Alive, Charles Mingus was celebrated as a phenomenal jazz bassist and bandleader. He was also feared for his volcanic temper, even getting into public fights with his colleagues onstage. For a time in the 1960s he was known as "the angry man of jazz."
After he died in 1979, suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, often called Lou Gehrig's disease, his reputation as a serious, spiritual and often profound composer started to congeal.
Separated from the man and his foibles, that posthumous reputation found life in the Mingus Big Band, which plays Atlanta's Rialto Center for the Arts Saturday night. Among the players is trumpeter Philip Harper, an Atlanta native now living in Amsterdam.
They'll celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Mingus albums "Blues & Roots," "Mingus Dynasty" and "Mingus Ah Um," a trio of classics all released in 1959.
Soon after Mingus' death at 56, his widow, Sue Graham Mingus, put together a tribute band. Her 2002 memoir of life with a giant, "Tonight at Noon," won praise in both jazz and literary circles. We reached her earlier this week at her home in New York City.
Q: How'd the band get started just after Mingus' death?
A: I got a call from the Walnut Theatre in Philadelphia to help put together a festival, so I called people I knew — Sonny Rollins, Lionel Hampton — and I also assembled seven musicians who'd worked with Charles as a tribute. It was a big success and went to Europe that summer and became the template: four horns and a rhythm section.
Q: Geniuses are often excused for their temperament, but was it hard living with Mingus?
A: Charles had plenty to be angry about in this country, the racial injustice above all. He used his bandstand as a soapbox, and also got into fights — many understandable, many unjustifiable.
Q: And at home?
A: At home he was mostly at the piano; it's where he found his peace. He used to say that he would play chords over and over and that the music was waiting for him at the keys. He was a peaceful man at home.
Q: In his music you must hear his personality. ...
A: Mingus music is who he was, in all his complexity and tenderness and anger and serenity. But his music is so open, it forces the players to put themselves into it, even the ones who were in diapers when Charles died. The way it's constructed, it makes them reinterpret everything that's come before. That's what keeps it modern and fresh.
IN CONCERT
Mingus Big Band
8 p.m. Saturday, Rialto Center for the Arts, 80 Forsyth St. N.W., Atlanta. $39-$65. 404-413-9849, www.rialtocenter.org.
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