Charles Mingus, composer, bandleader, bassist
April 22, 1922-January 5, 1979
Better late than never for someone who, like Miles and Monk, Bach and Beethoven, I couldn’t live without.
Charles Mingus (bass) with Eric Dolphy (alto saxophone, bass clarinet, flute), Clifford Jordan (tenor saxophone), Johnny Coles (trumpet), Jaki Byard (piano), Dannie Richmond (drums), live, Belgium, Norway, and Sweden, 1964*
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
There’s something about listening to Eric Dolphy that makes you feel glad to be alive.
Belgium
00:00-00:45 Intro
00:46-05:33 So Long Eric
05:35-11:20 Peggy’s Blue Skylight
11:23-32:03 Meditations On Integration
Norway
32:30-54:46 So Long Eric
56:30-1:11:40 Orange Was The Color Of Her Dress, Then Blue Silk
1:13:53-1:16:20 Parkeriana
1:16:22-1:29:05 Take The “A” Train
Sweden
1:30:05-1:33:55 So Long Eric
1:34:02-1:52:35 Meditations On Integration
1:52:40- 1:59:50 So Long Eric
Charles Mingus Quintet,* “So Long Eric,” “Peggy’s Blue Skylight,” “Meditations On Integration” (all by Mingus), live (TV show), Belgium, 1964
Mingus’s music, it seems, has everything. Call it “simple” or “complex” and you’d be both right and wrong—it’s both. Compositional elegance is balanced, exquisitely, with improvisational unruliness. Rhythmic momentum is no less—and no more—important than melodic invention. Like Ellington and Monk, he will, I’m confident, still be listened to a hundred years from now.
(Excerpts from this program have been posted previously.)
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lagniappe
art beat: yesterday at the Art Institute of Chicago
Ludovico Carracci, The Vision of Saint Francis, c. 1602
Going to the Art Institute again, after being away for a while, I felt a bit like someone who doesn’t realize he’s starving until he finds himself at a feast.
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*CM, bass; Eric Dolphy, alto saxophone, flute, bass clarinet; Clifford Jordan, tenor saxophone; Jaki Byard, piano; Dannie Richmond, drums.
• WKCR-FM (broadcasting from Columbia University)
—Lester Young/Charlie Parker birthday marathon
—John Coltrane birthday broadcast
—Bird Flight (Phil Schaap, jazz [Charlie Parker])
—Traditions in Swing (Phil Schaap, jazz)
—Eastern Standard Time (Carter Van Pelt, Jamaican music)
• WFMU-FM
—Mudd Up! (DJ/Rupture, “new bass and beats”)
—Sinner’s Crossroads(Kevin Nutt, gospel) —Airborne Event (Dan Bodah, “electronic noise to free jazz, drone rock to a capella African song”)
—Give the Drummer Some (Doug Schulkind, sui generis, web only)
—Transpacific Sound Paradise (Rob Weisberg, “popular and unpopular music from around the world”)
• WHPK-FM (broadcasting from University of Chicago)
—The Blues Excursion (Arkansas Red)
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