CHARLES MINGUS

NPR: Charles Mingus contained multitudes, but his native language was protest

May 1, 2022 Shannon Manning

A bit later, somebody called in a bomb threat, prompting authorities to start evacuating people from the hall. Mingus, alone among his cohort, refused to budge. "Racism planted the bomb, but racists ain't strong enough to kill this music," he barked at a police captain. "If I'm going to die, I'm ready. But I'm going out playing 'Sophisticated Lady.' " And with that, he started into Ellington's ageless ballad, turning it into a solo rumination as everyone else filed out of the building. New Yorker writer Claudia Roth Pierpont has recalled that it also "became a protest song, as the performance just kept going on and on and getting hotter. In the street, Ellington stood in the waiting crowd just beyond the theatre's open doors, smiling."

Nate Chinen

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