Hab ich eben für anderswo abgetippt – scheint mir für „Beneath the Underdog“-Verhältnisse recht gradlinig und untendentiös, dieser Abschnitt – ich meine damit, dass ich es für möglich halte, dass das in etwa den Tatsachen entsprechen könnte (was sonst in diesem Buch ja nicht immer der Fall ist):
So now you’ve got a job again, boy, in a trio, boy, with a famous name. The leader has red hair, boy, and the guitar player is a white man, too, from North Carolina. You’re playing in San Francisco and making records and the critics are writing good things. Boy! Boy! Boy!
Then You go on the road. How does it feel to drive through the South as a member of an otherwise all-white trio and in addition to that you’ve got a white girl traveling with you? How do you do it? I’ll tell you. First you straighten your hair. That’s before you start. You’re traveling in two cars and your girl rides with you on the road. But before you get to another town, out on the empty highway your girl changes cars and pretends to be the wife of one of the white men so you can check into hotels. You trade rooms that night and again in the morning so she can walk out with her „husband.“
How do you go into restaurants? Your girl and her „husband“ go in first, then the leader of the band takes you in, big white-man style. You’ve got straight hair and your skin isn’t too dark and you’re in the company of a famous guy. But the bouncer looks right at you, looks at you hard, slamming his fist into his palm again and again. He doesn’t say anything but you know what he’s thinking and he wants you to know.
How does it feel on your last stop in the South when you find in the morning the two white guys have checked out and you’re left in that hotel, boy, alone with a white woman? It feels very dangerous, that’s how it feels. You pack and go downstairs separately not knowing what’s going to happen. But thank God nobody says anything, they just look at you funny. You get out as fast as you can, get in your car and drive out of that town, and down the road apiece in front of a restaurant you see your leader’s car and inside are the two dumb white boys having breakfast.
The trip is almost over so you don’t quit. You drive straight through to New York in two cars and go in with this trio to a famous jazz club on the Upper East Side. You want to work and the critics are making it worthwhile–if the bread’s low, they a least boost your ego.
How does it feel when the Redhead’s trio is asked to do an important, special television show in color? It feels great. At night you’re playing this first-class club and daytimes you’re rehearsing in the studio. One day during a break you’re tuning the bass and you see this producer or somebody talking to the Redhead across the room and they’re both looking at you. You feel something is wrong but you don’t know what. In a few minutes some guy calls out: „That’s all for today, tomorrow at ten,“ and everyone leaves. While you’re packing up, the Redhead comes over and says something like this: „Charlie, I’m sorry to tell you but I have to get another bassist for this show. We’ll continue at the club but I can’t use you here.“ What do you say? You ask the name of the new bassist, of course. He tells you. The bassist is white. Now what you do, curse him out? Probably. You don’t remember what you said. He goes away fast. That night he doesn’t come to the club, he sends word he’s sick. After that somehow you never get a chance to talk to him, he comes late and cuts out early. You have to find out. You start going by where he’s staying, at a residential hotel on Broadway. But the desk always says he’s not in, they won’t even ring. You never get a chance to discuss it with him. Schitt, he can’t talk anyway–can’t talk about anything real, only about what chick you’re going with and like that. You can’t talk to the guitarist about it either, he never says anything. Two dumb white boys that can’t talk to you. So you quit the trio. How can you play with guys you can’t talk to? You wonder and wonder why he didn’t tell you face to face or why he didn’t walk off the TV job–some leaders would have. He wanted the money too bad. If he had hired Red Mitchell or somebody like that to replace you, you might have even believed it was something to do with your playing. But what’s good in a club is good anywhere else, wouldn’t you think? It didn’t take much to figure it out. The way television was in those days, they had sponsors who worried about „the Southern market“ and „mixing“ was taboo.
Yeah, there are certain things in this life that nobody likes to talk about. Nobody white, that is.~ Charles Mingus: Beneath the Underdog: His World as Composed by Mingus. Edited by Nel King. New York, 1991, pp. 321-323 [first edition: New York, 1971].
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"Don't play what the public want. You play what you want and let the public pick up on what you doin' -- even if it take them fifteen, twenty years." (Thelonious Monk) | Meine Sendungen auf Radio StoneFM: gypsy goes jazz, #158 – Piano Jazz 2024 - 19.12.2024 – 20:00 | Slow Drive to South Africa, #8: tba | No Problem Saloon, #30: tba