Remembering! interview with Charles Mingus’ wife, Sue Graham – Charles Mingus in memory of Sue: Videos, Photos

Today would have been Mingus’s 103rd birthday. We remember him with a rare interview with Sue Graham, his wife who accompanied him in his final years.

JBN: – Sue, was it love at first sight?

SG։ – There was definitely something familiar, something I knew that drew me to him through a noisy, smoke-filled room. The way he could concentrate in a crowd, as if there were nothing around him.

JBN: – What did you like about Mingus?

SG։ – His dark, innocent eyes. Vulnerable, honest eyes.

JBN: – And his bad temper?

SG։ – There was certainly nothing violent or aggressive about Charles when I met him.

Mingus wrote about himself: he is three people, a quiet man, a frightened animal that attacks before being attacked and…

… I met the third, the person full of kindness, and also the frightened animal. But Mingus was three hundred people, not three. Multifaceted and changeable.

JBN: – But what was she, a WASP from a good family, doing in the underground scene?

SG։ – I was co-editor of a New York newspaper, and I was also in a film by Robert Frank, better known as a photographer but who also made films. He was looking for a soundtrack, and I was there for that reason. But I had never heard a jazz concert.

JBN: – Have you ever given up anything to be with your husband?

SG։ – I had my world and he had his, I had journalism and he had music. Neither of us ever wanted to be the other. I was proud of him, not jealous or competitive.

And yet the relationship was stormy. Mingus says he was with 23 women in a single night.

I tell all the struggles, the ups and downs in “Tonight at Noon”. After eight years of a stormy relationship we got married, and after two years of marriage Charles Mingus was diagnosed with the terrible disease that led to his death. We went to Mexico, where there was a healer, Pasquina, who did special rites for him, in absolute darkness. But it was shocking to see Mingus, who was essentially a physical person, blocked and as if frozen in a wheelchair.

JBN: – Did he think about life after death?

SG։ – Like many musicians he was a mystic. He believed that music came from God. He was responsible for the virtuosity, the execution, but the melodies came to him from God.

JBN: – What exactly did he believe in?

SG։ – That there were many ways to reach God. This is why he was close to India and the syncretism of Hinduism. When I scattered the ashes in the icy waters of the Ganges, it was a Hindu ceremony.

JBN: – Did he believe in stars, in signs?

SG։ – He was always very attentive to these kinds of things. The fact that he was born on 4-22-22, the thunder that signaled Charlie Parker’s death. Even “Epitaph” was composed knowing that it would be played after his death. He had this kind of premonition.

JBN: – You are now a kind of muse. Do you feel the responsibility to bring Mingus’ music to the world?

SG։ – His music speaks for itself. And it is a joy to relive the same atmospheres every time with the Mingus Big Band. And then jazz is to America what Mozart is to Europe. It is our classical music.

JBN: – What did he think of politics?

SG։ – He was sorry for injustice and was very attentive to discrimination, he wrote music inspired by politics and the Beat Generation, but he was not a politician. He was too much of a composer to submit his compositions to politics. He did politics with music.

JBN: – Did he have relations with the Black Panthers?

SG։ – He was a part of himself. He never agreed to join groups even if they asked him to. He was a musician.

JBN: – Were you afraid of racism?

SG։ – Yes, he always said: I feel it everywhere. If two white people clink a glass, I stop playing and call them racists.

JBN: – How do you remember Mingus?

SG։ – He was someone who always knew who he was, in a world that didn’t always accept him. He had the wrong skin color, he wasn’t always understood. And it took him a long time to be accepted as a composer and not just a musician. But he never doubted himself. I don’t know if I’ll ever write about him again. But he’s in his music, just listen to it.