[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > I was listening to Sue Mingus on the radio at the time, on the way to catch > the last segment of the show live. I could easily be confusing this with a > different attribution from a different time, but in the back of my head I > hear someone saying that Joni said she would sooner capsulize the Bible than > that poem 9was it Love Song ?).
This is how I recall what Sue Mingus said: "Charles got the idea to put T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets to music and have Joni adapt the words. Word got back to us very quickly through Joni's representatives that Joni was not interested. She said she'd just as soon paraphrase the Bible as touch Eliot. So Charles thought about it and came up with the idea to have Joni put words to some of his music, and she was contacted again, and said yes." The one phrase I'm completely certain about is "paraphrase the Bible" because I remember thinking that sounds exactly like what sharp-witted Joni would say. Sue then went on to say that Charles' usual way of composing was on the piano, but he was not able to do that anymore, so he suggested humming his tunes (? not sure if that's the word Sue used) into a tape recorder, and then Joni took those recordings and worked out the words, and then they'd get together and go over them. Mingus died before the album was finished. He wasn't on his death bed when he met Joni, but he was in a wheelchair because of ALS, and knew death was not far off. It seems I've read somewhere that the project with Joni started about six months before his death. Sue Mingus also talked about the song "Chair in the Sky" saying that when Joni first met Mingus it was at their home on the 40th floor and he was in his wheelchair. "So Joni took that image and imagined what Charles was thinking he would miss most as he was preparing to meet his maker, and when Charles heard the lyrics he was impressed that Joni was sensitive enough to get it right, and he knew he'd made the right choice of Joni as his collaborator." The phrase I remember most clearly from that bit was Sue Mingus describing Charles as "preparing to meet his maker". It made me think what a special time it must have been for Joni, in a spiritual way, as well as a musical one. I was also surprised to hear that Sue and Charles lived in a high-rise apartment building. I always picture Mingus in his wheelchair on a veranda in a lush environment, as in Joni's painting of him. Maybe they had two homes, or maybe that painting is mostly Joni's imagining. Debra Shea
