilet training a cat. But mostly there's the music.

A very useful book for jazz musicians and a must for Mingus fans. This book is one of my most frequently referred-to jazz texts. The book is filled with information on most of Mingus' best-known works. It provides accurate transcriptions of works that are very often printed inaccurately (such as Goodbye Pork Pie Hat and Reincarnation of a Love Bird). In addition to the wealth of lead sheets, there are also many quotations from the master about each of the tunes, a short biography, and two great writings from the Ming himself. I enthusiastically recommend this book to all jazz musicians interested in Mingus' great music.

Janet Coleman and Al Young were University of Michigan English graduate students when they met Charles MINGUS in the late 1950's. In this slim volume, each writes separate but intertwined memoirs about their relationship as friend, editor, and fan with the great bassist/composer/bandleader. Their memories are fond, warm, personal, and humorous; their affection and something like awe are evident throughout the book.

This was the period of such Mingus works as "Pithecanthropus Erectus" and "Ah Um." Both Coleman and Young followed Mingus to New York City, where at clubs like the Bohemia, Mingus' "Jazz Workshops" (people pay to hear us practice), musicians such as Jacki Byard, Dannie Richmond, Jimmy Knepper, Jackie McLean followed Mingus' spontaneously combusting arrangements. We get a glimpse of Mingus the musician, the writer, and general connoisseur of life. As Coleman puts it, I knew Mingus during "his Shotgun, Bicycle, Camera, Witchcraft, Cuban Cigar, and Juice Bar periods, and was familiar with his Afro, Egyptian, English banker, Abercrombie and Fitch, Sanford and Son, and ski bunny costumes. I ate his chicken and dumplings, kidneys and brandy, popcorn and garlic . . . " There are several good clues to the puzzle of Mingus' autobiography "Beneath the Underdog," a work which Coleman, among others, helped edit. I recommend reading "Mingus/Mingus" before tackling his Joycean autobiography.

We also see the political Mingus, rightly protesting the treatment of black musicians, as well as racism and militarism generally. After all, this is the genius who wrote such pieces as "Oh, Lord, Don't Let Them Drop That Atomic Bomb on Me (with the great line, "don't drop it, bebop it"), "Remember Rockefeller at Attica," and the great "Fables of Faubus," which courageously lambasted the segregationist governor. Cole's memoir is perhaps the more literary of the two (Coleman is a writer), and gives us a very personal view of Mingus' profound effect. Coleman may have been the closer friend and she offers some rarely heard and often humorous anecdotes. Both Coleman and Young knew Mingus for more than 20 years, and the book is rich with material recalling Mingus and the social and creative forces of the period: For example, Mingus played Genghis Kahn in a "psychedelic Western" written by Coleman's husband and filmed at Timothy Leary's ranch. Mingus criticizes Leary's approach: "You can't improvise on nothin', man. You gotta improvise on something." The book is filled with Mingus' humor and anger and appetites; his idealism and his realism. A titan of a man and at times, a study in contrasts, Mingus the subject is as compelling as the music he composed. (No index, but you get Mingus' recipe for eggnog!) Highly recommended, I just wish there were more to read! Highly recommended for fans of Mingus, jazz and the sociopolitical climate of the era.

the lady spends too much time writing about herself and her parents, etc. I didn't buy the book to read about her, i bought it to read about a jazz great. She should have read Straight Life, the book put together by Art Pepper's wife (to see how it's done), before sitting down to write about Mingus.

She fails to get inside the artist's head, what made him tick, etc. I read the first two thirds and put it down. If you want an indepth book on Charles Mingus I suggest you look elsewhere.

I just finished this gem of a book and wonder why it is buried under Music
Biographies in bookstores rather than acknowledging it for what it claims
to be, a love story. Although rich with unique insights into the
incomparable Charles Mingus, this is not essentially biography but rather a story of opposites who turn out to be not so opposite, who share the profound and conflicting challenges of what it means to be human, which includes every one of us.

This book is a must-read for fans of Charles Mingus. Here you get first-hand accounts of what it was like living with and dealing with Mingus's temperament, exaggerated lifestyle, and unique musical talents.

A majority of the book deals with Charles's last few years of life struggling to deal with ALS and going through a serious of desperate third-world medical practices to achieve a "miracle cure" which sadly never came.

All the while Sue Mingus's surprisingly fresh and concise prose will carry you through each chapter, salivating for more of Charles's sudden bouts of rage and humor, and then equally strong showings of compassion toward his family as he faces the "chill of death" head-on.

All in all a unique insight into one of Jazz's greatest composers.

If you are a fan of Charles Mingus' music, you will certainly enjoy this wonderfully bombastic character in his autobiography. His story has his life woven in with some fictionalized characters and segments "jazzed" in, which adds quite a peculiar nature to his work. However, you will never guess what segments are true and which aren't. The work is very peculiar as an autobiography, revealing more the conversations and the feelings he underwent through his travels as opposed to a straight narrative from beginning to end. His work goes through a path of flashbacks and such, with a major emphasis on women (esp. his lovers), the road, and his jazz music. The interesting people he meets in his travels are well interweaved, and really make the story. My only criticism is when this "jazz" story starts to ramble out into peculiar segments which seem to lose your attention. The work tends to well reflect the chaotic nature of this genius. It is also a treat to listen to his music while reading... One of the many pleasures I've undertaken in. Highly recommended reading.

In the uncompromisingly self-mythologizing "Beneath the Underdog", Charles Mingus reveals himself to be a slave to his passions, namely music and sex, with the emphasis on the former. Mingus extrudes a complicated portrait of himself as a virtuoso musician, pimp, orgiast, philosopher - and all these facets might come out in the same paragraph. His no-holds-barred, occasionally chaotic style reflects his music nearly perfectly, which makes this an essential read for even a casual fan of his music. Anyone looking for a conventional, "and then I wrote" sort of autobiography should look elsewhere, but those looking for the development of the personality that informed one of the singular careers in the history of any sort of art will find a lot to enjoy here.

I didn't really know what to expect when I opened this book. It was the first time that I've opened a musician's autobiography, and I thought it might have an examination of how he developed his style, how did he decide to play the instrument, etc. This book was a good surprise. Mingus is hardly focusing the music, though it is always there, and choosing to tell us about everything that's around it. It seems as if he knows that the reader is probably familiar with his music, and is trying to make us understand WHY his music is as it is, and it's a smart move. The autobiography sort of completes the music, adding a missing half to it, making me understand Mingus the man, and through it understand better Mingus the artist.

The book is written wonderfully, Mingus' writing is brilliant, and the story sweeps you with him and you thank God for it being such a small book or you might've missing a month from reading it rather than a day. Some things are not totally clear, and some things are not explained, but yet, it is a great book, deals with love, crime, blacks and whites, jazz, madness, and the conclusion, which is expressed in the title, that love, for friends, women or for music is the only thing that's really important, and if you dig it, you could find happiness.

Listen to his music while you are reading this book. It will help you understand what is going on. Mingus paints a self-portrait which impresses the reader with it's brilliant colors, distorted proportions and powerful images. Mingus shares with us the events, people and impressions in his life which matterd to him. This book is compelling, humorous, disturbing and at times disonant. Just like his greatest music. Unlike his music, however, this is not a great literary work. The value of this book is not in the literature, but the stature of the author. "Beneath the Underdog..." is a view into the soul of the artist rather than a narrative of the life of the man. Highly recommended for those who are prepared to accept Mingus on his own terms

Charles Saxe, Chicago, Illinois

What do you want from this Charles Mingus biography?

1. A depiction of Mingus the man, including a psychological and/or anecdotal interpretation of his character?

There's not a lot of that here. Although I will say that this falls into the category of what I call "John Bonham Biographies", named for the Led Zeppelin drummer who came off as a manic-depressive Jekyl and Hyde in the book "Hammer of the Gods". Another good example of this is humourist Michael O'Donoghue in Dennis Perrin's bio "Mr. Mike". Mingus, in Priestley's hands, is an extreme man. He is either a soulful genius, or a tyrannical, violent, out-of-control maniac. It always strikes me as a road too easily traveled by the biographer, and is thus distracting.

2. A theoretical explanation of Mingus' music, with the intent of illustrating why he casts such a powerful shadow over the jazz world (as unparalleled bassist *and* composer)?

There's oodles of that here. Unfortunately, it leaves very little room for the layman to join the party. At times the book reads like an advanced textbook on modern jazz theory. I guess I should have taken the title of the book -- "A Critical Biography" -- a little more seriously. Also, there are references made to Mingus quoting other songs within his own, which further baffled me, as it would anyone but the most knowledgeable jazz historian. And when he tries to determine Mingus' place in music history, Priestley isn't afraid to let the hyperbole fly. Like when he implies that rock 'n' roll is an indirect descendant from a relationship between Alexis Korner and Mingus in London. Or an attempt to elevate Mingus' jazz as an artform, when compared to the vacuous pop of the mid-1960s, which lacks credibility because the vacuous being compared to is the (relatively) sophisticated music of the Beatles! Or an absurd claim that a disastrous concert Mingus put on at the Town Hall in New York "caused more fallout than the almost simultaneous Cuban Missile Crisis"! These and other arguments are handled sloppily at best, and do a disservice to Mingus himself.

3. An explanation/refutation of Mingus' fantastic semi-autobiography "Beneath the Underdog"?

You're in luck, because at times it feels like Priestley has a copy of Mingus' book beside him as he writes, ticking off fact after fact as it is corrected or explained here. Which might have been helpful had I read "Beneath the Underdog", but I haven't. And now don't need to. He should have just published a version of "The Annotated Beneath the Underdog", and left the biography writing to someone else with an original sense of narrative.

So just be sure you know what your goals are when confronting this work. Jazzheads and Mingus-freaks, you're welcome to join the party. Casual jazz fans and Mingus admirers (of which I am one), step lightly. Fans of biography, do yourself a favour and pass on by. Oh, and I almost forgot. This book has the tackiest, creepiest, and most irresponsible closing line of any book I have ever read. I just hope that Dannie Richmond (drummer and frequent Mingus band member) hasn't seen it.

This is a slightly disappointing, but still very good biography of one of the greatest jazz composers and probably its top bassist. Mingus, using a mixture of jazz, blues, church music, European impressionism and march music, and folk, wrote some of the most outstanding music of the 20th century. A man of wide-ranging, complicated emotions, lionesque appetites, and varied intellectual and creative pursuits, this titan of modern music is a fascinating biographical subject.

However, Brian Priestley does not capture the full measure of the man and his music. I'm not sure what the subtitle "A Critical Biography" is meant to convey, but there is not enough musical criticism. Particularly in the second half of the book, Priestley resorts to an "and then he wrote" approach, painstakingly detailing every new composition or derivative, and every new musician in the ever-changing Mingus ensemble. There is musical analysis, but often it is more technical than critical. Referring to a song on "East Coasting" Priestley writes, "it incorporates passages of G minor twelve-bar blues only slightly different from the opening of 'Eulogy' (Im/bVImaj\bII7\V7 instead of Im|bVImaj7\IIm7b5\v7)." The first part of this sentence is the more revealing: "It is a tribute to Mingus' maturing methodology that ideas are shown to be capable of repetition and rearrangement."

This does not go far enough, though. Why did Mingus "cross-breed" so many of his works, as Priestley notes but never really examines. The reasons (aesthetic, psychological--practical in the case of "Slop") for the similarities among some works (e.g., "Better Get Hit Into Yo Soul", "Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting", "Slop," and other compositions is never really explored. Were Mingus' edits across versions and his reworking of similar themes an attempt to forge a new "traditional" folk music within a mere two decades? (Perhaps this hypothesis is off, but I would have preferred that Priestley write a more encompassing analysis of both the whole of Mingus' work and its constituent parts.)

Conversely, we may praise the author for not indulging in psycho-biography, for including extensive well-documented quotes from Mingus as well as other musicians, and for describing enough on-stage Mingus behavior to get a sense of his personality. One might want to read the excellent though brief "Mingus/Mingus: Two Memoirs" for a better look at the offstage Mingus and his relationships with non-musicians.

The strength of the book is the extensive documentation of the entire Mingus discography, the ever shifting lineups, and both the recorded and non-recorded performances. This must have been a labor of love, as Priestley gives the definitive record of Mingus' output and how the performances map onto the different albums. The appendices include musical notations of ten (!) bass excerpts, a second-by-second structural analysis of "The Black Saint...,"and notes to all citations in the book. This is invaluable for the Mingus fan.

Priestley's writing can be awkward, "She it was who wrote....," and strained "Any minimally serious astrological guide will describe the typical Taurean as having outsized physical appetites; what is perhaps even more relevant to Mingus is the ability to treat extramarital affairs (like the ice-cream [sic] of which he was so fond) as a dessert complementing, but in no way threatening, any long-established relationship."

Despite the reservations noted above, I can recommend this book as a comprehensive resource for Mingus fans. It also includes enough personal information and sympathy (through interview excerpts with Mingus and others) that one begins to appreciate his complexities. There are a few clues to his Joycean autobiography, "Beneath the Underdog," and one gets a good sense of the racial tensions and injustices battled by Mingus. Finally, judging from the reviews of the other major Mingus biography, "Myself When I Am Real," this is the best book currently available. It will be enhanced, however, if read with the aforementioned autobiography (as perplexing as it is) and "Mingus/Mingus," as well as the brief but excellent critiques in "The Penguin Guide to Jazz." Includes 25 black and white photos, notes, appendices, and an extensive index.

The reviewer from LA makes this book sound like a cheesy celebrity bio. Nothing could be further from the truth. Priestly has written a carefully detailed history of Mingus's musical life. There's an effort to make sense out of Mingus's wild autobiography Beneath the Underdog, and his personal life is discussed, as it should be, but Mingus's accomlishments and his place in jazz history are the main focus of this book. This is a first rate jazz biography.

Was it David Sedaris (author of Me Talk Pretty One day) that said he won't date anyone who uses the word Zeitgeist? Too many times this word gets used in this book. I think this book still deserves to be read, especially along with _Beneath the underdog_ written by Mingus himself. I thought in terms of Jazz history, this book does better than _Miles_ for example. This kind of book is written out of love, and we should be thankful for Mr. Santoro's efforts. I did not know much about Mingus' life, and it gives me different insight into his world when I listen to his music now.

I am not a great reader and I have never been a great fan of jazz, but my friend gave me this book for my birthday and I couldn't put it down. It may not appear to be a typical biography; it is not a straight story that runs on for 400 pages. It has many twists and turns that help you examine the real Mingus, not just his music or what was in the papers. Santoro examines Mingus's life from every view imaginable, he doesn't hold anything back. Some of the chapters may drone on a bit but through it all Santoro projects Mingus as what he was, a human being. I give the book five stars and encourage anyone who enjoys music to read it.

Contrary to the other reviewers, I thought that this was an excellent book. The author places Mingus in the context of the pop culture of the 1940's through the first half of the 1970's. He relates Mingus's life to other major jazz musicians, the Beat generation poets and icons, popular music, the chi chi movers and shakers, big city life, jazz clubs, fusion, wives, jazz festivals, periods of violent acting out and self destruction, etc. This book is a cultural history (probably why the other critics didn't like it) of the middle of the 20th century. He does make a few obvious errors. For example, the distance from Monterey to Berkeley is about half of the 200 miles he maintains. It's not Camarillo State Prison, but Camarillo State Hospital where Parker was hospitalized (a big difference). He was about a year off when talking about the release of Kind of Blue. He also overworked the term "noodling". On the other hand, if you are interested in jazz history in the context of the middle of the 20th century and a very interesting look a Mingus's life, this is a great place to start.