Charles Mingus's "The Lost Album from Ronnie Scott's"

Charles Mingus's centennial is upon us April 22, and Resonance Records -- the worthy nonprofit that's released important archival recordings by John Coltrane, Bill Evans, Sonny Rollins, Roy Hargrove and Mulgrew Miller, to name but a few -- is commemorating the occasion with this previously unheard concert from a comparatively under-documented period in the titanic bassist-composer's career, on vinyl for Record Store Day (April 23), with CD to follow April 29.

The 1972 recordings British CBS made on the last night of this Mingus sextet's two-week stand on the musician-friendly turf of Ronnie Scott's club in London, released for the first time as The Lost Album from Ronnie Scott's, capture a band riven by interpersonal tensions, but burning brightly, like a lightbulb just before its filament fails. After this date, tenorman Bobby Jones (a member of the band since 1970, who'd been sparring with Mingus in press interviews) and teenage trumpet prodigy John Faddis (a high note specialist and protege of Dizzy Gillespie) would depart the lineup, leaving only altoist Charles McPherson (who'd first played with Mingus in 1960 and had probably seen worse), pianist John Foster (about whom little is known except that he passed too early, in 1976), and drummer Roy Brooks (former Horace Silver sideman who had his own big archival RSD release with last year's Understanding) to complete the tour with Mingus. 

While the '64 Dolphy-Byard-Jordan-Richmond and '73-'75 Adams-Pullen-Walrath-Richmond lineups remain more revered, the way this '72 unit inhabits Mingus's compositions takes a back seat to no one. Ensembles are solid but not slick, solos are expressive and individuated, and the spontaneous rhythm section dialogues behind them -- a highlight of live Mingus -- are bustling and vibrant. Obscure though he might be, Foster is a fully developed player, more than equal to the demands of Mingus's music. Brooks listens and responds effectively, as well as swinging hard. Jones has a light touch that contrasts with some of his predecessors on tenor in the Mingus band, and adds variety with his clarinet on two of the pieces. Young Faddis's virtuosity generates light as well as heat, and McPherson shows why he was a linchpin of Mingus groups for a dozen years. (Lucky fans on a few selected dates will get to hear McPherson with the Mingus Big Band during this year of centennial celebrations.)

They stretch out at length on a set that mixes Mingus live staples (the lushly Ellingtonian "Orange Was the Color of Her Dress (Then Silk Blues)," the barbed political irony of the tour de force "Fables of Faubus," the ballad "The Man Who Never Sleeps"), the previously unrecorded, boppish-themed "Mind Readers Convention in Milano" -- which winds its way through several intriguing shifts in tempo and dynamics, with all the players digging deep in their solo spots -- and homages to Texas tenor Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson ("Noddin' Ya Head Blues," later recorded with fusion guest stars on Three or Four Shades of Blues, here with a vocal by Foster and a solo by Brooks on musical saw!) and Louis Armstrong ("Pops"). In the course of two and a half hours, Mingus and his men create whole worlds in sound.

Interviewed for the liner notes, McPherson describes Mingus the composer's methodology as well as anyone I've heard: "When Mingus wrote, he quite often wrote long form. He had tempo changes. There were parts that were almost polytonal; you could hear a lot of stuff going on. And he wrote thematically and he wrote episodically, as well." Besides that interview, the notes include an essay by Mingus biographer Brian Priestley, and the full transcript of the wide ranging '72 interview -- mirroring their onstage instrumental conversations -- that the author conducted with Mingus and McPherson at Ronnie Scott's a couple of nights before these recordings were made (excerpts from which appeared in his essential '82 tome Mingus: A Critical Biography).

If Columbia had released The Lost Album from Ronnie Scott's when it was new, the '72 lineup would be remembered as one of the great Mingus bands. Instead, the label cut Mingus loose at the same time as it dropped Ornette Coleman, Bill Evans, and Keith Jarrett -- an incredibly short-sighted decision in an industry known for short-sighted decisions. It is fitting and proper that Resonance should make these sides available in time for the centennial. One wonders what other treasures from Mingus's legacy still remain to be heard.