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Rating: 
Summary: More about Mingus
Review: An important contribution to the existing material about the great jazz composer/bassist. I give the book a medium rating because it can't seem to decide what it wants to be -- a love story, a "portait of the artist as a dying man," or collected anecdotes about a master musician and enormous personality. My bias is that I was hoping for the latter. There's stuff here about Mingus that you won't get anywhere else because it's written by his soulmate. Sue Mingus may tell us a little bit more about herself and her background than music aficianados may want to know, but she is a very good writer and has quite a story to tell.
Rating:
Summary: More about Mingus
Review: An important contribution to the existing material about the great jazz composer/bassist. I give the book a medium rating because it can't seem to decide what it wants to be -- a love story, a "portait of the artist as a dying man," or collected anecdotes about a master musician and enormous personality. My bias is that I was hoping for the latter. There's stuff here about Mingus that you won't get anywhere else because it's written by his soulmate. Sue Mingus may tell us a little bit more about herself and her background than music aficianados may want to know, but she is a very good writer and has quite a story to tell.
Rating: 
Summary: On the Money
Review: Exquisitely written, Sue Mingus has achieved what many did not think was possible. She's exposed us to Charles Mingus's world - his genius, torment and raw emotions in all their complexity, written with love, empathy and unsparing honesty. She's also delved into her own beginnings, family relationships, tumultuous marriage to Charles, and so much more. To me, her writing is like poetry but strikes at the core of all she covers. My only criticism is that this book didn't go on for another 266 pages!!
Rating:
Summary: A Multi-Level Masterpiece
Review: Exquisitely written, Sue Mingus has achieved what many did not think was possible. She's exposed us to Charles Mingus's world - his genius, torment and raw emotions in all their complexity, written with love, empathy and unsparing honesty. She's also delved into her own beginnings, family relationships, tumultuous marriage to Charles, and so much more. To me, her writing is like poetry but strikes at the core of all she covers. My only criticism is that this book didn't go on for another 266 pages!!
Rating:
Summary: This is a great book !
Review: I am glad Sue Mingus wrote and published this book. After personally meeting her briefly in Australia in January 2002, a chance encounter on a tennis tournament during Mingus Big Band tour, I can relate the book to the author. And thanks to the book, I can relate better to Mingus himself and to his music. I saw him only once in a European concert in 1972. I was a young man then and could not understand much of what was performed. My appreciation of his music has being growing ever since. This is a great book ! But it is too short. I deliberately read it slowly, several pages every night, in order to enjoy it more and to give some time perspective to Sue's and Charles's life together. It is not only about Charles, it is about Sue as well. Also, Sue Mingus provides in the book the best description of Mingus music that I ever encountered:
"Any musician will tell you that Mingus music requires multiple skills. ... You need to read like a classical player, improvise like a jazz musician, play well in the ensemble, and, on top of everything else, have a personality."
That, in simple terms explains why the music of Charles Mingus will still be played, or at least listened to, in 100 years from now.
Rating:
Summary: This is a great book !
Review: I am glad Sue Mingus wrote and published this book. After personally meeting her briefly in Australia in January 2002, a chance encounter on a tennis tournament during Mingus Big Band tour, I can relate the book to the author. And thanks to the book, I can relate better to Mingus himself and to his music. I saw him only once in a European concert in 1972. I was a young man then and could not understand much of what was performed. My appreciation of his music has being growing ever since. This is a great book ! But it is too short. I deliberately read it slowly, several pages every night, in order to enjoy it more and to give some time perspective to Sue's and Charles's life together. It is not only about Charles, it is about Sue as well. Also, Sue Mingus provides in the book the best description of Mingus music that I ever encountered:
"Any musician will tell you that Mingus music requires multiple skills. ... You need to read like a classical player, improvise like a jazz musician, play well in the ensemble, and, on top of everything else, have a personality."
That, in simple terms explains why the music of Charles Mingus will still be played, or at least listened to, in 100 years from now.
Rating:
Summary: A Truly Wonderful Read
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: Meditations on Mingus
Review: I purchased this book because I have loved the music of Charles Mingus since I first purchased Ah Um. What I expected was a breezily written collection of Mingus stories, colorful anecdotes involving gigs and musicians and glimpses of the magic of creation. And certainly there is some of that in this book - Mingus' diet foibles and paranoid fears and erratic public behaviors elicit laughter and disbelief in the reader. Mingus opinions are never tepid - Miles' voice gets lost in his later fusion era, and Coltrane became a musical preacher that never changed his sermon. Those who played completely free (Archie Shepp and Pharoah Sanders, for instance) were participating in a shuck and trying to trick both a white audience and themselves while neglecting the fact that any music has to come from an historical common place. For a man as massive in stature and appetites as Mingus, his fragility is touching. He is demanding, mercurial, and larger than life; all qualities that get clearly demonstrated by the author. There is also some material that covers Sue's upbringing in an undemonstrative household that initially seems distracting but eventually becomes appropriate to the narrative. The tense switches from past to present on occasions, as though journal entries have been inserted. However, the book is really, as advertised, a love story. Detailed at length is the Mingus household's battle with Lou Gehrig's disease, from the initial diagnosis to the increasingly desperate attempts to obtain a cure, to the heart attack that eventually takes Mingus' life. Underlying all the voodoo and the iguana blood cocktails and the wildly exploratory midnight rides through the Mexican countryside is a testament to the power of human love and kindness.
The reason I hoped this book would be a lightly written witness to Mingus is because I purchased it as something to read during the nights I am spending at the bedside of my dying father. Instead there is much that is grimly familiar here - after weeks of caregiving you find yourself not knowing what day it might be, idly speculating of ways to end a loved one's life that might look perfectly natural, wrestling with your own spiritual loneliness. Nevertheless, this is a great book for music fans in general, and Mingus fans in particular.
Rating:
Summary: On the Money
Review: Someone finally wrote a book about mingus that unlike the other biographies gives a personal insight into mingus the man and the artist. This book written by Mingus' widow kept me riveted.
Rating:
Summary: Leaves you wanting to know more...
Review: 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.
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