The Guide to Classic Recorded Jazz (29 page)

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Authors: Tom Piazza

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BOOK: The Guide to Classic Recorded Jazz
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then each succeeding chorus adds one instrument with a new line - tenor, trombone, another trombone, then the altos - until six horns are playing different lines in counterpoint over a savagely swinging rhythm section background. The lines the horns play, by the way, are riffs, not long, nonrepeating lines; in this way, it is Mingus's extension of the swing players' extension of New Orleans polyphony. "My Jelly Roll Soul" is Mingus's tribute to Jelly Roll Morton, a two-melody contrapuntal theme played by the saxophones versus the trombones. The main theme is played once over a parade-ground two-beat feeling, then over a straight-ahead four-four feeling, and is a perfect example of the difference that accenting makes in a performance. During the solos, too, the metric feel shifts, from two to four, at one point into a march as well. All in all,
Blues and Roots
is a grand statement, one of the most enjoyable jazz records ever made - not background music, not hors d'oeuvres, but a full plate of meat and potatoes. Mingus's music was so strong because he understood all the fundamentals of the jazz idiom, as he demonstrates here. Don't miss this album.
Another essential Mingus set is
The Complete Candid Recordings of Charles Mingus
(Mosaic MD3-111), a three-CD set containing everything Mingus recorded for the independent label Candid under the supervision of writer Nat Hentoff. The set shows Mingus simultaneously at his most emotionally raw and his most focused. The best-known tracks in the collection - also available as a separate CD called
Mingus Presents Mingus
(Candid CD 9005) - are four by the quartet he led in 1960 at a Greenwich Village club called the Showplace, which included Eric Dolphy on alto saxophone, flute, and bass clarinet, Ted Curson on trumpet, and Dannie Richmond on drums; they are some of the most extraordinary jazz performances ever recorded.
"Folk Forms No. 1" is a therneless blues based on one short rhythmic motif, which all the instruments play with, extend, modify, twist, and shout throughout a thirteen-minute performance. The motif is basically a gospel figure, but the form of the piece is a blues; over the course of it, all the instruments contribute as if they are part of the front line. Sometimes Mingus walks on the bass and Richmond plays tempo, but much of the rest of the time the instruments are engaged in dialogues with each other - in groups of two, three, and four, sometimes all of them improvising at once. Since they all know the basic accenting structure of the piece, based on the motif, they can play things with each other that make sense and have a truly improvised counterpoint. To hear Dolphy and Curson blowing their heads off over Mingus's and Richmond's stormy swing is a jazz experience you'll never forget.
"Fables of Faubus" is an eerie theme dedicated to the governor of Arkansas at that time, a notorious racist. Mingus and Richmond sing some mocking
 
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lyrics, and the tune is full of tempo shifts and changes in dynamics. Also notice that here, as throughout these four sides, the instruments aren't locked into their customary roles; Mingus and Richmond are not merely backing up the soloists but are constantly at work behind them, playing little arranged sections and other kinds of commentary, as well as playing solos themselves. They do the same thing on "What Love," a long, languorous theme, seemingly out of tempo. Under the main theme, listen closely for Mingus's bass counter-melody, which gets repeated and transmuted over the course of the piece behind the various solos. This track is also famous for a startling duet between Mingus's bass and Dolphy's bass clarinet; the two instruments so closely approximate two human voices having an argument that you can practically tell what they are saying. The last tune, "All the Things You Could Be by Now If Sigmund Freud's Wife Was Your Mother," is a wild ride through tempo changes, Charleston vamps, stop-time sections, and more, distinguished above all by the nearly telepathic interplay between Mingus and Richmond.
It would be worth having the Mosaic set for these four tracks alone, but there is so much more here. The quartet is augmented by various horns for a number of other excellent performances, including two takes of Mingus's ode to Charlie Parker, entitled "Reincarnation of a Lovebird," featuring altoist Charles McPherson, a straight-ahead bop line called "Bugs," on which the bass and drums play contrapuntal figures under the horns' reading of the head, and "Vassarlean," also recorded as ''Weird Nightmare" and, in a fantastic version by Miles Davis with Mingus on piano, as "Smooch" (available on Davis's
Blue Haze
[Prestige/OJC-093]). But the most exciting of these is probably "MDM," subtitled "Monk, Duke, and Mingus," which features the full band (Ted Curson and Lonnie Hillyer, trumpets; Eric Dolphy on both alto sax and bass clarinet; Charles McPherson, alto; Booker Ervin, tenor; Jimmy Knepper and Britt Woodman, trombones; Nico Bunick, piano; and Mingus and Dannie Richmond) on a cooking, up-tempo blues. The soloists are paired off - the two trombones follow each other, then the altos, etc. They play just with rhythm, then they are accompanied by different riffs. After all the soloists have played, they are brought around again for a round of four-bar exchanges in which inspiration runs high. This is real jazz improvising at the highest pitch on the most basic of materials, one of the most swinging recordings ever made. Notice also that the trombones use the plunger mute in their solos to give the New Orleans-based vocalized quality that Ellington used to such advantage in his bands and which Mingus loved so much.
The balance of the set contains material recorded by an improbable ensemble including Mingus, Dolphy, and Knepper, along with trumpeter Roy Eldridge, pianist Tommy Flanagan, and Jo Jones, the drummer of the Count
 
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Basie orchestra. The results are very harmonious and once again underscore the uselessness of rigid stylistic categories when talking about great musicians. All concerned here understood the fundamentals of jazz and had even defined one or two, and the program, made up of blues and a couple of standards, including two fine Eldridge features on "Body and Soul," is in the timeless arena that is the property of all true jazz musicians.
The Complete Candid Recordings of Charles Mingus
is an essential set.
Some of the same material is dealt with on
Mingus at Antibes
(Atlantic 90532-2), which features the Mingus-Curson-Dolphy-Richmond band with Booker Ervin added on a highly charged program including both "What Love" and "Folk Forms No. 1," as well as "Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting." The performances aren't quite up to the level of the Candid sides, but then very little is. The set is especially enjoyable for the presence of Bud Powell, in very good shape, sitting in on a long version of ''I'll Remember April," on which he emits chorus after chorus of characteristic Powell melody; it is also a treat to hear him accompanying the other horn players. At the end, Dolphy and Ervin engage in some four-bar exchanges, then two-bar exchanges; you can hear, at one point, Mingus yell out "ones," and the two go into a section of one-bar exchanges. As they do, Mingus signals to Richmond, and they break up the background tempo. The tune ends with the three horns blowing simultaneously, giving a good example of the kind of spontaneity that was part of a Mingus performance.
If you're not quite ready to set off for such deep waters, a good place to start might be
Mingus Ah Um
(Columbia CK 40648). This set contains nine tunes, most of which last under five minutes and which show the most organized side of Mingus; it is one of his least wild sets, no shouting and wailing, and most of the loose ends have been tucked neatly back into place. That's not to say that it's a subpar album; it stands as one of Mingus's classics. Several tunes here are available in other versions that are perhaps more interesting (the version of "Fables of Faubus" on
The Complete Candid Recordings of Charles Mingus
[Mosaic MD3-111], for example, blows this one out of the water, at least for intensity), but this set does contain the achingly beautiful slow theme dedicated to Lester Young, called "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat," definitely one of the most haunting things Mingus ever recorded, and "Self-Portrait in Three Colors," another singing, slow melody of the type Mingus was so good at spinning. "Open Letter to Duke" goes through several moods and tempos in under five minutes - an up-tempo solo section for Booker Ervin, a ballad section with the alto in the lead à la Johnny Hodges, backed with shifting chromatic harmony and tone clusters, and finally a Latin section. My favorite on the set is "Pussy Cat Dues," a slow, sly, good-humored blues that evokes a late
 
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night in a club; the ensemble is lightly contrapuntal, clarinet and trombone both playing countermelodies to an effect that sounds loose and jammed but is carefully planned. "Jelly Roll" is a recasting of "My Jelly Roll Soul" from
Blues and Roots
(Atlantic 1305-2). A companion set, entitled
Mingus Dynasty
(Columbia CK 52922), is in the same vein and just as good.
One of the best things Mingus ever did is
New Tijuana Moods
(RCA/Bluebird 5644-2-RB). An impression of a trip to Tijuana, Mexico, the music is full of shifting rhythms, abrupt changes in dynamics and tempo, and wild contrasts in mood. Nothing in the best of Mingus's music stays the same for long; his music is always changing, arguing with itself, posing alternatives and questions. On "Ysabel's Table Dance," for instance, a piano and bass vamp based on a fast flamenco rhythm underlies a series of tumultuous ensemble passages in which castanets twitch and all the instruments blow at once, then slowly die out; solo instrumental interludes come along, only to give way again to the crashing, whirling ensemble. Yet toward the end a lyrical, melancholy theme for trumpet floats over all the tumult. It is unique music.
"Los Mariachis (The Street Musicians)" likewise goes through a series of contrasting themes and sections, yet always returns to the same theme. As Martin Williams says in his section of the liner notes, observing how full-sounding Mingus makes the relatively small (six pieces, plus percussion) ensemble, "There has been nothing like this, I think, since the golden days of the New Orleans style. Even with one horn in solo, there is a denseness to the performance, a feeling of total movement that is never distracting, always integrated." The same goes for the slowest of slow tunes, as here, on a poignantly bittersweet version of the ballad "Flamingo," with Clarence Shaw's muted trumpet evoking all the melancholy of the end of a trip, the view of a place through the eyes of someone who is about to leave it with a mixture of good memories and disappointments. For anyone who really wants to sit and listen, this is an extremely rewarding set. (Note: the set is called
New Tijuana Moods
because alternate takes of four of the five tracks are included.)
Pithecanthropus Erectus
(Atlantic 8809-2) contains some of the first examples of a technique that would become very common in jazz, a replacement of the chord-changes approach with one in which players play only off of one scale, instead of a series of them, for as long as they like, at which point they cue the other members to switch to another scale. "Love Chant" here alternates between this approach and the earlier chord-oriented approach and produces some interesting sounds from altoist Jackie McLean and the rarely heard J. R. Monterose on tenor. The title piece also uses the new idea, usually called the modal approach, in a long piece in progressive sections. "A Foggy Day" is described by Mingus as a walk through San Francisco with all the
 
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noises of the city - car horns, police whistles, fog horns - behind the soloists as they make their way through the streets; it's a charming performance. "Profile of Jackie" is a nice, short ballad feature for the altoist. Miles Davis's 1959 album
Kind of Blue
(Columbia CK 40579) was the record that really prompted widespread investigation of the modal approach.
Two other Atlantic Mingus sets,
The Clown
(7 90142-2) and
Oh Yeah
(7 90667-2), are somewhat less interesting, although
The Clown
has the great "Haitian Fight Song" on it, which opens with a huge-toned, extremely strong bass solo from the composer before the musicians come on playing the menacing, fanfarelike theme. Notice the marchlike stop-time section under the soloists, a direct echo of the introduction to "(Yes!) I'm in the Barrel" on
The Hot Fives, Volume 1
(Columbia CK 44049). The title cut is a long piece with narration by radio personality Jean Shepard.
Oh Yeah
is a big favorite with some for its loose, spirited ensemble, which produces a sound something like that of Bob Dylan's "Rainy Day Women #12 and #35" (and just about as together, musically), Mingus's Ray Charles-inflected piano playing, and Mingus vocals(!) on ''Eat That Chicken" and "Oh Lord Don't Let Them Drop That Atomic Bomb on Me." To me, Mingus's singing sounds like he had just spent a long, rough night in a club with a leaky roof. The idea seems to have been to have a really loose, fun session, but the ensemble seems to be looking for direction from Mingus that isn't forthcoming. The album might have been fun if they had thought a little more about it beforehand.
Changes One
(Rhino/Atlantic R2 71403) and
Changes Two
(Rhino/Atlantic R2 71404) are two of Mingus's best and most listenable small-group sets, simultaneously very pulled-together and very relaxed, recorded with a quintet including trumpeter Jack Walrath, tenorist George Adams, pianist Don Pullen, and Mingus's favorite drummer, Dannie Richmond.
Changes One
may have a slight edge, with a varied program consisting of four new Mingus compositions - the bright, bittersweet "Remember Rockefeller at Attica," "Sue's Changes," a mood piece that shifts between languid ballad sections, medium-tempo swing, shuffle rhythms, and turbulent group improvisation, "Devil Blues," a shuffle blues with a humorous vocal from tenorist George Adams, and the gorgeous ballad "Duke Ellington's Sound of Love."
Changes Two
has a short version of this last tune with a vocal by Jackie Paris and two non-Mingus tunes that are performed well. But this disc is essential Mingus for the seventeen-and-a-half-minute version of one of his best compositions, "Orange Was the Color of Her Dress, Then Silk Blue," which appears in another incarnation on
Mingus at Monterey
(Prestige P-34001). This tune is one of the greatest mood pieces in the literature of jazz, and here it gets a classic reading, the small ensemble negotiating the changing tempos as if they were thinking with

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