Ron Carter Esperanza Spalding - Downbeat

Historical | By kevin whitehead
Charles Mingus
courtesy legacy recordings
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Charles Mingus’ Gospel Truths
For Charles Mingus, composer with outsize
ambitions, major label dates afforded major
opportunities: to spend more time shaping
music in the studio, or to expand instrumental
resources. Witness five albums included in
the 10-CD The Complete Columbia & RCA
Album Collection (Columbia/Legacy 88697
97959 HHHH1/2), starting with 1957’s Tijuana
Moods on RCA, for sextet. Tijuana, Mexico, is
a border town, like Nogales, Ariz., where Mingus
was born, and he had a genius for border-hopping.
At Atlantic in the ’50s he mixed
gospel jazz with Lennie Tristano counterpoint.
Mingus also heard possibilities in Spanish music
for bypassing conventional harmonies before
Miles Davis’ flamenco sketches, and here
applies the same raucous multi-vectorism and
improvised counterpoint to Latin rhythms and
Spanish modes as to his churchy music.
As always, the dynamism starts with the
bass. Mingus prodded in a way even the
greats before him didn’t. His notorious cajoling
wasn’t limited to verbal abuse and sucker
punches: His bull fiddle could run players over,
too. The other MVP, the other half of his heartbeat
on most sessions here, is quietly cooking
drummer Dannie Richmond, with his tight
triplety drive, who faithfully shadows the bassist’s
gloriously flexible tempos.
Mingus moved to Columbia in 1959, and
recorded the classic Mingus Ah Um for fourhorn
septet with trombonist Jimmy Knepper,
tenor saxophonist Booker Ervin and alto saxophonist
John Handy. “Better Git Hit In Your
Soul” and “Boogie Stop Shuffle” are the rollicking
Atlantic years redux; “Goodbye Pork
Pie Hat” is one of the greatest jazz eulogies.
Slap bass on “Jelly Roll” honors jazz’s twobeat
roots and Morton’s compact orchestrations.
These players return for Mingus Dynasty
six months later, often revisiting the same territory:
more 6/8 gospel, handclaps and verbal
exhortations. There are also two tunes from
Duke Ellington’s book, and the spritely “Far
Wells, Mill Valley” for tentet, with its beautiful,
flutey scoring.
Two CDs’ worth of alternate, incomplete
and rehearsal takes from the above sessions
were included over the protests of the composer’s
trustee Sue Mingus, who denounces
their inclusion in her booklet notes. Some of
those leftovers aren’t bad, but there are too
many Tijuana Moods scraps though they shed
light on the laborious recording process. The
more welcome rarities are 1957’s third-stream
“Revelations” for 16 musicians and a one-off
blues duet with Dave Brubeck.
Mingus’ big projects could run away from
him; the best sustained realization of his orchestral
scores is Let My Children Hear Music
from 1971, much of it arranged by Sy Johnson,
who also wrote some “connective tissue.”
“Allegro Ma Non Troppo,” an orchestration of
Mingus’ piano solo “Myself When I Am Real,”
brings back the Spanish tinge; “Taurus In The
Arena Of Life” is a bullfight turned rueful waltz;
“Hobo Ho” spotlights James Moody’s pleading
blues tenor. For all the imposing weight of
his lines and harmonies, Mingus depended on
soloists to thicken the texture and give voice to
multiple viewpoints.
Johnson also worked on Charles Mingus
And Friends In Concert from ’72, which reprises
much of the same music, along with some
oldies, and boasts guests including saxophonists
Gene Ammons and Lee Konitz. Mingus
impetuously invited too many players, but it
comes together rather well. The band’s pretty
much in tune, and not too heavy on its feet. It’s
better than Mingus thought at the time.
The box’s sixth album is 1989’s posthumous
Epitaph, the biggest of Mingus’ big
pieces, painstakingly assembled from myriad
familiar and unfamiliar bits by “Revelations”
conductor Gunther Schuller. Sterling players
abound—Michael Rabinowitz memorably
plays five bassoon choruses on “Wolverine
Blues”—but it’s relatively flat. We get the notes
but rarely the passions of the man. DB
Ordering info: legacyrecordings.com
92 DOWNBEAT DECEMBER 2012