I'd heard of jazz bass player Charles Mingus; had some albums with him where he played as part of various jazz ensembles, but never really paid that much attention to the man or his work.
The bass fiddle is for the real jazz afficianado. For most of us, the instrument provides the deep rhythmic background notes of jazz, while the trumpet and trombone stars set the music alight.
Well, Charles Mingus: Triumph of the Underdog sets that pretty ignorant concept straight. The documentary shows the awesome musicianship of Charlie Mingus. More interestingly, it shows how he spread that musicianship across an impressively wide canvas. He weaved thematically through all schools of jazz, from New Orleans to bop, with gospel music on the side. And he was heavily influenced by Western contemporary classical music - this was fusion of the highest order.
He assembled and led jazz orchestras which explored all these themes - and when we hear the music laid down in the 1950s and early 1960s, we can hear how strongly he influenced such later musical experimenters as Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart.
He was in some ways a bitter man. His Chinese, Swedish and African genes meant that he was never fully accepted in White American society. And he was too light to be fully accepted in Black America. The bitterness can be understood.
The documentary shows him to be irascible and short-tempered, but there was a lot of humour too. And there was a fierce intelligence, which helped overcome his often manic psychologically disturbed state.
In some ways, Triumph of the Underdog is intensely disturbing, especially when tracing the lowest dog-days of Mingus's career, when it seemed that his long creative life had come to nothing. But it serves also as an affirmation of the strength of a man's artistry. And we emerge with a real understanding of just what Mingus was able to achieve, against such odds. There has been a spate of excellent jazz documentaries recently; this stands with the best of them.
The documentary is assembled from source interviews held over the past ten years, and from archive footage from the past half-century. So video quality varies greatly from scene to scene, but is never poor.
The two-channel Dolby Digital stereo soundtrack is in fact in mono for most of its length, again because so much of it is derived from archival footage. But the sound is clear and strong and is certainly adequate for the purpose.
There is a text discography pointing to some of Charlie Mingus' most important recordings, and four fair-condition trailers for other Umbrella jazz films - documentaries on musicians Dexter Gordon, Chet Baker and Art Pepper, and the brilliant chronicle of the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival, Jazz on a Summer's Day. Now, there's a movie which should be in everyone's collection!
