[Dixielandjazz] Mile-or-Mo Bird / Charlie Mingus

[Paige VanVorst]

What didn't get mentioned in the discussion of Albert Ammons' record of Mile-or-Mo-Bird Rag is the fact that the title is probably just a corruption of the actual name of the tune, which is Milenberg Joys. Either the A&R man didn't understand the title or the band used a similar name so they could copyright it themselves. 

Charles Mingus' roots go pretty far back in jazz- his uncle, Fess Williams, was a prominent bandleader in both NY and Chgo and when his beloved nephew was interested in music he sent him for lessons to one of his associates, Foots Thomas, a longtime Jelly Roll Morton sideman then running a music school in Harlem. When young Mingus moved to LA in the 40s one of his first jobs was with the Barney Bigard Quartet. Kid Ory always told people he used to play the bass with Bigard while he was getting back into music. Someone asked Barney about that and he said, "Why would I let Kid Ory play the bass? I had Charles Mingus!" 
One Mingus biography I read said that one of Mingus' goals in life was to be like Jelly Roll Morton. I guess he succeeded, as people are still arguing about him twenty years after his death, much as Morton has remained an object of contoversy more than sixty years after his demise.