Myself When I Am Real: The Life and Music of Charles Mingus

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.

Santoro has written an intimate portrait filled with all the color and detail that Mingus brought to his music. Using interviews with musicians, friends, relatives, ex-wives and business associates as a springboard, Santoro swings,bops, and tears into the music and soul of one of jazzes great composers and inovators. This well researched book allows you to feel the music as you meet Ellington, Dizzy, Monk, Byrd and scores of others that helped create modern jazz. With references to Ginsburg, Kerouk, Leary and Orson Wells, Santoro leads us into the beat culture and its influence on Mingus, jazz and American culture. With clarity he allows us to see a black man in American music and all the twisted, convoluted paths that can lead to greatness. This is Mingus at his best and worst. An American story that mirrors us all.

The complex genius of Charles Mingus gets his due in Gene Santoro's new book. Gene's passion ( for the music) and his compassion (for the man) shine through in this engrossing biography which also provides a commentary on race, culture and music in America during the 40's 50's and 60's. While reading this detailed, well-researched book, I had a sense of Mingus as a deep character who was multifaceted and in some ways, way ahead of his time. His fascination with Eastern philosophy and spirtuality, his visionary-ness, his relationships with jazz colleagues, women, his children -- all defy being put into a 'neat little box with a neat little wrapper' -- he defies categorization. From the childhood years in Los Angeles through music scenes, financial ups and downs, marriages, emotional breakdowns, the last days of writing music from a wheelchair (due to muscle wasting from 'Lou Gehrigs' disease) -- to the final spread of MIngus' ashes over the Ganges River by his wife, Sue -- it's a fascinating story. Also, well-written and well-researched. I enjoyed this book and would recommend it.

Like a mountain that seems to grow larger the further away you travel from it, so grows Charles Mingus--man, musician, composer, figure--as time passes. Clearly, as Santoro claims, he was one of the seminal figures in American music of the last fifty years. This book relentlessly places him is the context of the world swirling around him and captures the interactive relation between the energy that is history and the energy that was Mingus. Santoro's research seems exhaustive without ever exhausting the reader and his opinions of Mingus' music are right on (unlike that other biography, this one gets it that "The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady" is a major work in jazz history). All in all, an excellent opportunity for a Mingus neo-phyte to start seeing this hugely important figure for the giant he was and also for those, like me, who think of Charles as a mountain to see the intricate ledges and cliffs and long vistas even more clearly.

This is a great biography. Filled with new information and many interviews with musicians, friends and ex wives this book shows a real look at the music, mind , and beliefs of Charles Mingus. It offers a lot of new details regarding concert performances and even goes as far as to releate actual amounts of money earned for concerts, recording sessions and records. The reader gets a chance to really go inside the mind and music of Mingus and get a feel for how he composed and lived his life. Highly Recommended.