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.
*****
*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)
Charles Mingus, bassist, bandleader, composer
April 22, 1922-January 5, 1979
In celebration of Mingus’s birthday, WKCR-FM (broadcasting from Columbia University) is playing his music all day. We’re celebrating by revisiting some favorite clips.
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Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Miles Davis: so many of the greatest figures in jazz weren’t just great musicians, or composers, or arrangers. They were great bandleaders. As important to their artistic success as anything else was their ability to find, and showcase, players who could make the music come alive—people like Johnny Hodges and Ben Webster and Jimmy Blanton and Lester Young and Freddie Green and Jo Jones and John Coltrane and Bill Evans and Tony Williams.
That small circle of elite bandleaders includes this man. He hired musicians who played their instruments like no one else (Eric Dolphy, Jaki Byard, et al.). He gave them a musical setting in which structure and freedom were exquisitely balanced. And together they made music that sounds (even on something familiar) like nothing else.
Charles Mingus Sextet (with Johnny Coles, trumpet; Jaki Byard, piano; Eric Dolphy, alto saxophone and bass clarinet; Clifford Jordan, tenor saxophone; Dannie Richmond, drums), “Take the A Train,” live, Norway (Oslo), 1964
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lagniappe
I nominate Charles Mingus one of America’s greatest composers—Ran Blake (in the liner notes to his recent album Driftwoods)
(Originally posted 12/1/09.)
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No jazz composer since Thelonious Monk has a stronger voice.
Lyrical beauty, inexhaustible drive, deep feeling: what more could you ask for?
Charles Mingus Quintet (CM, bass; Dannie Richmond, drums; Eric Dolphy, alto saxophone, bass clarinet; Clifford Jordan, tenor saxophone; Jaki Byard, piano), live (TV broadcast), Belgium, 1964
“So Long, Eric”
*****
“Peggy’s Blue Skylight”
*****
“Meditations on Integration” (excerpt)
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lagniappe
. . . [Mingus’s] music was pledged to the abolition of all distinctions: between the composed and the improvised, the primitive and the sophisticated, the rough and the tender, the belligerent and the lyrical.—Geoff Dyer, But Beautiful: A Book About Jazz (1996)
*****
Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.
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I, myself, came to enjoy the players who didn’t only just swing but who invented new rhythmic patterns, along with new melodic concepts. And those people are: Art Tatum, Bud Powell, Max Roach, Sonny Rollins, Lester Young, Dizzy Gillespie and Charles Parker, who is the greatest genius of all to me because he changed the whole era around.
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In my music, I’m trying to play the truth of what I am. The reason it’s difficult is because I’m changing all the time.
Charles Mingus Quintet (CM, bass; Dannie Richmond, drums; Eric Dolphy, alto saxophone, bass clarinet; Clifford Jordan, tenor saxophone; Jaki Byard, piano), live (TV broadcast), Belgium, 1964
“So Long, Eric”
*****
“Peggy’s Blue Skylight”
*****
“Meditations on Integration” (excerpt)
**********
lagniappe
. . . [Mingus’s] music was pledged to the abolition of all distinctions: between the composed and the improvised, the primitive and the sophisticated, the rough and the tender, the belligerent and the lyrical.—Geoff Dyer, But Beautiful: A Book About Jazz (1996)
*****
Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.
***
I, myself, came to enjoy the players who didn’t only just swing but who invented new rhythmic patterns, along with new melodic concepts. And those people are: Art Tatum, Bud Powell, Max Roach, Sonny Rollins, Lester Young, Dizzy Gillespie and Charles Parker, who is the greatest genius of all to me because he changed the whole era around.
***
In my music, I’m trying to play the truth of what I am. The reason it’s difficult is because I’m changing all the time.
—Charles Mingus
(Originally posted on 4/22/10.)
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Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Miles Davis: so many of the greatest figures in jazz weren’t just great musicians, or composers, or arrangers. They were great bandleaders. As important to their artistic success as anything else was their ability to find, and showcase, players who could make the music come alive—people like Johnny Hodges and Ben Webster and Jimmy Blanton and Lester Young and Freddie Green and Jo Jones and John Coltrane and Bill Evans and Tony Williams.
That small circle of elite bandleaders includes this man. He hired musicians who played their instruments like no one else (Eric Dolphy, Jaki Byard, et al.). He gave them a musical setting in which structure and freedom were exquisitely balanced. And together they made music that sounds (even on something familiar) like nothing else.
Charles Mingus Sextet (with Johnny Coles, trumpet; Jaki Byard, piano; Eric Dolphy, alto saxophone and bass clarinet; Clifford Jordan, tenor saxophone; Dannie Richmond, drums), “Take the A Train,” live, Norway (Oslo), 1964
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lagniappe
I nominate Charles Mingus one of America’s greatest composers—Ran Blake (in the liner notes to his recent album Driftwoods)
music clip of the day 