[Dixielandjazz] Still Married To The Music

[Steve Barbone]

CAVEAT: LONG AND NOT OKOM. About the wives of Charles Mingus and Art Pepper.
Possibly some wives/girlfriends on the DJML will relate well to this article
as will those who enjoy the musical genius of Pepper & Mingus.

BTW, the Mingus Dynasty Band, formed by Sue Mingus decades ago is still
going strong. Tom Wiggins and the Ambassadors Of new Orleans performed with
them at the Red Sea Jazz Festival in Israel last year.

Several of us jammed with them after hours in Eilat. They are extraordinary
musicians, and lots of fun to be around, especially trombonist Frank
"Kuumba" Lacy who described my playing as sounding "like Bob Wilber on
crack". <grin> He gigged with Wilber during their days together as
teachers/mentors at Rutgers University in NJ a few decades ago.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone

Still Married to the Music

NY TIMES - by FRED KAPLAN - July 29, 2007

IT¹S a happy accident that two of the most self-absorbed legends in the
history of jazz ‹ the bassist Charles Mingus and the alto saxophonist Art
Pepper ‹ married women who wound up equally absorbed in the preservation of
their legacies. The men have been dead now for a quarter-century, yet their
widows, Sue Graham Mingus and Laurie Pepper, keep unveiling major
discoveries. 

Their latest finds are three previously unreleased live recordings. ³Cornell
1964² (Blue Note) captures Mingus¹s most adventurous sextet (including Eric
Dolphy on reeds and Jaki Byard on piano) playing at Cornell University in a
concert that, until now, no jazz historian even knew about. Volumes 1 and 2
of ³Unreleased Art² (Widow¹s Taste) feature Pepper¹s most lyrical quartet,
the first volume at a concert in Abashiri, Japan, in 1981, the second at the
1982 Kool Jazz Festival in Washington, which was his final performance.

All three albums capture the musicians at mesmerizing peaks: Mingus plucking
his bass with ferocious merriment, Pepper blowing blues and ballads with a
shivering intensity, as if each song recounted his own dreams and
disappointments. ³I¹ve been itching to get the Cornell concert out for
years,² Ms. Mingus said. ³There¹s more tapes where that came from, and I
plan to release them soon too.²

Artists¹ widows have long been keepers of the flame. John Coltrane¹s final
works were assiduously controlled by his wife, Alice (who died this year).
Jackson Pollock¹s posthumous image was heavily shaped by his wife, the
artist Lee Krasner. Ernest Hemingway¹s widow, Mary, released unfinished
works and sued those who tried to publish others. But few widows have
devoted themselves as persistently as Ms. Mingus and Ms. Pepper.

³It takes an obsessive personality to do this, and that¹s what I am,² Ms.
Pepper said with a laugh. Ms. Mingus admits to a passion for ³the value of
excess, of being blinded by something that matters.²

Sue Graham was a model, indie-film actress and Italian translator when a
friend took her to see Mingus play at the Five Spot, a Bowery jazz club, in
July 1964 (a few months after the Cornell concert). ³I knew nothing about
jazz at the time,² she said, sitting in the Midtown apartment that she and
Mingus shared toward the end of his life. His piano (which she plays) takes
up much of the living room. His bass leans in a corner. Framed sheets of his
handwritten scores adorn several walls.

Through most of their 15 years together she published an alternative
newspaper and only occasionally got involved in his career. That changed in
1979, after Mingus died of Lou Gehrig¹s disease at 56. ³Somebody was
planning a Mingus tribute concert at Carnegie Hall,² she recalled. ³I put
together a band called Mingus Dynasty by looking on the back of his albums
and calling people who had played on them. I had no idea what I was doing.²

The group went over well, and she took it on the road. She expanded it to
the 14-piece Mingus Big Band, which the manager of Fez ‹ a club in the
basement of Time Cafe in Greenwich Village ‹ hired to play every Tuesday
night. When Fez closed, she moved the band uptown to Iridium, where it still
alternates with a revamped 7-piece Mingus Dynasty and a 10-piece Mingus
Orchestra, all devoted to playing her husband¹s compositions.

Ms. Mingus commissions arrangements, produces the bands¹ CDs (10 so far),
manages their tours, picks the musicians for each gig (rotating among 100,
many of whom were in grade school when Mingus lived) and often selects which
songs they play.

It took her a while to grow into her part. During an early road trip a few
months after Mingus died, she overheard band members making fun of her
inexperience. ³It hurt, but I was an outsider,² she said. ³I¹m not a jazz
musician, yet here I was telling seasoned jazz musicians things like,
ŒPlease make your solo shorter.¹ But I soon realized that I did have one
power ‹ I paid the checks. And there was the power of Charles¹s music, which
has an openness that forces musicians to free themselves, and they
appreciated that.²

The Cornell tapes were discovered 20 years ago by Ed Michel, then a producer
at Fantasy Records, who while putting together a 12-CD box set of Mingus
recordings from the 1950s came across the reels in the Fantasy vaults. He
urged Ralph Kaffel, Fantasy¹s president at the time, to release the tapes as
a separate CD. ³I said: ŒThis is the real deal. There¹s nothing better,¹ ²
Mr. Michel recalled in a phone interview. ³But Ralph waved me off.²

Mr. Kaffel, reached by phone in California, explained, ³I¹d been trying
unsuccessfully to get Sue to sell me the rights to the tapes of a Mingus
concert at Monterey, so I didn¹t want to waste my time trying again with the
Cornell tapes.²

Mr. Michel sent the tapes to Ms. Mingus. At the time she was busy producing
the concert tour for ³Epitaph,² a 500-page Mingus jazz symphony that had
recently been unearthed, so she stored them with Nesuhi Ertegun, an old
friend and a top executive at Atlantic Records. He died soon after, and the
tapes couldn¹t be found. After a frantic search, an assistant of Mr.
Ertegun¹s located them in a mislabeled box. Then Ms. Mingus lost them again,
found them again, and finally arranged for Blue Note to release them as a
two-CD set to coincide with what would have been Mingus¹s 85th birthday.

³It¹s all been serendipitous,² she said. ³Not just the tapes but everything
that¹s happened. Either that or it¹s all been orchestrated by Charles from
the beyond.² She laughed. ³He was prescient. He¹d say he was receiving
messages from the spheres, that the music was waiting for his fingers when
he went to the piano.²

Now 77 Ms. Mingus is gradually turning over direction of the bands to
selected musicians. Recently she signed with Ted Kurland Associates, a major
booking firm, to take control of their tours. ³The shame is, you finally
learn everything, then you die,² she said with a shrug. ³The important thing
is, if I walked away today, all of this would survive.²

Laurie Miller grew up listening to her uncle¹s collection of jazz records.
She briefly studied jazz singing at Westlake College (she dropped out, she
said, after realizing she wasn¹t the next Billie Holiday) and of course had
heard of Art Pepper, who in the early 1950s consistently placed second to
Charlie Parker in the polls for best alto saxophonist.

She was a newspaper photographer when they met in 1969 at Synanon, the drug
treatment center in Santa Monica, Calif. She had checked in to get off pills
and alcohol; he entered to avoid getting sent back to San Quentin prison,
where he had spent years locked up on drug charges. While at Synanon, Pepper
entertained her with wild stories about his life.

³I became obsessed with the idea of turning these stories into a book,² Ms.
Pepper recalled over brunch at a Midtown Manhattan restaurant during a
recent visit from her home in Los Angeles. ³At the time he had no career. I
had no interest in helping him restart one.²

They left Synanon and moved in together in 1972. For the next several years
she cajoled him into speaking into her tape recorder and then pieced
together his stories. The result was the harrowing autobiography ³Straight
Life,² published in 1979. During the process, in 1976, they were married,
and Pepper returned to playing jazz after a 15-year absence.

³Only then did I get caught up in the music,² Ms. Pepper said. ³Every time
he did a gig, I would sit there in the audience or at the sound board and
say, ŒThis is why I¹m doing this.¹ The glory of the music was overwhelming.
It was like a religious experience. I looked at the band on the stage, these
guys that I knew, and realized they¹d become gods.²

Pepper remained an unrepentant addict, no longer shooting heroin but
snorting cocaine on top of his methadone. Yet for the last six years of his
life he toured almost constantly and recorded more than 40 albums. His wife
booked the gigs, negotiated contracts, handled the money and went with him
everywhere. ³Art couldn¹t organize anything except a drug buy,² she said,
rolling her eyes. ³Even that he did awkwardly.²

At one point he made her buy a tape-recorder and told her, ³Record me every
chance you get, so you¹ll have something after I¹m gone.² He died in 1982 ‹
like Mingus at 56 ‹ from liver disease and a slew of other ailments.

³After Art died, I was completely broke,² Ms. Pepper said. She published his
music, produced a major box set of reissues, sold some of the tapes she had
made ‹ and made a living.)

Last fall, at 66, she started her own label, Widow¹s Taste, after an editor
from Travel & Leisure magazine called. He was writing an article about
Abashiri and had heard that Pepper once played there. ³Yes,² she replied,
³I¹m about to release a recording of that concert.² In fact she wasn¹t. ³At
least I wasn¹t until that moment,² she recalled, laughing. ³But I figured if
I did, that magazine would give it good publicity.²

She never heard from the editor again but went ahead with the CD. She
followed up with the Washington concert ‹ she obtained those tapes from
Voice of America, which had recorded it ‹ and plans to release many more
from her vast archive.

³It sounds kind of woo-woo,² Ms. Pepper said, ³but there¹s a part of me
that¹s forever connected to Art. He¹s my muse. He made me feel like
somebody, and he still does.²