Few musicians spent more time playing in the band of jazz giant Charles Mingus than alto saxophone great Charles McPherson.
And few have more insight about the towering bassist and composer, whose legacy extends to rock, hip-hop, the film world and beyond.
“Mingus’ legacy as an artist is that he was truly multidimensional,” said McPherson, 82, who will perform at Saturday’s Charles Mingus Centennial Concert in Nogales, Arizona.
McPherson was a member of Mingus’ constantly changing bands on and off (but mostly on) from 1960 to 1972. A longtime San Diego resident, McPherson is prominently featured on Resonance Records’ new live triple-CD, “Mingus: The Lost Album,” which was recorded at Ronnie Scott’s jazz club in London in 1972.
The album finds the musicians stretching out at length on absorbing versions of such Mingus classics as “Fables of Faubus” and “Orange Was the Color of Her Dress, Then Silk Blues,” which clock in at — respectively — 35 minutes and 30 minutes and 45 seconds. Close behind is “Mind Readers’ Convention in Milano (AKA Number 29),” which is just under 30 minutes.
This kind of expansiveness in performances on nightclub stages was a Mingus trademark for much of his career, starting in the 1950s when he and his bands would often perform using the moniker The Jazz Workshop.
“That’s true,” McPherson said. “That was part of his musical DNA, in clubs especially, where gong off script, expanding and musical stream of consciousness things would happen often. It would be like going off script, in a musical way, especially at live performances.
“What Mingus said he wanted (in performances) was ‘musical chaos.’ I think (composer Arnold) Schoenberg said something like: ‘All written music should sound improvised and improvised music should sound written.’
“If you can really write as a composer, you learn how to freeze that moment and keep the feeling of spontaneity like you just wrote it. And improvisers, even though they are more in a stream of consciousness mode in the here and now, are suppose to do it and be so wonderful that it sounds as if they wrote the damned thing!”
McPherson did not hear “Mingus: The Lost Album” until shortly before its recent release.
“It takes me back into those moments,” he said, “listening to the totality of the music, and also to myself, and hearing this young man playing the sax and comparing that with what I sound like now, what I play now, my technique, everything.
“I wish I had played better then and been more willing to take risks. But I was much younger and it wasn’t my band; it was Mingus’ band. If I knew then what I know now, I would have been a lot more ballsy. Mingus was already ballsy.”
McPherson laughed.
“I didn’t even know they were recording it,” he said of the new/old live album.
“So, what makes me remember the time it was made is who was in the band at the time. Because, another week earlier or later, one of the guys on the album wouldn’t have been in the band.”
A famously volatile artist, Mingus was known to hire and fire band members on a moment’s notice. He also came to blows on occasion with some of his musicians — and some of his audience members as well (especially if they were talking loudly during his club performances).
“Mingus didn’t edit much; what you saw is what you got,” McPherson said. “If he thought you were disingenuous, he would say so. But if he felt you were a beautiful soul, if I can be so romantic, he’d sense that and treat you accordingly.”
The saxophonist feel into the latter category, thanks to an early 1960s benefit concert on behalf of ailing writer Kenneth Padgett, a close Mingus friend. McPherson was the only band member to turn down his payment for the performance, suggesting the money should go to Padgett directly.
“Mingus looked at me for three or four seconds, and I saw his eyes tear up,” McPherson recalled.
“He said: ‘Thanks, Charles.’ From that moment on, I could do no wrong in that band. I could be late or goofing off on stage, and I did — I was 20 or 21 when Mingus hired me — and he would never turn around. He’d look the other way and never bothered me. But I didn’t run it into the ground; I never crossed the line.
“Once he had you pigeon-holed in whatever box, whatever his box was for you, that’s what you were in forever. So, he had me in the ‘nice guy’ box!”
