I’ll have to copy and paste this from Wiki. I think [MENTION=17039]Beanz[/MENTION] would like Charles Mingus, being such a tough guy!
[i]As respected as Mingus was for his musical talents, he was sometimes feared for his occasionally violent onstage temper, which was at times directed at members of his band, and other times aimed at the audience.[22] He was physically large, prone to obesity (especially in his later years), and was by all accounts often intimidating and frightening when expressing anger or displeasure. Mingus was prone to clinical depression. He tended to have brief periods of extreme creative activity, intermixed with fairly long periods of greatly decreased output.
When confronted with a nightclub audience talking and clinking ice in their glasses while he performed, Mingus stopped his band and loudly chastised the audience, stating “Isaac Stern doesn’t have to put up with this shit.”[23] Mingus reportedly destroyed a $20,000 bass in response to audience heckling at New York’s Five Spot.[24]
Guitarist and singer Jackie Paris was a first-hand witness to Mingus’s irascibility. Paris recalls his time in the Jazz Workshop: “He chased everybody off the stand except [drummer] Paul Motian and me… The three of us just wailed on the blues for about an hour and a half before he called the other cats back.”[25]
On October 12, 1962, Mingus punched Jimmy Knepper in the mouth while the two men were working together at Mingus’s apartment on a score for his upcoming concert at New York Town Hall and Knepper refused to take on more work. The blow from Mingus broke off a crowned tooth and its underlying stub.[26] According to Knepper, this ruined his embouchure and resulted in the permanent loss of the top octave of his range on the trombone – a significant handicap for any professional trombonist. This attack temporarily ended their working relationship and Knepper was unable to perform at the concert. Charged with assault, Mingus appeared in court in January 1963 and was given a suspended sentence. Knepper did again work with Mingus in 1977 and played extensively with the Mingus Dynasty, formed after Mingus’s death in 1979.[27]
In 1966, Mingus was evicted from his apartment at 5 Great Jones Street in New York City for nonpayment of rent, captured in the 1968 documentary film Mingus: Charlie Mingus 1968, directed by Thomas Reichman. The film also features Mingus performing in clubs and in the apartment, firing a .410 shotgun indoors, composing at the piano, playing with and taking care of his young daughter Caroline, and discussing love, art, politics, and the music school he had hoped to create.[28][/i]
