Mix and Mingus

by Anthony Medici in Album Reviews

 Mingus’ band at the Cornell concert consisted of Johnny Coles, Eric Dolphy (as, fl, bc), Clifford Jordan (ts), Jaki Byard (p), and Mingus’ perennial drummer, Dannie Richmond.  A great line-up that, like most Mingus’ ensembles,” would soon undergo dissolution.  The two discs together run about 120 minutes.  Mingus clearly had a band he was happy with.  The group plays beautifully together, and Mingus seems uncharacteristically relaxed.  Perhaps too relaxed; while the performance glows, it rarely sets off sparks.  The performance never reaches the intensity of that captured on the “Mingus, Antibes 60” album.  Nevertheless, there are some quite fine performances; for me, in particular, “Orange Was the Color of Her Dress, Then Silk,” as lovely and lyrical as the title suggests.  The nearly 30 minute version of “Fables of Faubus” dispenses with the biting political lyrics of other performed versions, as well as some of their bite.  “So Long Eric” is a wonderfully bluesy, soulful tribute to the still-very much present Dolphy—apparently written to commemorate one of Dolphy’s previous departures from one of Mingus’ many ensemble formations.  The other long piece on the album, the 31 minute “Meditations,” according to Priestley, the work deals with African-American slave history and contemporary civil rights.  I suspect Mingus intended this work as a major statement.  While noteworthy, I’m not sure he succeeded; it may be freighted with too much intention.  As with much of Mingus, I’ll need to give it a few more listens.  Dolphy and Jordan play superbly together, Jaki Byard is always fascinating to listen to and probably one of the few pianists who could stand up to Mingus.  Coles doesn’t leave much of an individual impression, frankly. 

The UCLA concert was as fractious and eruptive (and disruptive) as the Cornell concert was a celebration of musical harmony.  This is another performance captured on two discs.  Aside from Richmond, the group is completely different from the one that appeared at Cornell a year earlier:  Hobart Dotson (tp), Lonnie Hillyer (tp), Jimmy Owens (fl, tp), Charles McPherson (as), Julius Watkins (french horn), Howard Johnson (tuba), with Mingus on bass and piano.  The suite of pieces performed at the concert strike me as having at least a conceptual relationship to those that that appeared on Mingus’ 1963 “Black Saint and Sinner Lady.”  With little if any time to prepare for performance of these challenging pieces, the band had its hands full, with the music and with Mingus himself.  At one point, Mingus sends half the band packing from the stage for “mental tardiness”!  Under the concept of the “workshop,” Mingus performances often involved onstage revision, instruction, exhortations and spontaneous ecstasies—all of which I love about Mingus.  It often seems to me the real spirit of jazz.  While none of the pieces performed could be said to have become standards (at least partly due to lack of commercial distribution), they are often compelling and engaging.  Dotson blazes his way through “The Arts of Tatum and Freddy Webster.”  After the abortive first effort at “Once Upon a Time There was a Holding Corporation Called Old America,” the second attempt swings and burns.  “Don’t’ Let I t Happen Here”—well, play it now and LISTEN!   

I wish I could have been at both of these concerts.

 I can’t say that initially I was immediately taken by the music of Charles Mingus.  It is as rumbustious, variable, blustery, sensitive, maddening, virtuosic, inventive and uncategorizable as the man himself.  That’s what I came to love about it.  Mingus is one of the great jazz composers, maybe the greatest.   Need a starting point? Try “Pithecanthropus Erectus” with Jackie McLean (one of my faves), J.R. Monterose,  Mal Waldron, and Willie Jones, or “Tonight at Noon” (try to get it on the Atlantic Original Sound series—great  audio), with Jimmie Knepper, Shafi Hadi, Wade Legge, and, on some cuts, Roland Kirk, and the perennial Dannie Richmond—one of Mingus’ great line-ups.  

Mingus is an American Original–LISTEN!