Happy birthday, Saint John!

September 23, 2011 by 2 Comments

Portrain of John Coltrane (2007) BY Paolo Steffan. Image via Wikipedia

Many jazz musicians have been devoutly religious, but only one has been canonised – Saint John Will-I-Am Coltrane, who would have turned 85 on 23 September 2011.

The influential tenor player was born in Hamlet, North Carolina, in middle class circumstances into a family with deep religious roots.

He started playing other instruments, especially alto, only gravitating to the tenor sax after playing alto with Dizzy Gillespie’s Big Band until that broke up. After that Coltrane stayed with Gillespie’s small group and took up tenor.

One of the big breaks in his career came in 1955 when he was called by Miles Davis to join the trumpeter’s famous “First Great Quintet” in the place vacated by Sonny Rollins. Miles at that time was exploring modal scales which had a great impact on Coltrane. Valerie Wilmer in her book about the “New Music” As Serious as Your Life (Serpent’s Tail,1992) wrote that Coltrane had said “…he used to listen to Miles Davis on record and fantasise about playing tenor the way he played trumpet.”

Coltrane was with the Davis group until November 1956 when he rather abruptly left it. He was by this time being badly affected by heavy drinking and his addiction to heroin. In his biography of Davis (Paladin, 1984) Ian Carr writes “Miles may have tried to jolt the saxophonist from time to time to sting him into revolting against the inexorable progress of his destructive habit.” Whatever the reason or process of his leaving the Davis band Coltrane went home to Philadelphia where he managed to clean himself up, kicking the heroin habit cold turkey and having a kind of spiritual awakening with the support of his first wife Naima.

In the liner notes to his great album, A Love Supreme, Coltrane wrote about this episode:

“During the year 1957, I experienced, by the grace of God, a spiritual awakening which was to lead me to a richer, fuller, more productive life. At that time, in gratitude, I humbly asked to be given the means and privilege to make others happy through music.”

In early 1957 Coltrane was offered a recording contract by Bob Weinstock of Prestige Records which led to the saxophonist’s first recording date as a leader. Recorded at the end of May 1957 it was released as Coltrane in 1957.

Coltrane’s second solo album was Blue Train issued by Blue Note records in 1957 which featured four of Coltrane’s own compositions and one standard.

By January 1958 Coltrane was back with Davis after a six-month stint with the Thelonius Monk Quartet which produced two outstanding albums: Thelonious Monk with John Coltrane and an outstanding date at Carnegie Hall, the recording of which was only discovered serendipitously in 2005 and released as Thelonius Monk Quartet with John Coltrane at Carnegie Hall. Of great interest in the first of these albums is the contrast between an earlier influential tenor player, Coleman Hawkins, who plays on two of the tracks, and his younger counterpart Coltrane.

Wilmer wrote about Coltrane’s technique and musicianship: “Coltrane rewrote the method book for the saxophone, just as Charlie Parker had done twenty years earlier and Coleman Hawkins twenty years before that.”

In 1959 Coltrane was an influential part of the Davis group which made the seminal Kind of Blue album which has become something of a jazz classic, very possibly the top selling jazz album of all time. This session confirmed Coltrane’s interest in modal jazz and set him off on his explorations of other musics, especially African and Indian.

Shortly after completing the Kind of Blue recording was Davis, Coltrane was again in studio as leader to record the first album consisting entirely of his own compositions, Giant Steps, a breakthrough album which showed to the full his playing style dubbed “sheets of sound” by critic Ira Gitler. The complex chord sequences of the title track have been called “Coltrane changes”.

By the time of his recording of the album My Favorite Things in 1961 Coltrane was heavily into his exploratory phase, in part as a result of meeting and studying with famed sitar player Ravi Shankar. Coltrane used a soprano sax on this recording for the first time.

After some personnel changes the so-called “Classic Quartet” was in place by 1962. This group consisted of pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Jimmy Garrison with Elvin Jones on drums.

The Classic Quartet produced increasingly inventive albums, including what is considered by most to be Coltrane’s greatest, A Love Supreme. This 1964 album indicated the increasingly spiritual direction Coltrane was taking. In the liner notes of the 1995 re-release Michael Cuscuna, prolific producer and discographer, wrote: “A Love Supreme is one of the most honest musical performances put to tape. Its beauty and appeal are timeless.”

A Love Supreme has gone on to influence many generations of musicians and fans, in a way as Kind of Blue has done, who would not normally be associated with jazz.

By the time Coltrane died in July 1967 he was a legend with a huge number of high quality recordings to his name. Valerie Wilmer wrote, “In addition to his musical importance, Coltrane exerted a profound spiritual influence on the musicians who followed in his footsteps.”

Icon of St John Will-I-Am Coltrane. Image via Wikipedia

“What he did through his own example, was to give not only the musicians but the Black community as a whole, an example by which they could live,” Wilmer continued. Which is why, perhaps, he was canonised by the African Orthodox Church back in the early 1980s.

As the founder of the St John Will-I-Am Coltrane Church in San Francisco, Franzo Wayne King, said in a sermon reported by the New York Times in 2007: “The kind of music you listen to is the person you become. When you listen to John Coltrane, you become a disciple of the anointed of God.”

I do wonder what Coltrane himself would think of this, seeing that he was determinedly non-denominational?

But the influence for positive, good values is clear.

Coltrane said in 1966: “I hope whoever is out there listening, they enjoy it.” Thank you, St John, we do!

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Port Elizabeth’s “great gale” of 1902

September 12, 2011 by 2 Comments

“Never before in its history has this port suffered under such overwhelming disaster as we record today. On Sunday morning some 38 craft rode at anchor under the leaden sky. Heavy rains had fallen and the wind gradually rose until, as the shadows of evening hid the shipping from view, a fresh gale was blowing in from the south-east, which, as the midnight hour was reached, had developed in to a hurricane. As the turmoil of wind and wave continued, so the toll of ships mounted, until 18 vessels were aground, with a raging sea adding a high toll of human lives.”

So read a report in the Eastern Province Herald in Port Elizabeth on 2 September 1902.

A gale force south easterly wind came up during the evening and night of Sunday 31 August 1902 when some 38 ships were riding at anchor in Algoa Bay. Huge waves battered the ships and several of them began to drift onto the bight of the bay.

The first distress signals sounded were gun shots which were heard just before midnight. The local rescue team, consisting mainly of a rocket brigade, went to the shoreline to see what they could do. In spite of their efforts the wind made it almost impossible to get lines to the distressed ships.

Four local men, Frank Gregory, A. I. McEwan, E. Hayler and John Mannie went out to attempt to get a line across but all were drowned in the attempt. Mothers and children were among those who succumbed in the raging seas.

By the time the storm abated on the Tuesday there were perhaps 38 people known to have died and about 300 rescued. From that day funerals became a daily occurrence as more bodies were washed ashore. The victims were buried in Port Elizabeth's Southend Cemetery, where there is also a monument recalling the tragedy. On the monument are recorded the names of all the ships, those victims whose names are known, and the names of the local men who made the rescue attempt.

The disaster remains the largest marine disaster ever to hit South Africa – though there have been others with greater loss of life, never before or since have so many ships come to grief simultaneously on the treacherous South African coastline.

The list of ships which were beached that day included:

Oakworth – a British cargo sailing vessel of 1242 grt was on route from Port Pirie with a cargo of grain;

Emmanuel – was a German sailing barque of 1147 tons under the command of Captain Tuitzer on route from Port Pirie with a cargo of grain;

Coriolanus – was a German sailing barque of 978 tons. under the command of Captain Gotting on route from Wallaroo with a cargo of wheat;

Hans Wagner – was a German iron barque of 938 tons under the command of Captain Millman was on route from Melbourne with a cargo of grain;

Agostino Rombo – was an Italian sailing barque of 827 grt, en route from Buenos Aires with a cargo of forage under the command of Captain Vassho (Captain Vassho is listed on the Memorial SE cemetery at Port Elizabeth);

Waimea – Norwegian ownded ship was carrying a cargo of wood, with loss of Captain Oredorp and 7 crew on passage from Fremantle (Captain Oredorp is listed on the Memorial to the dead in the SE Cementary of Port Elizabeth);

Arnold – was a German iron sailing barque of 854 grt under the command of Captain Ahlars and carrying a general cargo

Sayre – a British cargo sailing barque of 735 grt was on route from New York with a general cargo ;

Nautilus – was a German sailing barque of 745 grt that dragged her anchor in the great storm of the 1st September 1902 and was wrecked at North End Beach, Algoa Bay. She was under the command of Captain Assing and on route from Adelaide with a cargo of wheat. Captain Assing and 11 crew lost. Their deaths are listed on the Memorial SE Cemetery, Port Elizabeth.

Content – was a Swedish sailing barque of 547 grt. under the command of Captain Gustafsen. She was on route from Rangoon with a cargo of rice when she was wrecked on North End Beach, Algoa Bay on the 1st September 1902.

Iris – a transport schooner of 522 tons;

Kimara – I have been unable to find out anything about this ship;

Hermanos – was a Norwegian sailing barque of 498 tons under the command of Captain Gunderson which was on route from Banbury with a cargo of wood;

Thekla – was a German sailing 3 masted schooner of 350 grt on route from Mauritius with a cargo of sugar;

Constant – was a Norwegian sailing barque of 292 grt that was wrecked at North End Beach, Algoa Bay on the 1st September 1902 under the command of Captain Jacobsen when on roure from Rio de Janeiro with a cargo of coffee.

Clara – was a British Steam tug of 139grt;

Gabrielle – was a British sailing schooner of 78 tons on route from St. Johns with a cargo of wood;

Scotia – was a British cargo steamer of the Clan Line;

Countess of Carnarvon – was a wooden British steam tug of 38 tons;

Cavaliere Michele Russo – was an Italian ship of 1,529 tons on route from Newcastle, Australia with a cargo of Grain. 17 crew members died;

Inchcape Rock – was British full-rigged ship under the command of Captain Ferguson on route from Portland, Oregon.

My source for most of the above information about the ships involved is The Wreck Site.

The photos accompanying this post come from the collection of my late father, Murray McGregor. I do not have any idea of the name of the photographer.

For the identification of the photos I am grateful to FaceBook friends Valma Meier and Derek Watters.

Filed Under: Port Elizabeth, South Africa Tagged With: , ,

Greenmarket Square – a sense of place in Cape Town

September 10, 2011 by 1 Comment

“The search for a sense of place in a city is also a search for that place where the city is most itself. For me this is Greenmarket Square.” – from Sea-Mountain, Fire City by Mike Nicol (Kwela Books, 2001)

For around three centuries the heart of Cape Town has beaten in Greenmarket Square.

It started in 1696 when the authorities at the tiny refreshment station, founded by the Dutch East India Company (or VOC, for Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie) 44 years earlier, decided that a building should be erected for the Burgher (Citizen) Militia (or Burgher Wacht) which had been established in1659 as a force for both policing and defence.

The members of the militia were given wooden rattles which with they signalled the hours, as well as sounding a warning to loiterers and others up to no good.

Mothers in the Cape taught their children a little Dutch ditty:

Moederlief, ‘k geloof vast

Dat hy op de dieven past,

Goede klaper houdt de wacht;

Ik ga slapen – goede nacht.

(Dearest mother, I firmly believe

that he catches the thieves,

the watch has a good rattle

I’m to bed – good night)

The Burgherwacht Huys was built in 1696 on what was to become Greenmarket Square. It was a simple building and no doubt a fire-trap too! Fire was a constant hazard at the little settlement at the time and one of the duties of the Burgher Wacht was to act as a fire brigade.

In 1710 the Council of Policy, the highest authority at the Cape, decided to erect a more permanent building for the Wacht and in the same resolution set aside land for public use. The land so set aside was what is now Greenmarket Square.

The building for the Wachthuys was started in the same year. It served not only the Burgher Wacht but also served as a meeting place for the Burgher Council (Raad), until in 1755 it was demolished to make way for a new Wachthuys. The foundation stone of this new Wachthuys was laid by a member of the Court of Justice, Baerendt Artoijs, on 18 November 1755. The silver trowel used for the ceremony is still in the building.

The Old Town House across the Square. Photo taken in 1967

The Old Town House across the Square. Photo taken in 1967

The new building was completed in 1761, although it had been in use for some years before already. The façade, still largely unchanged to this day, was designed by Matthias Lotter whose father was a stucco-sculptor in Augsberg.

The balcony in the front of the building was used to make proclamations and citizens were summoned to the Square to hear these by a bell in a tower above the balcony, now replaced.

When in 1804 Cape Town was given a Coat of Arms, this was placed in the cartouche above the door to the balcony. From this time onwards the Wachthuys was used for civic functions, which is why it acquired the name the “Old Town House”. It served as Cape Town’s Town Hall until the present Town Hall was built in the early years of the 20th Century.

The square in front of the Old Town House was used as a market by the market gardeners on the outskirts of Cape Town, hence the name Greenmarket Square. The square was first mentioned officially in 1733 but by then had already been long in use.

Slaves on Greenmarket Square. Drawing by Johannes Rach, 1762.

The square was also a favourite gathering place for slaves during their infrequent free time, when they would gather there to gossip and relax. It was also popular with visitors from all over the world when their ships called at Cape Town, the square being a jolly meeting place offering travellers all the amenities of bed and board.

One of the travellers who spent time in the Square was Norwegian Johannes Rach who visited Cape Town in August 1762, staying for a fortnight. While in Cape Town Rach captured the early spirit of Greenmarket Square in a series of drawing like the one here.

During the 1960s and 1970s Greenmarket Square entered into a period of what Nicol described as “sterility”, weighed down by the dark mantel of apartheid and its denial of life. It became primarily a car park.

People relaxing under a tree next to the once-disputed toilets.

One of the stories about the Square in that era concerns the farmer from the Free State Province who was visiting the Cape and had to make use of the toilet facilities in the Square. He found himself standing next to a coloured (creole) man at the urinal and was outraged. He wrote to the City Council demanding that the toilets be declared for white use only. The Council did a survey to establish who used the toilets most and found that coloured people were the most frequent users. They therefore decided to proclaim it a “coloured” facility.

The cobblestones of the Square

The square and surrounding streets were paved with cobblestones in 1967 when the whole area was proclaimed a National Monument. This proclamation has ensured that the façades of the surrounding buildings will not be encroached on by high-rise buildings which would destroy the human scale of the Square.

In the late 1980s the Square was opened up for trading again and became a “noisy, friendly, raucous” place – it has become, as Nicol writes, “A meeting place again.”

Drawing of Greenmarket Square in 1833 by Sir Charles D'Oyly.

Nicol writes of the 1833 drawing of the Square and the Old Town House by Sir Charles D’Oyly shown here: “…the mountain rises behind Town House and the buildings that enclose the square in a warm embrace. I can stand where he stood, see the Town House he saw. I can imagine, then as now, disappearing into the market jostle, becoming part of the city.”

Square, while the Metropolitan Methodist Church (right) offers comfort to the lost and lonely, as it has done since 1879.

The Old Town House (centre) still keeps guard over the Square, while the Metropolitan Methodist Church (right) offers comfort to the lost and lonely, as it has done since 1879.

 

Filed Under: Cape Town, South Africa Tagged With: , , ,

From Antibes to a New York Penthouse with Mingus

September 6, 2011 by 1 Comment

The 1960 albums

The year 1960 saw Mingus record five great albums, three released in 1960, one in 1961 and one in 1980. The 1961 release was the result of his collaboration with conductor and musicologist Gunther Schuller and entitled Pre-Bird Mingus. The album released in 1980 was the live set at the Antibes Jazz Festival.

The 1960 release which will not be part of this Hub is the Candid album Reincarnation of a Lovebird, produced by Nat Hentoff, as was the album we will discuss here, Charles Mingus presents Charles Mingus.

The other album we will discuss here is the live set recorded at that year’s Antibes Jazz Festival.

Mingus at Antibes

On 13 July 1960 Mingus appeared at the Antibes Jazz Festival, Juan-les-Pins on France’s Côte d’Azur, with Ted Curson on trumpet; Eric Dolphy on alto and bass clarinet; Booker Ervin on tenor; and Dannie Richmond on drums. Bud Powell joined the group for “I’ll Remember April”.

The group’s set opens with an atmospheric, swinging version of “Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting”, which sounds indeed like a Holiness Church meeting, complete with shouts, moaning and hand-clapping, which generates an incredible emotional energy, especially during Dolphy’s amazing solo. A solo from Richmond is followed by a brief but exciting chorus from Curson before the whole meeting is wrapped up with another short Richmond solo just before the whole group comes together with Mingus chanting “Oh yeah, my Lord” which others take up.

“Prayer for Passive Resistance” opens with a slapped bass figure from Mingus which Richmond quickly echoes, leading into Ervin’s soulful solo.

Next comes that great Mingus number “What Love” which features great solos by Dolphy and Curson.

Bud Powell delivers a typically great solo on “I’ll Remember April”, a kind of bebop revival thing in this context. Powell’s solo is a feat of creativity – the track is 14 minutes long and the solo lasts almost half of that time. The number swings furiously throughout. and features solos by Curson, Dolphy and Ervin besides Powell. There is a long passage of play in which Ervin and Dolphy enthusiastically trade fours, building up to a great finale in which Curson also gets involved in some group improvisation before the head comes back and Powell signs it all off.

“Folk Forms No 1” is introduced by Mingus playing a funky figure before the ensemble comes in equally funkily. Ervin, Dolphy and Curson again do some great group improv with Mingus providing some enthusiastic support and playing off the others. This all generates enough energy to light up New York City, never mind the crowd at Antibes who get enthusiastically into the swing of the whole thing. Mingus’s solo on upright is enough to make any bass guitarist worried. The three horns just keep on going, playing off each other, sometimes with rhythm section and sometimes without. An incredible performance all round.

The final track is that great Mingus number we first met on Mingus Ah Um: “Better Git Hit in Your Soul”, here taken at breakneck speed and with an incredible load of energy pulsing along. It gets so breathtaking at times I keep expecting the band to collapse with exhaustion, especially seeing they had by this time been going for an hour of high intensity music, but they just seem to get higher and higher on the energy. Amazing stuff! Again the gospel feel is heightened by hand clapping and shouting, encouraging the players to ever new heights of expression.

This is an album I return to again and again, an album of really exciting, emotional music, just as Mingus said: “Music is, or was, a language of the emotions.”

Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus

This recording was a relatively rare instance of Mingus recording with a quartet – besides himself there were his current favourite collaborators in the Jazz Workshop: Dannie Richmond on drums, Eric Dolphy on reeds and Ted Curson on trumpet. In spite of Mingus’s interjections and introductions this is a studio recording and there was no audience. Mingus wanted to replicate the ambiance of a club date without the distractions of such gigs, like ice clinking in glasses and cash registers ringing. It was in fact recorded at Nola Penthouse Sound Studios in New York City

The first track is listed on the cover as “Folk Forms No 1”, but Mingus seems to have been a bit unsure about the title in the actual performance, he calls it “Opus”, or “New Series 1”, “Folk Series”. Whatever, it is a swinging vehicle for each of the collaborators to shine, which the leader and Richmond proceed to do, each taking longish solos. Mingus introduced the number as being based on “folk song form” and if jazz can be termed a “folk form” then it surely is.

The next number is listed as “Original Fables of Faubus”, perhaps a wry reference to the banning of the lyrics from the “Fables of Faubus” track on the Columbia album the previous year. Mingus dedicates the piece to “the first, or second, or third all American heel”:

Oh, Lord, don’t let ’em shoot us!

Oh, Lord, don’t let ’em stab us!

Oh, Lord, don’t let ’em tar and feather us!

Oh, Lord, no more swastikas!

Oh, Lord, no more Ku Klux Klan!

The next number, “What Love?” featuring a great solo by Mingus and otherwise very similar (with, of course, a smaller force!) to the arrangement on Antibes. It’s a great tune and gives especially Dolphy a chance to really shine on that bass clarinet! Great stuff.

Mingus introduces the next track as “a tribute to all mothers.” I’m not sure if he means “mothers” in the jazz sense, but whatever, it has a ridiculous title (must be one of the longest in jazz): “All the things you could be by now if Sigmund Freud’s wife was your mother.” Yes? Even Mingus admits “it means nothing.”

What it is, is a another Mingusian (how’s that for a made up word?) romp at high speed through the changes. Curson especially makes the most of the opportunity to take some high flying liberties with the whole thing. Then Dolphy just makes mincemeat of everything with some amazing pyrotechnics, to the shouted encouragement of Mingus. It’s great fun and wonderful to listen to. I love the way the solos sound as if they cannot stop at all and then do, very suddenly. The changes in the tunes are not anywhere near those in “All the Things You Are” but Mingus apparently told his players to keep that tune in mind as they played this one. Weird idea but it makes for great fun.

The reviewer of CD Universe (http://www.cduniverse.com/search/xx/music/pid/1224780/a/Charles+Mingus+Presents+Charles+Mingus.htm accessed 21 July 2009) wrote of this album that “The songs here feature a fiery amalgam of blues, gospel, and folk with group improvisation.” Fiery it is, and like things that have been tried by fire, it is very pure Mingus, to my mind one of his best.

Ronnie Lankford, Jr is quoted on the Accoustic Sounds website (http://store.acousticsounds.com/browse_detail.cfm?Title_ID=16452 accessed 21 July 2009): “The album accomplishes what the best of Mingus accomplishes: the perfect tension between jazz played as an ensemble and jazz played as totally free.” I totally agree. It’s a blast, it’s thoughtful, it’s angry and it’s fun.

Filed Under: Jazz Tagged With: , , ,

Tijuana to ‘Frisco – more Mingus moods

September 4, 2011 by 2 Comments

The albums

This article will look at Charles Mingus albums released in 1962, 1963 and 1964. The first of them was actually recorded in 1957, with Danny Richmond on drums for the first, and most definitely not the last, time with Mingus. This was the ever-popular Tijuana Moods , which Mingus wrote, “was written in a very blue period in my life.”

The second album is one which is very special in the whole Mingus ouvre – The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady , recorded and released in 1963.

The third album is a live album recorded at the Jazz Workshop in San Francisco on 2 and 3 June, 1964. This album, called Right Now , is notable, apart from the amazing music, for the contribution of Jane Getz on piano.

Tijuana Moods

“This is the best record I ever made” – Mingus

This album features a little-known trumpeter Clarence Shaw, who, Mingus wrote in the liner notes of the 1962 release, “by now would probably have become as famous as any of our current so-called jazz players if this record had been released six years ago when recorded.”

Shaw shines especially on the opening track, “Dizzy Moods” which is based on the Gillespie composition “Woody ‘n You”. His solo is clearly articulated and swinging, exemplifying Mingus’s comment that Shaw “doesn’t overcrowd his ideas like most improvisers. He’s like a great conversationalist, he stops and rests…” This is a typically Mingus number with frequent changes of tempo.

The next track is “Ysabel’s Table Dance” is Mingus’s successful attempt to capture his experience in Tijuana, whence he had gone to forget a break-up from his wife, and he “decided to benefit musically from this experience and set out to compose and re-create what I felt and saw around me.”

This track “contains the fire, the pulse, and all that I felt as I heard the tune in my head with the movement of her body.” A truly remarkable evocation of place and mood in jazz. The mood is greatly enhanced by the castanets played by Ysabel Morel and her vocal interjections.

Its a driving, swinging and exhilarating choice from the opening bars with Mingus’s bowed riff and the castanets setting up a fabulous rhythm which is maintained throughout. Wonderful piece, altogether.

“Tijuana Gift Shop” is a tightly swinging number with gorgeous ensemble work, featuring amazing unison riffs from Shaw on trumpet and alto player Shafi Hadi. Jimmy Knepper’s trombone growling in the background adds a great feel to the whole thing. Shaw’s muted few bars at the end are things of great beauty.

The CD made to look like the original vinyl LP

In the liner notes Mingus tells of finding himself, after arriving in Tijuana at six in the evening, “wandering through the street followed by local bands of five to ten musicians with bass, sax, guitar, and typical Spanish instruments.” That is the feeling he creates in “Los Mariachis” which, he wrote, “typifies the blues beat.” This is a gloriously atmospheric piece, alternating between hard-driving blues beat and moments of quiet, when typically just two instruments will play. In the first such break there is a superb dialogue between Shaw and Mingus himself. That is worth buying the whole album for! It’s one of those moments of total magic that sometimes happen in great music, when everything else falls away and one becomes lost in that timeless time. There are whole worlds and long beguiling stories told in this number.

The final number on the original album was “Flamingo” which is marked by an absolutely gorgeous solo from Shaw.

The final track on 2000 double CD re-issue is entitled “A Colloquial Dream (Scenes In The City)”, a great spoken poetry with music mix which was recorded in the same session as the rest of Tijuana Moods. It features the voice of Lonnie Elder, who declaims “I love jazz” and “I guess I must be the only man in the world who wakes up with jazz music!” Its a great mood piece and a fine end to the album. The words and the music are wonderfully evocative and supportive to each other. “Beautiful like a woman, a real woman,” as Elder says at the end.

Besides those already mentioned the personnel on this album include Frankie Dunlop on percussion, and Bill Triglia on piano.

The production of the two-disc re-release from 2000 that I have is great for many reasons, not least of which is the sound which is superb.

The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady

This album has been hailed by critics as having “a special place in Mingus’s work,” and “one of the greatest achievements in orchestration by any composer in jazz history.” It certainly was a very ambitious project on Mingus’s part, to write a ballet for an 11-piece orchestra, a ballet which would capture all the emotions of which his psychologist Edmund Pollock would write in the liner notes: “Mr. Mingus cries of misunderstanding of self and people.” The music does indeed, as Pollock continues, “present a brooding, moaning intensity about prejudice, hate and persecution.”

My contention, though, is that if that were all this music did it would not grab us as it does, with deep emotion, yes, but with that emotion expressed in so “right” a way, and covering a wide range of human experience, fittingly made musical in the adoption by Mingus of themes and modes from many different musics, and blended into an artistically unitary whole of immense power.

The first track “Solo Dance” is introduced by Danny Richmond opens with what Mingus describes in his 1963 notes about the album, as a “written repeated rhythmatic (sic) bass drum to snare drum to sock cymbal figure that suggests two tempos along with its own tempo.” This complexity is maintained throughout the track, through some wonderful ensemble work and a just a few solos, most notably a longer one on the alto, by Charlie Mariano, sounding like a voice “calling to others.”

The second track, “Duet Solo Dancers”, starts with a gentle piano theme, almost classical in feel, at a slow tempo, then the whole ensemble comes in with sonorous harmonies, Ellingtonian in feel (Black, Brown and Beige comes strongly to mind) In Pollock’s words, “The music then changes into a mood of what I would call mounting restless agitation and anguish as if there is tremendous conflict between love and hate.” There is an amazing muted trombone solo which again sounds like a voice calling out in anguish.

“Group Dancers” opens with some interesting piano and features some wonderful Spanish-tinged music played on a classical guitar by Jay Berliner, reminding strongly of Tijuana Moods. There are again multiple tempo changes which mirror the changing emotions. According to Dr Pollock Mingus said that the use of the guitar was meant to mirror the Inquisition and El Greco’s “mood of opppressive poverty and death.”

The final track, consisting of three movements or modes, is an even more complex piece than any of the preceding. the sub-titles of the numbers are revealing of what the music expresses: “Mode D — Trio and Group Dancers” Stop! Look! and Sing Songs of Revolutions! ; “Mode E — Single Solos and Group Dance” Saint and Sinner Join in Merriment on Battle Front; “Mode F — Group and Solo Dance” Of Love, Pain, and Passioned Revolt, then Farewell, My Beloved, ’til It’s Freedom Day. Pollock notes that “the ending seems unfinished but one is left with a feeling of hope and even a promise of future joy.”

Its a “monster” of an album, which required a very special corps of musicians to handle all the music, and Mingus had assembled a stellar cast for the recording. The personnel were, besides Mingus himself, Jerome Richardson on soprano and baritone saxes and flute; Charlie Mariano on alto; Dick Hafer on tenor and flute; Rolf Ericson and Richard Williams on trumpet; Quentin Jackson on trombone; Don Butterfield on tuba and contrabass trombone; Jaki Byard on piano; Jay Berliner on acoustic guitar; and Danny Richmond on drums.

As Steve Huey wrote on All Music (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=A4f867ur070jd): “The result is one of the high-water marks for avant-garde jazz in the ’60s and arguably Mingus’ most brilliant moment.”

A date in ‘Frisco: Right Now

This just happens to be the first Mingus album I ever bought, back in the days of vinyl and I was living in Durban, in the South African province now known as kwaZulu-Natal and then simply known as Natal, with my family. Not sure why this particular album, but it must have sounded good to me at the time, the early 1970s, and I loved the sound and the feelings of the whole thing.

Had a bit of fun with a rather serious friend who fancied himself as a bit of an expert on classical music (to be fair, he was actually), by playing him the few bars of Mingus bowing his bass in the upper register at the beginning of “Meditation for a Pair of Wire Cutters”, the second side of the vinyl LP, and asking my friend to identify the composer. He was baffled and tried John Cage, Hindemith and a few other of the modernists, and was furious with me when I let him into the secret!

This is a wonderful album, which still sounds good to me. The first track is an updated version of “Fables of Faubus” which really cooks, as the saying goes. John Handy on alto really wails, to the great pleasure of his leader, who shouts his customary encouragement. Mingus’s own solo iks a veritable tour de force, a virtuosic display, with quotes from “Down by the Riverside” and “It Ain’t Necessarily So” woven into the swinging flow. Clifford Jordan on tenor is also inspired and uses some Coltranesque “sheets of sound” in his solo. Danny Richmond on drums is fervent and swinging and very supportive. Jane Getz doesn’t get much chance to shine but her presence is nevertheless felt. The blues with which the track ends is simply stunning..

“Meditation” starts with bowed bass introduction with which I teased my friend all those years ago. It then gets down to some serious swinging. The group on this track is without Handy but otherwise the same as the first track. Jordan gets a long solo and so does Getz. Towards the end of the track Getz and Jordan play together, he on flute, while Mingus gets out his bow again, for some interesting, almost modern-chamber music style stuff. It’s really inspired playing by all three and becomes almost atonal until the very last chord. A brilliant piece of music which in its 24 minutes covers a great range of styles and sound.

A musician of powerful originality

This ends my review of what is possibly the most creative decade of Mingus’s career, although there would still be some great albums in the years that followed, more surprises and explorations of what music is all about.

To my mind Mingus is quite simply one of the giants of 20th Century music, not just of jazz. He displayed a range of music that stretched any definition of jazz beyond the limits. No-one interested in music of any sort can really avoid the contribution of this massive genius and he certainly deserves to be taken very seriously indeed, as he demanded during his lifetime.

Nat Hentoff wrote about Mingus: “Charles Mingus was not only the most powerfully original bassist in jazz history, but he was one of the few legendary soloists and band leaders to leave an utterly distinctive body of continually unpredictable compositions. In that respect, he was in the rare company of Jelly Roll Morton, Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk.”

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Mingus magnificus Ah Um

September 4, 2011 by 1 Comment

A unique and brave musician

“This is the uniqueness of this man: he jolts with the unexpected and the new. He has something to say and he will use every resource to interpret his messages.” – Dr Edmund Pollock, Ph.D., Clinical Psychologist. (From the liner notes to the album The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady , 1963)

I wonder how many other jazz musicians would have invited their therapists to write liner notes for their albums? Charles Mingus was a unique and brave jazz musician, and the tribute to his qualities by his therapist is both fitting and insightful.

Few jazz musicians could have achieved what Mingus did in terms of taking jazz into a totally new space while maintaining strong, clear roots in the history (and stories) of both the music itself and the people who played it.

Two Charles Mingus albums reach their 50th anniversary this year, both recorded by Teo Macero at the 30th Street Studios of Columbia Records, the same studios which produced Miles Davis’s classic Kind of Blue and Dave Brubeck’s Time Out in the same year. Macero was clearly a busy man! And a very perceptive, sensitive one also, to have recognised and promoted such diverse talents, each of whom could make significant contributions to the richness of jazz, the power of its sound, and its huge emotional content and appeal.

In this regard the two Mingus albums stand as significant and beautiful manifestations: they are rooted in the history and story, yet are individual responses to that history and story, as Dr Pollock wrote, “Mr Mingus has never given up. From every experience such as a conviction for assault or an an inmate of a Bellevue (a New York psychiatric institution) locked ward, Mr Mingus has learned something and has stated it will not happen again to him.”

Listening to Mingus is to experience a person with an intense, almost terrifying, self-awareness and a furious determination to share, through his music, the pain, the anger, the joy and elation of this condition we call being human.

To quote Dr Pollock again, this time writing of the three tracks of side B of the original vinyl LP release of Black Saint , though the words could equally be applied to almost any music Mingus wrote or played: “…repeating and integrating harmony and disharmony, peace and disquiet, and love and hate… one is left with a feeling of hope and even a promise of future joy.”

Mingus was a restless searcher for media, styles, forms of music that would be adequate to convey his urgent emotions about and understanding of life. So he listened with “big ears” to the jazz “old-timers” and the new players bringing their own insights and styles to the music, to the old classical composers and the avant garde , always searching for sounds that would express himself, help him to say what he felt he had to say.

As Dr Pollock wrote, with considerable understatement: “Inarticulate in words, he is gifted in musical expression which he constantly uses to articulate what he perceives, knows and feels.”

Mingus Ah Um

The first of the two 1959 albums is often regarded as Mingus’s greatest: Mingus Ah Um.

The personnel on the album is made up of great musicians, all individualists with their own styles and personalities, who come together brilliantly to blow their hearts out for Mingus. On tenor sax Booker Ervin makes a weighty and soulful contribution. John Handy plays alto, clarinet and tenor on various tracks, the clarinet most notably on “Pussy Cat Blues” which he said was the only time he had played clarinet on a recording. The third tenor seat is held down by Shafi Hafdi, who doubles on alto on some of the tracks. Two trombones complete the horn line-up: Jimmy Knepper and Willie Dennis. The rhythm section consists of, besides the leader, Horace Parlan on piano and long-serving Mingus drummer Dannie Richmond.

Each of these players is noteworthy in their own rights and play significant roles both as soloists and in ensemble work on the album. Besides Mingus, only Parlan, Richmond and Ervin play on all the tracks, the other tracks having different combinations.

Track 1: Better Git It in Your Soul

This album opens with the bluesy, gospelly “Better Git It in Your Soul” which is suffused with the sounds and rhythms that Mingus grew up with in the Holiness Church he attended with his step mother in Watts – it is a foot-stomping, shouting and moaning declaration of all the “harmony and disharmony, peace and disquiet, and love and hate” that Dr Pollock wrote about.

The hand-clapping and shouts (Halleluia! Oh Yes!) add to the “Holiness” feel of the song, which never lets up in emotional intensity throughout its more than seven minutes duration. It’s a stunning and engaging performance.

Track 2: Goodbye Pork Pie Hat

One of Mingus’s best-known compositions follows, his soulful, keening tribute to great tenor sax player Lester ‘Prez’ Young, who had died in March 1959, just two months before this recording date. the title was a reference to Young’s favourite headgear.

The song is a 12 bar blues and, unlike most others of Mingus’s tunes, has been covered by many musicians, including Joni Mitchell who wrote lyrics for it and included it on her Mingus album released in 1980.

Track 3: Boogie Stop Shuffle

Next up is “Boogie Stop Shuffle”, a combination of boogie and shuffle rhythms with stop time. Stop time is defined in Jazz: The Essential Companion (Carr, Fairweather and Priestley, 1988) as “a lengthy series of breaks, so that the rhythm section marks only the start of every bar (or every other bar) for a chorus or more, remaining silent between each of the stop-chords.” On the face of it boogie and shuffle rhythms would seem to be incompatible. The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz (Kernfeld, 1996) defines boogie as a “percussive style of piano blues” and shuffle as being a “smooth” rhythm “played legato and at a relaxed tempo.” In the hands of Mingus’s group, it makes for exciting and unusual listening, especially with its four themes and alternating backing behind the soloists.

Track 4: Self-Portrait in Three Colours

The next tune, “Self-Portrait in Three Colours”, was originally written for the John Cassavetes movie Shadows, but for budgetary reasons was not used in the film. This is a relatively unusual piece for Mingus in that it is composed throughout, with no solos or improvisations. It starts in a quiet, beautiful way, just piano and bass, but then the horns come in with some clever voicings which give the impression of collective improvisation.

Tracks 5 and 6

The next track is a rollicking tribute to Duke Ellington called “Open Letter to Duke” and the following one is an exciting tribute to Charlie Parker called “Bird Calls.” Of this latter song Mingus wrote, “It wasn’t supposed to sound like Charlie Parker. It was supposed to sound like birds – the first part.”

Track 7: Fables of Faubus

“Fables of Faubus” comes next on the programme. This is a searing, angry meditation on segregation and injustice, occasioned by the attempts of Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus who attempted to prevent the integration of schooling in the state in the 1950s by sending the Arkansas National Guard to block the entry of African American students into Little Rock Central High School in defiance of a Supreme Court ruling. This piece was one Mingus returned to again and again in his career, giving voice to his strong feelings about justice and freedom.

Tracks 8 and 9

The next track, “Pussy Cat Dues” is a stunningly lovely down-tempo blues with some brilliant solo work by Handy, Knepper and Handy. Simply exquisite playing and brilliant arranging. Knepper especially stands out on this number, as he does on the next, called “Jelly Roll”.

Tracks 10, 11 and 12

The last three tracks on the 1998 re-issue are bonus tracks not found on the original LP. Indeed many of the tracks on the re-issue are released at full length for the first time as they were edited into shorter versions for the LP. The tracks are “Pedal Point Blues” which features Mingus joining Parlan on another piano, “GG Train” and the only non-Mingus composition on the album, “Girl of My Dreams.”

The rewards of open ears

This album is a great example of authentic, real music. It is definitely not “easy listening” but will reward anyone willing to really listen with some moments of transcendent beauty, deeply spiritual experience and true feeling.

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Take Five plus Fifty!

September 2, 2011 by 1 Comment

The making of music history

What happened when producer Teo Macero, who had just months before had Miles Davis and his musicians in the Columbia 30th Street Studio to record, brought Dave Brubeck and his quartet into the same studio, was to make more jazz history – the album Time Out with the hit track “Take Five”.

So in three days of recording in the summer of 1959 the Dave Brubeck Quartet, already popular even outside of jazz circles, made an album which would send their popularity into orbit, even gaining them recognition on the Billboard Charts in 1961 in the categories “pop album” where the album reached second spot, “adult contemporary”, where “Take Five” ranked 5th, and “pop singles” where the same number reached the 25th spot. Not bad for a jazz outfit playing some fairly challenging music in time signatures very far from the standard four-in-a-bar pop tunes.

The album is probably the most famous of all jazz albums, especially seeing that it is known by people who are not jazz fans per se .

Time Out is sometimes derided by jazz purists as something like “jazz lite” in spite of the rather awesome intellectual gifts that spawned it.

Brubeck on Time

Dave Brubeck had already appeared on the cover of Time magazine (the second jazz artist to do so -the first was Louis Armstrong) by the time Time Out was recorded. This was in November 1954 when the magazine described him as playing “some of the strangest and loveliest music ever played since jazz was born.” And that was five years before Time Out . (I can’t help thinking about the different meanings of “Time” in the magazine and album titles).

Brubeck himself had studied with Darius Milhaud who advised him to keep on with jazz improvisation. But the modern “classical” training shows through in the way Brubeck handles both harmony and rhythm. Clearly the time spent with Milhaud was very instructive for Brubeck.

Track 1: Blue Rondo a la Turk

The first track, “Blue Rondo a la Turk” is based partly on the Rondo in Mozart’s Piano Sonata No 11 and the Turkish folk rhythms Brubeck and Company heard on the US Foreign Department sponsored tour the group undertook in the 50s. This tour, in the view of some, was a cold war ploy by the US government, as can be seen from this blog comment (I have unfortunately lost the reference so don’t know where this comes from): “The story behind Time Out placed it squarely as a product of the cold war. Dave Brubeck was sponsored by the US government to tour the periphery of the Soviet Union to show how rich American culture was. This tour took the band to such places as Turkey where the indigenous music and time signatures inspired the album. Hurrah for cultural imperialism.”

I guess that point of view is at least debatable.

Track 2: Strange Meadow Lark

Long-tailed Meadowlark. Photo via Wikipedia by Alastair Rae

Brubeck can sound very esoteric one moment and the next be downright earthy. This makes for some very interesting listening, and not always that “easy listening.” Listening to how the piano part develops in the second “Strange Meadow Lark” from the almost cocktail lounge style rather long introduction to the way drummer Joe Morello comes in quietly with brushes to bring in a solo from Paul Desmond which is typically lyrical but swinging. Followed by some Brubeck soloing which sounds almost Monkish with very rapid time and key changes going seemingly all over the place. A piece of rare beauty which has hidden depths, like a shallow pool of clear water which suddenly gets very deep and crystalline cold.

Track 3: Take Five

The third track on the album is, of course, that ubiquitous number “Take Five.” This number, written by Desmond as the vehicle for a Joe Morello solo, has become a standard, and has been played almost to death (I even heard a South African band which managed to play the whole song in good old common time, i.e. four beats to the bar, completely ignoring the original time signature which made the song so irresistible in the first place!).

“Take Five” is so strongly associated with Dave Brubeck that to a great number of people it is a surprise to learn that Desmond actually wrote it. The number itself is five minutes of sheer jazz joy, and the solo by Morello which was its original purpose, is stunning in its build up and complexity. Morellohas been described as the most technical of jazz drummers and in this piece he shows exactly why. It is a tour de force of outstanding drumming which holds the listener’s attention from start to finish.

The Side Two tracks

On the original vinyl LP “Take Five” rounded off Side 1. Side two opened with another interesting Brubeck number, “Three to get Ready” which starts, as the name implies, in a rollicking three four or waltz time, then quickly gets into a pattern of three four alternating after two bars with two bars of common time and the pattern repeats throughout the song. This presents more of a challenge to listeners than it seems to have done to the musicians who seem to be having a ball all through.

The song “Kathy’s Waltz”, named for Brubeck’s daughter, “Everybody’s Jumpin'” and “Pick up Sticks”, another Morello vehicle, follow.

The amazing Paul Desmond’s unique sound and contribution

The quartet was made up of musicians who were each of them outstanding in their own ways, but perhaps the most outstanding was Desmond, who’s sound really gave the quartet its unique timbre, its signature feel.

Many people have not appreciated the Desmond sound or his music, putting it into a category, boxing it in, and then condemning it for qualities applicable to the box or category, but not necessarily to the man and his music.

One who appreciates Desmond is avant-garde readman Anthony Braxton, who said of Desmond: “I have never stopped loving this man’s music. The first thing I recall that struck me about it was his sound. The sound grabbed me.”

Braxton went on to say, in interviews with Graham Lock (Forces in Motion , Quartet Books, 1988): “I think Paul Desmond’s music is widely misunderstood on many levels. He was fashionable for the wrongs reasons and he was hated for the wrong reasons.”

Desmond himself once made the comment, “I have won several prizes as the world’s slowest alto player, as well as a special award in 1961 for quietness.” So Braxton’s next comment is especially rich: “He was far ahead of what you heard: what you heard had been edited completely, only the essence remained. Desmond understood how to get to the point quicker than most players ever learn. This is a lightening-fast improviser, who understood sound logic and how to prepare the event.”

The clarity of both his sound and his thinking certainly shine through on all the tracks on this masterful album, and provide some of its highest moments.

And maybe what has attracted so many to this album, making it one of the most successful jazz albums ever made, is captured in Braxton’s comment: “You can say what you like, but masters can touch your heart and change your life. In the case of Desmond, I know that’s true.” (Emphasis in the original)

So in the somewhat unlikely event that you have not heard this album, may I respectfully suggest you go out and get a copy. You will not be disappointed.

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Mingus gets down to the roots of the matter

August 31, 2011 by 1 Comment

The album

On 4 February 1959 bassist Charles Mingus took a group of top class jazz musicians into the Atlantic Records studio to record a “barrage of soul music: churchy, blues, swinging, earthy” to quote his own words, and the result is the magnificent Blues and Roots, an album which gets me shouting and moaning myself whenever I listen to it (which, I have to admit, is quite often!).

From the opening moments of the first track, “Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting”, this album is just full of swinging, engaging and earthy jazz with its blues and holiness church roots exposed.

The musicians Mingus assembled for this date were each impressive in their own rights – John Handy and the inimitable Jackie McLean on altos, the soulful Booker Ervin on tenor, Pepper “The Knife” Adams on baritone, Jimmy Knepper and Willie Dennis on trombone, with Mingus’ favourite drummer Danny Richmond and pianists Horace Parlan and Mal Waldron (who only appears on one track) completing the rhythm section.

The tracks

“Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting” starts with “preacher” Mingus setting the tone with some big bass sounds and he’s soon joined by the “congregation” getting right down to it – with some interesting interchanges between reeds and trombone before the swinging, blue-based piano of Parlan starts some preaching of his own. This becomes a wonderful rhythmic interchange between Mingus and Parlan, with Mingus shouting his encouragement behind the music. Parlan keeps a chord pattern going behind the tenor preacher and Mingus and the rest shouting their responses – I think anyone with any soul in them will join in also while listening to this track! Then Richmond gets to add his few bars worth of rhythm before the whole congregation brings it all to an end with a heartfelt “Amen!”

The next track, “Cryin’ Blues”, is noteworthy for the relatively long bass solo from the leader, who quotes from other blues, especially “Blues in the Night” before Parlan gets in on the act with a beautifully-phrased, blues-drenched solo. “Oh yeah! Going home!” Mingus shouts in the background before the whole gang get back into it to bring it all to a great ending, with Adams making it a very deep one indeed. That baritone really strikes home.

“Moanin'” features the baritone from the start. This up-tempo blues is swinging in the most enjoyable way. Many years ago drummer Mel Lewis explained how Adams got his nickname: “We called him ‘The Knife’ because when he’d get up to blow, his playing had almost a slashing effect on the rest of us. He’d slash, chop, and before he was through, cut everybody down to size.” Hearing his solo on this track, which comes after McLean’s and before Ervin’s, gives one some idea of his explosive, “cutting” playing. Mingus can be heard shouting “Yeah, I know …what I know” behind the title for Todd Jenkins and Sy Johnson’s book on Mingus: I know what I Know, published by Praeger Publishers in 2006.

Mingus starts “Tensions” before the rest of the gang put in some spirited ensemble work over the light touch of Richmond. Then come solos from the leader, McLean, Ervin and Parlan before the solos end with what Jenkins and Johnson call “a passionate drum improv” by Richmond.

“My Jelly Roll Soul” features Mingus playing “slap bass” and solos by Knepper, Parlan, McLean, Mingus and Richmond. This tune also featured on the later 1959 album “Mingus Ah Um” where it was simply called “Jelly Roll.”

Mal Waldron replaces Parlan in the final track “E’s Flat, Ah’s Flat Too” to play an incredibly beautiful blues solo. The track is altogether amazingly energy-filled and the players all have opportunities to make their presences felt. Its a hard-driving affair and a great tribute to the stamina and musicality of all involved.

On the CD which I have there follow alternative takes of tracks 1, 4, 5 and 6 which are interesting to listen to but I can hear why they are “alternative” tracks. The tracks issued on the original album are definitely better overall, though the alternative tracks do have some good moments.

Post-modernist tribute to New Orleans

Overall this is an album that stands well with all of Mingus’ output, though perhaps not as great as the later Mingus Ah Um or Black Saint and the Sinner Lady (this album, by the way, is rated by jazz writer Piero Scaruffi, as the number one jazz album of all time), but one which is a favourite of mine for the feel and energy of it all.

Scaruffi described the album as “a post-modernist tribute to the sound of New Orleans, an exercise in disassembling the clichés of a genre and rebuilding it from an analytic perspective (best the gospel-y Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting and the bluesy Moanin’). None of the exuberance was lost, but the harmonic complexity was certainly not what the old New Orleans bands had in mind.” (From http://www.scaruffi.com/jazz/mingus.html, accessed on 5 June 2009).

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The famous 1959 Charles Mingus albums

August 30, 2011 by 1 Comment

Jazz’s “annus mirabilis”

Mingus recorded four albums in this annus mirabilis of jazz: Mingus in Wonderland, a live album recorded on 16 January at Nonagon Art Gallery in New York City; Blues and Roots recorded on 4 February with Nesuhi Ertegun again doing the producing; and the two Teo Macero-produced albums Mingus Ah Um recorded in May and Mingus Dynasty recorded at the famous 30th Street Studio on 1 and 13 November, with different personnel on each day.

Blues and Roots and Mingus Ah Um stand out as works of art – albums that continue to shine, inspiring jazz musicians and fans 50 years later.

They are albums which show a musician reaching a pinnacle of creativity, and the wonder is that they are not the final words in this particular musician’s career – Mingus went on to make many more superlative albums. Somehow, though, these two are albums that fans and other musicians turn to again and again, they are both treasuries of great music that one can learn from and a great deal of fun to listen to.

Wonderland and blues

Mingus in Wonderland features John Handy on alto, Booker Ervin on tenor, Richard Wyands on piano, and Dannie Richmond on drums. Two of the tracks are songs that Mingus wrote for the John Cassavetes movie Shadows, namely “Nostalgia in Times Square” and “Alice’s Wonderland”. The other tracks are “I Can’t Get Started” and “No Private Income Blues”.

I have not been able to obtain a copy of this album and so cannot write with any certainty about it.

The album Blues and Roots is the subject of my article “Mingus gets down to the roots of the matter” and so I won’t describe it in any detail here. It was the first album on which Mingus’s composition “Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting” appeared, a number which subsequently became something of a Mingus staple. This composition distilled the experiences Mingus had in the Holiness Church in his days in Watts.

Mingus Ah Um was the subject of my article “Mingus Magnificus Ah Um” and so again I will not describe it in any detail here. It introduced another Mingus staple, “Better Get It in Your Soul”, another feast of gospel and blues sounds. It also featured the song to which Mingus returned more than any other, the famous “Fables of Faubus” written in response to the attempt by Arkansas Governor Orval E. Faubus to prevent the integration of Little Rock High School in 1957. The lyrics, which included the words “Nazi Fascist supremists!” in reference to Faubus, were allegedly regarded as too extreme and not allowed on the album by the Columbia management.

Mingus Dynasty

The final 1959 album, also a Macero production, was Mingus Dynasty, which featured on the first date a line-up of 10 musicians including Mingus: Richard Williams on trumpet; Jimmy Knepper on trombone, John Handy on alto, Booker Ervin and Benny Golson on tenor, Jerome Richardson on baritone, Teddy Charles on vibes, Roland Hanna on piano and Dannie Richmond on drums.

On the first date the band recorded “Diane”, “Song with Orange”, “Gunslinging Bird”, “Far Wells, Mill Valley”, “New Now Know How” and “Strollin'”.

On the second date the musicians were Don Ellis on trumpet with Knepper, Handy, Ervin, Hanna and Richmond. They recorded “Slop”, “Put Me In That Dungeon” Mercer Ellington’s “Things Ain’t What They Used To Be”, and the Duke’s “Mood Indigo”.

For me this last track is the pick of the album. It starts with a really slow introduction by the whole band with Mingus bowing his bass. Then Knepper enters with an incredibly soulful solo over the pizzicato bass. Then comes one of many abrupt tempo changes into double time. Then its abruptly back to a slow blues as Hanna takes over the solo spot to deliver a blues solo that is quite amazing, with another change to double time (punctuated by a “yeah” from Mingus) before he starts a brief solo which quickly moves into triple time – just unbelievably fleet by both Mingus and Hanna, and then it’s a tempo again as Mingus takes up the solo spot for a deep blues exploration with more abrupt tempo changes before Handy comes in to make his wailing solo and some great ensemble backing (with another shout by Mingus: “Early in the morning!”) to the end. Simply superb stuff!

Of the other tracks from the second date “Slop” and “Put Me In That Dungeon”are interesting, among other things, for the addition of two cellists to the line-up.

Apart from “Mood Indigo” the other outstanding tracks for me are “Gunslinging Bird” (Mingus’s tribute to Charlie Parker, originally called “If Charlie Parker were a gunslinger, there would be a whole lot of dead copycats”), “Slop” (a close cousin to “Better Git Hit in Your Soul”), “Song with Orange” (a great vehicle for solos by Handy and Knepper, with strong blues undertones), “Far Wells, Mill Valley” (after an almost atonal introduction, which has some echoes of “Some of My Favourite Things”, it continues interspersing some almost Oriental sounds with some straight-ahead jazz), and the short (too short?) blues “Put Me In That Dungeon” with its unusual voicings. I say “too short?” because it never seems to get going to the extent that it perhaps could if the musicians had a little more time.

The final track is “Strolling” which is in fact “Nostalgia in Times Square” which Mingus wrote for the Cassavetes movie “Shadows” with words added, sung by Honey Gordon.

Mingus created music in this great year that has stood the test of time.

Don Heckma, in the Los Angeles Times of 11 February 2001, wrote the following paragraph which to me sums up why Mingus’s legacy is so enduring, and expecially the music he created in 1959:

“But it was probably his passionate intensity, a drive to transform his visionary ideas into the hard facts of performance reality, that made his music such an extraordinary combination of accessible melody, driving rhythms and insistent social statement. His live performances were often delivered in chaotic settings, but they were never dull. And his recordings could easily serve as the passionately interactive soundtrack for the unfolding civil rights developments of the ’50s and ’60s.”

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The beginning of something new – a portrait in jazz

August 27, 2011 by 2 Comments

The players on the date

“The beginning of something too new to invite easy description” – that’s how jazz critic Rob Mariani recalls pianist Bill Evans’ debut at New York’s Village Vanguard in the early 1960s. He might have been describing Evans’1959 album, A Portrait in Jazz, recorded almost at the end of jazz’s most amazing year, a year which saw the recording of many albums which have become “classics” of jazz.

Evans went into a studio on 28 December 1959 under the direction of producer Orrin Keepnews, with young bassist Scott LaFaro and drummer Paul Motian to lay down 11 tracks of a new way for a jazz piano trio to play and sound.

Evans himself was an almost painfully shy young man of 30 who was battling some internal demons, partly the result of being the only white musician in the Miles Davis sextet, which in fact he had left to follow his own dreams just more than a year before. Earlier in 1959 Davis had hired Evans to return to the sextet just to record that other classic 1959 album Kind of Blue.

Scott LaFaro, a young musician born in Newark, New Jersey, was only 23 at the time of Portrait in Jazz,and was already making a name for himself, having played with Chet Baker, Buddy De Franco, Sonny Rollins, Harold Land and Hampton Hawes. Earlier in 1959 he also played with Thelonius Monk, and would go on in 1960 to join Ornette Coleman in the ground-breaking double quartet album Free Jazz with Charlie Haden on the other bass.

Paul Motian, then a 28-year-old drummer from Providence, Rhode Island, is a drummer of great sensitivity with a very distinctive style, who nevertheless was capable of providing superb backing to a wide range of musicians besides Evans: he played with Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra, with Oscar Pettiford, Lennie Tristano and Zoot Sims, and even recorded with Arlo Guthrie.

Bill Evans himself was also, like LaFaro, a New Jersey native, born in Plainfield in 1929, to a Rusyn mother and an alcoholic father of Welsh extraction. His mother was herself an amateur musician who encouraged young Bill to study the modern classical composers. I wonder to what extent Evans’ sometimes melancholic sound is the result of the influence of these two cultures on him? The
Rusyn people are an eastern Slavic ethnic group who have always been overshadowed by the other people with whom they shared living space, the Poles, the Russians and the Slovaks. The Welsh are Celts with their own history of struggling for identity. Another famous person with a Rusyn background is artist Andy Warhol (Warhola), born just a year before Evans, in Pittsburgh PA.

So it was a highly talented and individual group of musicians who went into that studio. And the music they left on the tapes was similarly individual and new. Davis, in his autobiography, said of Evans’ piano playing, “The way he approached it, the sound he got was like crystal notes or sparkling water cascading down from some clear waterfall.”

Track 1: Come Rain or Come Shine

The tracks the trio laid down in the studio that day were all standards except for two compositions by Evans, namely “Peri’s Scope” and the song attributed also to Davis, “Blue in Green”, which the Davis sextet had recorded earlier in the year on the album Kind of Blue.

The first track on the album is Harold Arlen tune “Come Rain or Come Shine”, the Johnny Mercer lyrics of which were sung so wonderfully by Billie Holiday. It was written for the show St Louis Woman and was published and recorded several times in 1946, and in the years following. In this trio’s hands it is a beautifully thoughtful ballad in which the playing of LaFaro takes the tune to new heights. The whole track feels indeed “High as a mountain and deep as a river” with delicate harmonies from both the piano and the bass, underscored by the beautiful brushwork of Motian who keeps the whole thing moving gently along.

Tracks 2 & 3: Autumn Leaves

The second (in stereo) and third (mono) tracks feature the ever-green (to coin a phrase!) “Autumn Leaves” written, originally as “Les feuilles mortes” by Joseph Kosma in 1945, to which Johnny Mercer added English lyrics in 1947. The interplay between piano and bass in the opening few bars is delicious beyond words. The trio play the song mid-tempo rather than the more usual slow pace, which helps it avoid the kind of mawkishness it sometimes achieves in certain hands. The way the three members of the trio interchange ideas all through the track is just exquisite. I am never sure who is leading whom, they all come across so strongly and with such conviction. A beautiful number indeed.

Track 4: Witchcraft

Track 4 is the Cy Coleman song taken to great heights by Frank Sinatra in 1957, “Witchcraft”. Listen out for LaFaro’s incredible solo. It’s a virtuoso performance from a young bassist just getting into his stride, and what a stride it is! In fact LaFaro pretty much dominates this track, with some really brilliant playing and thoughtful phrases that just jump out at the listener. He goes with such ease from the bottom register of his instrument to very high flights of melodic invention at the top end of the ergister without for one moment losing the momentum of the piece, in fact propelling it along at a good pace, keeping it swinging all the way. A grand example of the art of the bass.

Track 5: When I Fall In Love

The next track features Victor Young’s “When I Fall in Love” made into a hit in 1952 by Doris Day, with words by Edward Heyman. The song was written for the 1952 movie One Minute to Zero, in which it featured as an instumental. It has since become a very popular standard for jazz musicians from the likes of Miles Davis to Toots Thielemans. This trio takes it very slowly and ruminatively, a seemingly deliberate contrast to the “restless world like this is” of the lyrics.

Track 6: Peri’s Scope

On the next track the trio gets back into swinging mood with Evans’ own song “Peri’s Scope.” with Evans creating a very interesting series of melodic variations in the right hand with strong comping in the left. And as high as Evans takes the melody, LaFaro is right there with him, never losing a beat or getting left behind for one second by the piano’s flights. Motian puts rhythmic emphases in exactly the right spots to keep the whole thing together.

Track 7: What Is This Thing Called Love

The next track is a song of the same vintage an Evans himself, Cole Porter’s 1929 song “What Is This Thing Called Love?” The trio make this into a wonderful up-tempo romp after a slightly quiet start which is quickly blown away by the harmonic inventiveness of Evans and LaFaro and the solid rhythm supplied by Motian. In fact, in my view, this is Motian’s track. A lovely solo by LaFaro is followed by an exciting yet solid drum solo, all too short in my view. But Motian really shines all through the track as he keeps his partners to the rhythm. An interesting note about this tune is that it has been reinterpreted many times by jazz musicians, and sometimes transformed into new pieces. For example, Tadd Dameron based his great tune “Hot House” which Charlie Parker played so wonderfully, on “What is This Thing Called Love,” and John Coltrane based his great tune “Fifth House” on “Hot House.”

Track 8: Spring is Here

The next track opens with a beautiful singing note by Evans which became the subject of a whole page of analysis by Peter Pettinger in his book on Evans, How My Heart Sings. The song in this case is the 1938 Richard Rodgers composition which Alec Wilder called “a shattering ballad”, “Spring is Here.” The song was written for a broadway musical I Married an Angel and was in fact the second song Rodgers and his partner Lorenz Hart had written with that title. The first was an upbeat song written in 1929 and quickly forgotten. In the trio’s hands this is a brilliant exposition in notes of the melancholy of the words:

“Spring is here!

Why doesn’t my heart go dancing ?

Spring is here!

Why isn’t the waltz entrancing?”

The song ends with a gently cascading rain of notes from Evans, reflecting a feeling, the irony, of the last line of the song: “Spring is here I hear.”

Track 9: One Day My Prince Will Come

Next up is another popular jazz standard, from the calssic Walt Disney movie Snow White and the Seven Dwarves of 1937. The song was written by Frank E. Churchill with lyrics by Larry Morey. One of the moist famous jazz recordings is the 1961 version by Miles on his eponymously-named album. The Evans trio show their melodic and rhythmic virtuosity in this number, which again features a glorious LaFaro solo.

Tracks 10 & 11: Blue in Green

The last two tracks are of the Davis/Evans tune “Blue in Green“which Evans had recorded with Davis earlier in 1959. This tune has been the subject of speculation about who really wrote it for decades now. According to Ashley Kahn ( Kind of Blue, The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece, 2000) Evans told the story: “One day at Miles’s apartment, he wrote on some manuscript paper the symbols for G-minor and A-augmented. And he said, ‘What would you do with that?’ I didn’t really know, but I went home and wrote ‘Blue in Green.'” On Kind of Blue the song is attributed to Davis alone,while on Portrait it is attibuted to Davis/Evans. Is it that important who wrote it? It’s a wonderful tune with great moments for all three of the musicians on this album.

Epilogue

Overall, this is an album worth savouring. It bears repeated listening. Indeed, listening to it over and over again as I have done over the past few days, it reveals new subtleties and nuances every time. There are many critics who dismiss this album, and indeed much of Evans’ playing, as little more than good quality cocktail lounge music. I would strongly disagree with that assessment. There is lyricism and harmony a-plenty, but the rhythmic and harmonic subtleties and the way the tracks are structured lift this album way above cocktail music. The interplay between the musicians is always a delight, and each time I have listened to this album I have found new delights. Jazz piano trios would never sound the same again, and pianists, bass players and drummers all can learn from the playing on this rich and deep album.

 

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