**This Charles Mingus stamp is a part of the jazz music set from the Legends of American Music series. Make sure to check out my hub page for this project. Also check out my post on jazz stamps.
It is impossible to overstate the importance of Black musicians to American and world music. One reason why the Legends of American Music series by the USPS is so important is because it features so many Black American musicians across genres. For example, this blog has articles about such Black music legends on stamps including W.C. Handy, Louis Armstrong, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, and many others. Of course, perhaps the greatest musical contribution of Black musicians was the creation of jazz music. This post is about the postage stamp featuring one of the greatest jazz musicians of all, double bassist Charles Mingus.
Charles Mingus
Charles Mingus was born in 1922 in Nogales, Arizona, where his father was serving in the U. S. Army. Mingus grew up mostly in Los Angeles where only religious music was allowed in the home. However, Mingus grew to love jazz music, and especially the music of Duke Ellington. Mingus first learned trombone and then fell in love with the cello and classical music. However, classical music was not open to Black musicians, and he experienced racism in his youth orchestra.
This led him to begin studying the double bass with Red Callender in the late 1930s. His cello technique gave him dexterity on the instrument, and he also began to compose music. Mingus became known as a bass prodigy with great virtuosic skill. Like Charlie Parker, he was drawn to the idea of combining classical and jazz genres. Parker was also a large influence on Mingus’ style and opened his mind to the bebop musical vocabulary.
Tom Marcello, Webster, New York
Career
After his first major gig with clarinetist Barney Bigard, Mingus went on tour in 1943 with Louis Armstrong. For much of the 1940s, Mingus was in Lionel Hampton’s band. He played in several smaller jazz trios, but as a Black man he still experienced racism when he arrived at clubs to play in mixed race groups. He was briefly in Duke Ellington’s band, but Mingus’ bad temper caused Ellington to personally fire him. By the early 1950s, Mingus was playing with Charlie Parker, learning his improvisational styles.
Along with Max Roach, Mingus founded Debut Records, as to have freedom to record any music he wanted. One of their most famous recordings was of a live performance at Massey Hall in Toronto, featuring Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, Max Roach, and Mingus. It is one of the greatest of all jazz recordings.
By the late 1950s, Mingus was at the height of his musical prowess, and over the next decade he made more than thirty recordings. He played with nearly every jazz legend during his career. Then in the 1970s, he began to suffer from ALS. He died at the age of 56 in 1979
The Charles Mingus Stamp
United States, 1995
Scott Number 2989
A set of ten stamps featuring jazz musicians was issued in 1995. While some of the genre groups were weak (opera singers) and others controversial (rock & roll), the jazz group is a remarkable group of the greatest names in jazz over several generations. It includes Louis Armstrong, John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, Jelly Roll Morton, and Thelonious Monk.
The Armstrong stamp was issued on September 1, 1995 in New Orleans. The remaining stamps in the series became available two weeks later on September 16, at the Monterrey Jazz Festival. Like the other stamps in the Legends series, the jazz stamps are lithograph prints of an original acryllic painting. The stamp was the design of Dean Mitchell.
Visually, the jazz stamps are among the best of the Legends series. They look less cartoony that other designs and each stamp has at the top, a faint background of a piano keyboard. This both unifies the set and makes it obvious that the subject is a musician.
Make sure to check out some of Charles Mingus’ music:
