Virtuoso bass player, accomplished pianist, bandleader and composer, Charles Mingus was a paradoxical musician whose influence is immense on the development of modern jazz - from be-bop to new thing, and from composition to collective improvisation. Like Miles Davis, whom he coached in the Charlie Parker's orchestra, Charles Mingus was an exceptional conductor and leader, at the origin of the careers of prominent musicians such as Eric Dolphy, Jackie McLean, Booker Ervin, Roland Kirk, Mal Waldron, Horace Parlan, Don Pullen, or Dannie Richmond. 

Charles Mingus was an activist with uncompromising positions that have often kept him away from the majors and the general public _⁽¹⁾.

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⁽¹⁾ « …In other words I am three. One man stands forever in the middle, unconcerned, unmoved, watching, waiting to be allowed to express what he sees to the other two. The second man is like a frightened animal that attacks for fear of being attacked. Then there’s an over-loving gentle person who lets people into the uttermost sacred temple of his being and he’ll take insults and be trusting and sign contracts without reading them and get talked down to working cheap or for nothing, and when he realizes what’s been done to him he feels like killing and destroying everything around him including himself for being so stupid. But he can’t - he goes back inside himself. Which one is real? They’re all real… » [Beneath the Undergog - 1971]