A cavalcade of live Mingus

I've probably written at greater length about the titanic bassist-composer Charles Mingus than anyone else but the Who (idols of my misspent yoof). Time was when I'd buy any recording of the band he took to Europe in 1964, with iconic avant-gardist Eric Dolphy on multiple reeds, Jaki Byard conjuring the whole history of jazz on piano, Clifford Jordan on tenor, Johnny Coles on trumpet (before he took ill in Paris), and Mingus mainstay Dannie Richmond on drums. The April 18 Paris show released as The Great Concert of Charles Mingus was an early revelation when I started investigating jazz ca. '75, and I first heard "Peggy's Blue Skylight" from the previous night's show (which Sue Mingus released as Revenge! The Legendary Paris Concerts in the mid-'90s) on a mixtape I got from a SAC NCO Academy student when I was an instructor there in '91. 

The existence in Europe of national radio and TV stations that considered jazz an important art form meant that the '64 tour was well documented. Besides the two aforementioned Paris dates (and the Town Hall and Cornell University concerts that were recorded before Mingus and Co. headed overseas), audio recordings from Amsterdam, Oslo, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Bremen, Wuppertal, and Stuttgart have emerged over the years, along with video from Belgian, Norwegian, and Swedish TV (the DVD of which has become my preferred way to experience this band -- the nonverbals between the musicians are fascinating, as is Mingus' dialogue with Dolphy, who remained in Europe at the end of the tour and died two months later).

Last year Sunnyside -- which previously released the storied 1965 Mingus concert from Royce Hall at UCLA, as well as a 1970 studio session from Paris -- released Mingus @ Bremen 1964 & 1975, a Radio Bremen broadcast from the '64 tour, coupled with another from the same source on the 1975 tour that featured pianist Don Pullen and tenorist George Adams, two forward-looking players who chafed under Mingus' leadership and went on to co-lead a long-lived quartet of their own (with Richmond) after the their former bandleader's death. Brevity is the soul of truth in advertising.

The two discs of the Sunnyside set devoted to '64 feature a typical set from the tour: the new pieces "So Long Eric" (a blues dedicated to Dolphy, here listed as "Hope So Eric") and the multi-themed, Ellingtonian "Meditations," one of Mingus' greatest works and one with a political origin story that still resonates, given symphonic sweep by Dolphy's multi-reed fluency; "Fables of Faubus," much expanded from its Columbia and Debut recorded versions to include extended solos from all the players, made more striking by the varied backing Mingus cued; the opening solo piece by Byard and his duet with Mingus on Duke's "Sophisticated Lady," leading into "Parkeriana," the evocation of the bebop era that didn't always cohere well onstage (most ignominiously in the Oslo TV broadcast, where it doesn't coalesce after a couple of minutes, so Mingus stops it dead and starts playing "Take the 'A' Train" instead).

The '75 discs are a rarer bird. Till now, the only released live recordings of that lineup, on DVD and CD, were of a less-than-stellar Montreux Festival performance, much of which is devoted to a jam session with guests. But onstage, the Pullen-Adams lineup was playing what was essentially a live version of the then-current releases, Changes One and Changes Two. Those records seemed a little studio-sterile to me at the time -- not to slight the quality of the compositions and performances, which were stunning -- in the same way as Mingus' 1959 Columbia sessions did when compared with his contemporaneous Blues and Roots for Atlantic. These live performances allow the pieces to breathe more, and showcase them to better effect, benefitting from the players' familiarity with the material. 

"Sue's Changes," another work of shifting tempos and moods, dedicated to Mingus' last wife and eternal advocate, is heard here in a half hour-long version that gives all the soloists room to extemporize at length. Don Pullen reveals expressive facility inside the chords, eschewing the clusters and glisses for which he was initially known (they'd reemerge later). Adams is a modernist who uses the full range of his horn, including frequent forays into multiphonics, covering some of the ground Dolphy did in the '64 band. Trumpeter Jack Walrath was a Berklee grad with a background that ranged from free jazz to R&B. "Black Bats and Poles," also played here, is his composition, on which it's particularly evident that Mingus was using a pickup on his instrument by this time.

"For Harry Carney," a tribute to an Ellingtonian by Sy Johnson (who was denied arranging credit for his work on Let My Children Hear Music), is an elegiac minor blues that was the highlight of the uncharacteristically subdued Mingus set I witnessed at Stony Brook in 1976 by a unit that included Walrath, Richmond, tenorist Ricky Ford and pianist Walter Norris (whom I mistook for Jimmy Rowles).

"Free Cell Block F, 'Tis Nazi USA" is essayed at an astonishing clip, compared to the studio version. "Fables of Faubus" (which had new lyrics for the Nixon era, not really audible here -- no "Fables of Ford?") also gets played at breakneck pace. "Duke Ellington's Sound of Love" is Mingus' last dedication to his idol and inspiration; I actually miss the lyrics and Jackie Paris vocal from the Changes Two version just because they're familiar. A brief, ironic snippet of "Cherokee" ends the set, then they encore with "Remember Rockefeller at Attica" (formerly known as "Just for Laughs Saps") -- another major work. Adams' vocal on "Devil Blues" is charmingly idiosyncratic, and will be easy to skip in this sequence after a couple of spins. I'm happy to have this set to reach for when I want to hear Mingus with Pullen and Adams, or revisit my perpetual favorite lineup.

Mingus at Carnegie Hall is an album I never paid much attention to when it was new. Two side-long jam sessions on Ellington chestnuts didn't seem as essential to me as Mingus' own compositions, so I sprung for Mingus Presents Mingus, Town Hall Concert, Tijuana Moods, The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady, and the aforementioned Blues and Roots and Great Concert instead. (Thanks to Creem magazine and Nat Hentoff for the early direction.) The Deluxe Edition that just dropped, however, is a different matter entahrly. Initially ambivalent about the hefty price tag for the three-LP version, I was unable to resist when Amazon (so evil, so affordable) had the 2CD for a mere 17 bucks, and I had a gift card.

This '74 recording is the only document of which I'm aware of the lineup immediately preceding the '75 one, with Hamiet Bluiett on bari sax for a brief sojourn, and trumpet wunderkind Jon Faddis (a Dizzy Gillespie disciple, who's reputed to have caused Freddie Hubbard to blow out his lip in an ill-advised high note contest) occupying the chair before Walrath arrived. Pullen and Adams are on board, but only just, and Richmond is newly returned. They'd cut the disappointing Mingus Moves LP and were in the process of forming a band identity -- which, with two fiery free blowers (Adams and Bluiett) in the front line, is more raucous and wild, than, say, the '64 band, where the more restrained, Rollins-esque Clifford Jordan balanced out Dolphy. 

The repertoire is retrospective, starting with a "Peggy's Blue Skylight" that goes through a steeplechase of tempo changes, a "Celia" (dedicated to Mingus' second wife, originally recorded in '58 for Bethlehem, recut in '63 for Impulse) that winds its way through several moods and movements and is a high point of the set, and a "Fables of Faubus" on hyperdrive. Bluiett and Adams both leave blood on the floor. Pullen's Bo Diddley-goes-to-church "Big Alice" closes the regular set. 

For the encore, the regulars are joined by the elegant altoist/tenorist John Handy, who'd played on Mingus' classic '59 recordings for United Artists and Columbia; flamboyant multi-reedist and master of circular breathing Roland Kirk, a veteran of the '61 sessions that produced Oh Yeah; and stalwart altoist Charles McPherson, a constant in Mingus' bands from the triumphant '64 Monterey festival appearance to '72, including some of the leader's leanest years. The jam session (on "Perdido" -- written by Mingus' one-time nemesis Juan Tizol -- and "C-Jam Blues") is exciting entertainment, typical of festivals or big concerts of the time, but the real action is in the germinal stages of Mingus' last great band, heard in its full flowering on the '75 Bremen date.