Tonight At Noon: A Love Story [Paperback]

Sue Graham Mingus (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 2003

Tonight at Noon is a story of love between American opposites: she, a product of privilege, a Smith College graduate who worked as a journalist in Europe and in New York; he, an authentic jazz master, 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 -obsessions refracted through Mingus's individualistic interpretation of life itself. It was a world that was as hostile, enlightening, and baffling as any far-off country. In Tonight at Noon, Sue Graham tells the story of that world, of her tumultuous, passionate marriage, and of her personal odyssey inside and outside its confines. Here is a love story that is also an important chapter in jazz history, a portrait of a marriage that also sheds light on the inner workings of a rare and complex artist whose music still plays to packed concert halls almost twenty-five years after his death.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The widow of the legendary bassist, band leader and composer Charles Mingus tells the story of their improbable love affair and marriage. They were an unlikely couple, a debutante from a proper Midwestern family and an antiestablishment maverick from the Watts section of Los Angeles, "jazz's angry man." When they met in 1964, she was puzzled by his anger, outrage and tempestuous life, so different from her own, which had been founded on order and decorum. Yet she was not intimidated by his volatility and ferocious temper. Together they organized a small mail-order record club to market Mingus's work, his way of getting back at the major labels that had cheated him. The author was soon "trapped in the middle of his vast appetites and imagination, his sexuality, his angry intelligence, his nonsense and his pain." After years of an on-and-off affair, they were married in 1975; two years later, Mingus was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease. The second half of the book chronicles their descent into a living hell as Mingus battles this terrible affliction, a gradually worsening muscular paralysis for which there is no cure, and the author exhausts her mental and physical resources caring for him. Mingus died in Cuernavaca in 1979, at the age of 56. This is a powerful and moving book, unsparing in its portrayal of the devastation caused by Lou Gehrig's disease and charged with insight into the personality of a jazz great. The author, who takes her title from one of Mingus's compositions, still disperses her late husband's music through repertory bands, educational books and the production of Mingus CDs.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From School Library Journal

Adult/High School-In writing about her husband, jazz legend Charles Mingus, the author offers readers no structured story line until nearly halfway through the book, when his Lou Gehrig's disease becomes the focus and Mexico, the locale. Instead, she seeks to connect with her audience by conveying the feeling of living with such an outsized character as Mingus and of his place in her life. She shares her experience of something great, something horrible, and, really, just something human. The depiction of how intensely life can be lived should resonate with many teenagers.
Ted Westervelt, Library of Congress, Washington, DC
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press (April 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0306812207
• ISBN-13: 978-0306812200
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.7 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #149,938 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Meditations on Mingus, May 25, 2002

By 

Arch Stanton (Bondurant, WY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tonight at Noon: A Love Story (Hardcover)

I purchased this book because I have loved the music of Charles Mingus since I first purchased Ah Um. What I expected was a breezily written collection of Mingus stories, colorful anecdotes involving gigs and musicians and glimpses of the magic of creation. And certainly there is some of that in this book - Mingus' diet foibles and paranoid fears and erratic public behaviors elicit laughter and disbelief in the reader. Mingus opinions are never tepid - Miles' voice gets lost in his later fusion era, and Coltrane became a musical preacher that never changed his sermon. Those who played completely free (Archie Shepp and Pharoah Sanders, for instance) were participating in a shuck and trying to trick both a white audience and themselves while neglecting the fact that any music has to come from an historical common place.

For a man as massive in stature and appetites as Mingus, his fragility is touching. He is demanding, mercurial, and larger than life; all qualities that get clearly demonstrated by the author. There is also some material that covers Sue's upbringing in an undemonstrative household that initially seems distracting but eventually becomes appropriate to the narrative. The tense switches from past to present on occasions, as though journal entries have been inserted.

However, the book is really, as advertised, a love story. Detailed at length is the Mingus household's battle with Lou Gehrig's disease, from the initial diagnosis to the increasingly desperate attempts to obtain a cure, to the heart attack that eventually takes Mingus' life. Underlying all the voodoo and the iguana blood cocktails and the wildly exploratory midnight rides through the Mexican countryside is a testament to the power of human love and kindness.

The reason I hoped this book would be a lightly written witness to Mingus is because I purchased it as something to read during the nights I am spending at the bedside of my dying father. Instead there is much that is grimly familiar here - after weeks of caregiving you find yourself not knowing what day it might be, idly speculating of ways to end a loved one's life that might look perfectly natural, wrestling with your own spiritual loneliness. Nevertheless, this is a great book for music fans in general, and Mingus fans in particular.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Elegantly Written Love Story & Testimony To A Jazz Legend, June 9, 2005

By 

Jana L. Perskie "ceruleana" (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Tonight at Noon: A Love Story (Hardcover)

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

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is a great book !, August 7, 2002

By 

Rajko Vukcevic (Melbourne, Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tonight at Noon: A Love Story (Hardcover)

I am glad Sue Mingus wrote and published this book. After personally meeting her briefly in Australia in January 2002, a chance encounter on a tennis tournament during Mingus Big Band tour, I can relate the book to the author. And thanks to the book, I can relate better to Mingus himself and to his music. I saw him only once in a European concert in 1972. I was a young man then and could not understand much of what was performed. My appreciation of his music has being growing ever since.

This is a great book ! But it is too short. I deliberately read it slowly, several pages every night, in order to enjoy it more and to give some time perspective to Sue's and Charles's life together. It is not only about Charles, it is about Sue as well.

Also, Sue Mingus provides in the book the best description of Mingus music that I ever encountered:
"Any musician will tell you that Mingus music requires multiple skills. ... You need to read like a classical player, improvise like a jazz musician, play well in the ensemble, and, on top of everything else, have a personality."
That, in simple terms explains why the music of Charles Mingus will still be played, or at least listened to, in 100 years from now.