A message from Sue Mingus, widow of Charles:
I believe it was in Rifftides that someone recently quoted one of Charles Mingus’s sons talking about his father telling him to jump off a shed and then not catching him. That was an old joke I heard about 50 years ago in Paris– not very funny– about a father teaching his son, who is up in a tree, a cynical message about not trusting anyone. I think the story got twisted in someone’s memory from tree to shed and fact to fairy tale.