These memoirs are of the great bassist and jazz composer Charles Mingus. Completed years before his death in 1979, this is the story of: growing up in the Watts, Los Angeles of the 1920s and 30s, ruled by a strap-wielding father and Bible-quoting stepmother; Mingus's outcast adolescent years ("a yella kid, running with the mongrels"); his apprenticeship, not only with jazzmen, but also with pimps, hookers, junkies and hoodlums; and his golden years in New York City with such legendary figures as Duke Ellington, Lionel Hampton, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker and Billie Holiday. Here is Mingus in his own words, from shabby roadhouses to fabulous estates, from the psychiatric wards of Bellevue to worlds of mysticism and solitude. But for all his travels, he never strayed too far, always returning to the music.

Beneath the Underdog

Mingus, Charles

Biographies & Memoirs

Mojo Books

Ray Charles : Man and Music

Michael Lydon

Arts & Literature

Featuring 1000 questions and 50 crosswords, plus many other puzzles, this book is aimed at music eggheads and pub quiz compilers everywhere. With special rounds on subjects such as The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, punk and Led Zeppelin, it should soon have you furrowing your brow.

The MOJO Inquisition

Humor & Entertainment

Dellarfred

Puzzles & Games

In a narrative that captures all the tumult and liberating energy of a country in division and transition, Sweet Soul Music is the story of the birth of modern rhythm-and-blues. Guralnick records the rise and fall of Stax Records - the Memphis powerhouse label that produced a string of classics from the likes of Otis Redding and Booker T. and the MGs - and other labels such as Atlantic, as well as profiling such major artists as Aretha Franklin, Sam Cooke, James Brown, Solomon Burke and Al Green. This is a fascinating tale of a decade that produced some of the finest music ever.

Sweet Soul Music : Rhythm and Blues and the Southern Dream of Freedom

Peter Guralnick

A Change is Gonna Come chronicles more than forty years of black music: from the hopeful, angry refrains of the Freedom movement to the slick pop of Motown; from Woodstock and the 'Summer of Love' to Vietnam and the race riots; from disco inferno to the Million Man March. This is an insightful and riveting study which looks at the place black music occupies in social history, its battle for the desegregation of popular music and its contribution to social change outside the recording studio

A Change Is Gonna Come

Arts & Photography

Craig Werner

Music

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