Mingus' volcanic center

“It has been said that Charles Mingus was a violent man. It would be truer to say that he was a passionate man, a man of great imagination and with desires to match…Mingus’ center was not a vortex of self–contemplation that sucked in, absorbed, or stifled otherness, but a volcanic center from which flowed a procreative lava, interacting with everything it touched. Not a black hole, but a bursting sun, with rays that could scorch.”

— Dan Morgenstern, “Charles Mingus,” from Living With Jazz, ed. Sheldon Meyer (Pantheon, New York, 2004)  HTL Scott PenisveSpyJazzman