Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #63984 in Books
• Published on: 2003-01-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 272 pages

Synopsis
In Tonight at Noon, Sue Graham Mingus gives us an elegant and unsparingly honest memoir of a romance between American opposites: she, a product of privilege, a former midwestern WASP debutante and Smith College graduate who worked as a journalist in Europe and in New York; he, an authentic jazz titan, a brilliant, eccentric, difficult artist, a scion of Watts, Los Angeles, who would become one of America's foremost composers. Charles Mingus's improbable love for Sue Graham, his unpredictable confrontations, excesses, and exaggerations, drew her into a bewildering world, one where jazz and art were magnificent obsessions but were refracted, as was everything else, through Charles's individualistic interpretation of life itself. It was a world that was as exotic and rapturous, as hostile, enlightening, and baffling, as any far-off country. Tonight at Noon is the story of that world, of the tumultuous, passionate marriage of Sue and Charles Mingus, and of Sue's personal odyssey inside and outside its confines. Here is a love story - heartbreaking, joyous, and unforgettable - that also illumines an important chapter in jazz history and the inner workings of a rare and complex artist, whose music, thanks to his widow, still plays to packed concert halls almost twenty-five years after his death.

Customer Reviews

An Elegantly Written Love Story & Testimony To A Jazz Legend
Charlie Mingus, the legendary bassist/composer has long been one of my favorite jazz musicians. Many have called him "irascible, demanding, bullying, and probably a genius." I can attest to the "genius" part. As a bassist Mingus has few peers. He elevated his instrument into the front line of a band with his "pulsating sense of rhythm and powerful tone." My admiration for him led me to buy the book, "Tonight At Noon: A Love Story." The title comes from one of Charlie's best compositions.

Sue Mingus, his widow and fourth wife, writes this extraordinary memoir with elegance, passion, and honesty. Their's is an improbable love story, especially given their racial, social, and temperamental differences. He was a brilliant, volatile, eccentric artist, and a product of L.A.'s Watts ghetto. Sue Graham, a Midwestern WASP and debutante, graduated from Smith College, and worked as a journalist in Europe and New York. The two met in 1964. Unlike many memoirs on the market today, this lady has a powerful tale to tell - and she can really write! One of the most moving and fundamental feelings I was left with after concluding this love story, and it is just that, is that Charlie Mingus was so very special, not just as a musician, but as a man.

The first part of the memoir covers the period of the couple's courtship and marriage, beginning when they met to the onset of Charlie's illness, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, (ALS), commonly called Lou Gehrig's Disease, in 1977. The latter half deals with his last years, and their terrible battle against his affliction for which there is no cure. Sue cared for him until his untimely death in 1979, at the young age of 56. Physically and emotionally exhausted, Sue traveled to India to scatter his ashes in the Ganges. She says, "He had more energy than ninety people running down the block when he was frozen in a wheelchair" (commenting on his final days in Cuernavaca, Mexico).

Jazz and art were Mingus' wonderful obsessions. He brought Sue into his world with all its exoticism, confusion, exhilaration, hostilities, excesses and unpredictable confrontations. Hers is the story of a loving and tumultuous marriage, and her own personal odyssey inside and outside its confines. Her writing on Mingus' shared thoughts, on many topics, makes for fascinating reading, and provides insight into the mind of this talented, complex man. At one point she writes, "He was so worried he might fail to express something on his mind that he was compelled to state it instantly, examine it, get a reaction to it. Sometimes I thought if he failed to express himself to the world around him, he would go out of his mind." Another discerning comment about living with a creative genius and asserting one's own priorities: "Artists get away with their ambiguities and immoralities because they leave something behind, maybe not to their own children, but to the world. The rest of us leave our children behind, whose judgment will add to our own."

There are several wonderful anecdotes of encounters with Charlie Parker, Sonny Rollins, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Norman Mailer, and some extraordinary anti-drug comments to Timothy Leary: "You've got nothing for Harlem, man. Nothing for the workers, the people who go to their jobs, the people who get up at six."

"Tonight At Noon" includes never-before published black and white photographs of Mingus and a special epilogue about the activities Mingus' music has taken on since his death. Sue Mingus is the founder and president of the Charles Mingus Institute and has managed Mingus's music for the past twenty years. She has dedicated herself to keeping his sound alive and thus created the Mingus Big Band, which has made five CDs, the latest is "Tonight at Noon," and each year tours about thirty cities in the U.S. and twenty more cities around the world.

"Tonight At Noon" was one of the "100 Best Books of the Year," chosen by the Los Angeles Times Magazine, December 8, 2002, and was among the "Notable Books of the Year 2002," in the New York Times Book Review, December 8, 2002. It is certainly one of the most memorable biography/memoirs I have read in a long time. Kudos!
JANA

Essential reading for fans of Mingus and human drama
Charles Mingus is recognized as being one of the great jazz musicians of the twentieth century, and the music of this bassist, pianist, composer and leader, whether angry or tender, matches the vagaries of his famously volatile personality. He has been well served by the printed word, with his autobiography Beneath The Underdog, and biographies by Brian Priestley and Gene Santoro, filling in a picture of the man behind the music. However, with the publication of Tonight At Noon: A Love Story by his widow Sue Graham Mingus, the picture becomes much more brightly illuminated. Coming from a background as a magazine editor, Graham is a stylish writer, and, in her story of her relationship with Mingus, she provides a fascinating account of that perennial phenomenon, the attraction of opposites. Yet perhaps not such opposites, as becomes apparent from the way she compares Mingus with her father: "Two angry men, purists, perhaps geniuses in their fields, outspoken, impatient with flaws, nourished by beauty." From the time in 1964 that Mingus whispers words of love to Graham along the echoing walls of Grand Central Station, their romance moves passionately, if not straightforwardly. There are vivid accounts of Mingus the musician, "Like a man possessed, breathing down the necks of his musicians, shreiking orders, goading his men until they expressed the visions in his head", but all too soon, less than halfway through the book, he is struck down by terminal illness in the form of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. The story of Mingus's struggle and of Graham's selfless dedication is a harrowing one, but it is not without moments of dark humour, as in the descriptions of the treatment prescribed by the seventy-two year old Mexican healer Pachita. After Mingus's death, physically and mentally at the end of her tether, Graham travels to India and scatters his ashes in the Ganges, later to work on keeping the Mingus musical legacy alive by promoting groups such as the currently very active Mingus Big Band. This is an essential book for anyone interested in the work and life of a great creative artist, and of the one who nurtures him.