The Guide to Classic Recorded Jazz (30 page)

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Authors: Tom Piazza

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BOOK: The Guide to Classic Recorded Jazz
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one mind. Don't miss this.
Mingus Moves
(Rhino/Atlantic R2 71454), a quintet set from 1973, is considerably less interesting than either of the
Changes
albums, with only three Mingus compositions out of the nine tracks. The two most spirited tracks here didn't appear on the original LP: "Big Alice," a Don Pullen tune that sounds like a meeting of Horace Silver and some New Orleans Mardi Gras Indians, and a swinger called "The Call."
Let My Children Hear Music
(Columbia CK 48910) is another of Mingus's best recordings, a brilliant 1971 presentation of Mingus compositions with large-orchestra arrangements by Sy Johnson. Highlights include the stately, mournful theme of "The Shoes of the Fisherman's Wife Are Some Jive Ass Slippers," a reworking of a Mingus composition originally called "Once Upon a Time There Was a Holding Corporation Called Old America," as well as the surging, insistent "Hobo Ho" and the lyrical ''Adagio Ma Non Troppo." A certain aspect of Mingus - the side of him that composed "Reincarnation of a Lovebird" and "Peggy's Blue Skylight" - is more fully represented in this album than it is anywhere else - a romantic, lyrical sound full of both optimism and melancholy that is completely Mingus's own. My personal favorite track here is "The I of Hurricane Sue," with its extended solos by alto saxophonist Charles McPherson and tenorist Bobby Jones.
Mingus Revisited
(EmArcy 826 496-2) is a collection I keep wishing were better than it is; Mingus has a big band with the cream of New York's musicians (Clark Terry, Eric Dolphy, Roland Hanna, Booker Ervin, et al.) at his disposal. But six of the eight tracks are under four minutes, and things always seem to stop just as they get going. There are a couple of showbizzy vocals that don't add much and two tracks on which tunes are set against each other in counterpoint; the first combines "Take the 'A' Train" and "Exactly Like You," and the second is an Ellington medley of an unusually up-tempo "Do Nothing Till You Hear from Me" overlaid with "I Let a Song Go Out of My Heart." It's fun but a bit of a parlor trick. The most substantial tracks are the Ellington-influenced "Bemoanable Lady," which features Eric Dolphy on alto sounding like Johnny Hodges on laughing gas, and an eight-minute-long contemporary classical piece by Mingus called "Half-Mast Inhibition," which is very ambitious and successful on its own terms but isn't primarily jazz influenced. Not to be overlooked here is "Mingus Fingus No. 2," first recorded as "Mingus Fingers" in 1947 with Lionel Hampton's big band (available on
Midnight
Sun [Decca/GRP GRD-625]), a choppy but interesting big-band chart.
A favorite album of many Mingus fans is
The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady
(MCAD-5649 JVC-462), an extended work in six parts that seems to have been written to accompany dancers. This is very romantic music, lushly
 
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scored for ensemble, with Charlie Mariano's florid alto handling most of the lead. Much of the work is based on vamps, churning riffs stated by the horns as well as the rhythm section, and is based harmonically on a pedal tone, or a bass note that forms the root of a number of different harmonic directions the group might take; the approach is very close in effect to the modal approach. As a result, perhaps, I find the music a little hard to listen to; it feels monotonous to me, and the melodic element seems weak. Generally, if the harmonic and rhythmic bases of the music are going to be relatively static, there should be a lot of melodic inventiveness to provide interest. Mingus seems here to be working mainly with incantatory patterns based on vamps, and I don't think it really comes off. Lots of people do, though.
A more successful large-ensemble performance is
Mingus at Monterey
(Prestige P-34001), recorded at the 1964 Monterey Jazz Festival. The focus of interest here is on two long pieces, "Meditations on Integration" and "Orange Was the Color of Her Dress, Then Blue Silk." "Meditations" is an intricate, emotional work lasting more than twenty-eight minutes, with a beautiful, brooding main theme, including variations full of tumult and shouting, solos overlapping with backgrounds, and Mingus's customary tempo shifts and dynamic turns. The recording quality is less than satisfactory, though, and in many places it is hard to really hear what's happening. ''Orange," on the other hand, is a lyric masterpiece, a blues-tinged theme with delicious harmonies, which the ensemble plays, bending and stretching the notes. The centerpiece of this performance is a long alto solo by Charles McPherson that sets and sustains a fantastic mood, balanced perfectly between languor and tension. It is worth owning the set just for this track. The album also includes a twenty-four-minute medley of Duke Ellington material, including a long version of "Take the 'A' Train."
A different approach to "Meditations" can be heard on
Town Hall Concert
(Jazz Workshop/OJC-042), retitled "Praying with Eric (Meditations for a Pair of Wire Cutters)." This isn't the large ensemble bombardment that the Monterey version is but rather a long patrol by a small band, including Johnny Coles on trumpet, Eric Dolphy on flute and bass clarinet, Clifford Jordan on tenor, and Jaki Byard on piano, along with Mingus and Dannie Richmond, into the heart of an ever-shifting composition, ballad sections of great gentleness giving way to surging, cooking sections. It is a really extraordinary example of extended-form improvisation.
A very good album is
Mingus, Mingus, Mingus, Mingus, Mingus
(MCAD-39119), which is often overlooked because there isn't a lot of new material on it. "Hora Decubitus" is "E's Flat, Ah's Flat, Too" by another name; "Theme for Lester Young" is a reworking of "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat." But there is some
 
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great playing here by two large ensembles containing two trumpets, trombone, tuba, three or four saxophones, and rhythm, and they give a strong reading to even the familiar themes. A highlight of the record is a shockingly beautiful ballad called "I X Love," in which Mingus wrote some exquisite Ellingtonian voicings behind Charlie Mariano's alto lead; check out, too, the trombone's countermelody to the muted trumpet solo. A strong album, if not a groundbreaking one.
The most ambitious Mingus record ever made was recorded ten years after his death.
Epitaph
(Columbia C2K 45428) is a two-hour performance by a thirty-piece ensemble of some of the best musicians in New York, recorded live in a 1989 concert conducted by composer-musician-writer Gunther Schuller. The recording represents a phenomenal amount of detective work, since much of the piece was unfinished at the time of Mingus's death, having been merely sketched out by him. The booklet that comes with the set is full of information and wonderful photographs of Mingus.
Ezz-thetic
Several other composer-arrangers must be mentioned here, each of whom used a large talent for orchestration to create unorthodox and stimulating situations for other instrumentalists to play in. One of the most highly regarded is George Russell, whose "Cubana Be" and "Cubana Bop" were recorded by Dizzy Gillespie's big band in 1947. Russell, who was only a limited instrumentalist himself (he played what is sometimes called arranger's piano), evolved a complex theory of harmony that involved modes rather than chords and which gave much less of a sense of rootedness in a tonal center than traditional harmony did. Beginning in the mid-1950s, Russell led a number of recording ensembles in performances of his original material.
The George Russell Smalltet - Jazz Workshop
(RCA/Bluebird 6467-2-RB) is certainly one of the best of these. Recorded with a small group including trumpeter Art Farmer and pianist Bill Evans, the extremely varied program is a refreshing change of pace from just about everything else being recorded at the time. Russell uses vamps, swing tempo, arranged backgrounds, and all the materials in the arranger's palette to set off the excellent solo work of all concerned. The set includes the famous "Ezz-thetic," dedicated to boxer Ezzard Charles, and a startling feature for Evans, "Concerto for Billy the Kid." All of the Russell albums reissued by Riverside/OJC are interesting; 1961's
Ezz-thetics
(Riverside/OJC-070) is especially noteworthy for the presence of alto saxophonist Eric Dolphy, who plays beautifully on Russell's arrangement of Thelonious Monk's ballad "'Round Midnight.''
 
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Russell's
New York, N.Y.
(Decca/MCA MCAD-31371) is fun, a sort of postbop
Manhattan Tower
, a stylized late-1950s sound portrait of New York's jazz world, with a spoken narration by singer Jon Hendricks. Here and there the proceedings are spiced with appearances by soloists such as John Coltrane, Benny Golson, Art Farmer, Bill Evans, amd Max Roach. Despite the stellar cast, this is probably more worth having as a period curio with some high points than as something to provide sustained listening pleasure.
Russell's writing can also be heard on two compilations,
The Jazz Arranger, Volume 2
(Columbia CK 45445) and
The RCA Victor Jazz Workshop - The Arrangers
(RCA/Bluebird 6471-2-RB). His offering on the Columbia set is the multilayered and multisectioned "All About Rosie," which, again, features an extended solo from pianist Bill Evans. The Russell material on the RCA set, recorded under the leadership of altoist Hal McKusick, involves a group similar to that on the other Russell RCA set, augmented by several more horns. The Russell tracks here share the spotlight with the McKusick group's treatment of two originals by another great orchestrator of the day, Gil Evans.
Evans had made a name for himself by orchestrating several of Charlie Parker's tunes for Claude Thornhill's big band in the late 1940s and had later turned in some very impressive work for the Miles Davis
Birth of the Cool
sessions (available on Capitol CDP 7 92862 2). He is still probably most famous for his late-1950s collaborations with Davis,
Miles Ahead
(Columbia CK 40784),
Porgy and Bess
(Columbia CK 40647), and
Sketches of Spain
(Columbia CK 40578), for which he produced beautiful large-orchestra frameworks for Davis's trumpet.
But Evans made a number of recordings under his own name that are worth hearing in their own right. His grasp of orchestration was masterful, and he always surrounded himself with the best musicians.
Gil Evans and Ten
(Prestige/OJC-346) has Evans at the piano directing a fine ensemble, including soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy, altoist Lee Konitz, and bassist Paul Chambers, in a mixed program of ballads and cookers, with a gorgeous feature for trombonist Jimmy Cleveland on Tadd Dameron's "If You Could See Me Now" and a fascinating translation of the folk ballad "Ella Speed" into a rolling, medium-tempo performance with excellent work from Lacy.
New Bottle Old Wine
(Pacific Jazz/EMI-Manhattan CDP 7 46855 2) is a sort of extended concerto for alto virtuoso Cannonball Adderley in a program consisting of material by "the great jazz composers," including Jelly Roll Morton's "King Porter Stomp," Monk's '''Round Midnight," and Lester Young's "Lester Leaps In." Some of the writing here, like the fey scoring of parts of "King Porter Stomp," sounds a little corny or contrived; the opening of Dizzy Gillespie's Afro-Cuban cooker "Manteca," which is done practically sotto
 
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voce with mysterious flutes and guitar played mandolin-style, seems to be straining for an effect that isn't natural to the material. But there is some excellent stuff here; I especially like the writing on Charlie Parker's "Bird Feathers," which makes wholesale use of improvised Parker lines very deftly scored for the ensemble. Adderley and trombonist Frank Rehak play fine solos.
Great Jazz Standards
(Pacific Jazz CDP 7 46856 2), recorded the next year (1959), is better, more relaxed and naturally conceived. The recording balance is better, too. The album is organized along the same lines as
New Bottle Old Wine
: new treatments of tunes by Bix Beiderbecke ("Davenport Blues"), Clifford Brown ("Joy Spring"), Don Redman ("Chant of the Weed"), and others. Trumpeter Johnny Coles is the primary soloist here, although Budd Johnson just about steals the show, both on clarinet ("Chant of the Weed'') and on tenor sax ("La Nevada" - a solo not to be missed). Coming at a transitional time in the music, this album and its predecessor were significant, reaffirming the continuum of the work of the jazz masters from the earliest times until then. Also good is
Out of the Cool
(MCA/Impulse MCAD-5653), which contains another version of "La Nevada," this one much longer than that on
Great Jazz Standards
, including some very Miles Davisian trumpet from Johnny Coles and another wailing Budd Johnson tenor solo.
In 1961 Oliver Nelson, a talented alto saxophonist, composer, and arranger, went into the studio with a seven-piece band - made up of himself on alto and tenor saxophones, Freddie Hubbard on trumpet, Eric Dolphy on alto and flute, George Barrow on baritone, Bill Evans on piano, Paul Chambers on bass, and Roy Haynes on drums - and recorded one of the strongest albums of the early 1960s,
Blues and the Abstract Truth
(MCA/Impulse MCAD-5659). The set consists entirely of Nelson originals, including the lovely medium-tempo "Stolen Moments," which went on to become something of a standard, all orchestrated imaginatively, economically, and tastefully by Nelson. The music swings hard and is steeped in the blues, and the solo work from all concerned cuts right to the heart of the matter. "Cascades" is an up-tempo scalar piece based, according to Nelson, on a saxophone exercise, and "Hoe-Down," despite the title, is a gospel-based piece that shifts into a fast swing tempo for the solos. The other four tunes, including "Stolen Moments," are either blues or are derived from the blues, in different tempos, and there is never any question of monotony. Throughout, the drumming of Roy Haynes is exciting, sensitive, and appropriate to the material; he is, to this day, one of the best and most underappreciated drummers in jazz.
Almost as good - maybe better, in some respects - is
More Blues and the Abstract Truth
(MCA/Impulse MCAD-5888), recorded in 1964 with all-star personnel including Thad Jones on trumpet, Phil Woods on alto, Pepper Adams

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