Blue Moods
| Blue Moods | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Studio album by Miles Davis | ||||
|
Publication |
||||
| Label (s) | Debut Records , Original Jazz Classics | |||
|
Format (s) |
LP, CD |
|||
|
Title (number) |
4th |
|||
|
running time |
26:40 |
|||
| occupation | ||||
|
Charles Mingus |
||||
|
Studio (s) |
||||
|
||||
Blue Moods is a jazz album by Miles Davis , recorded on July 9, 1955 at the Rudy Van Gelder Studio in Hackensack, New Jersey . The album was produced by the performing bassist Charles Mingus for his label Debut Records .
Session background
The Blue Moods session brought Miles Davis back together with bassist Charles Mingus in July 1955. They had already recorded in California in 1946; Mingus played in the early 1950s in the New York jazz club Birdland and then in Boston with Davis; The last meeting of the two musicians in the record studio was two years ago when Mingus sat at the piano in a session on May 19, 1953 and Miles Davis recorded a track called Smooch , which was based on the Mingus composition Weird Nightmare .
A few days earlier, the trumpeter had made quartet recordings (The Musings of Miles) with Oscar Pettiford , Red Garland and Philly Joe Jones for his contract label Prestige , "a kind of microcosm of the musical direction Miles should take for the following years". The following Saturday his legendary Newport appearance took place, which should give his further career a strong boost and brought him a record deal with Columbia .
Charles Mingus, however, worked during this time with musicians from his Jazz Composers Workshop , which included Teddy Charles and Britt Woodman , whom he selected for the front line. When Mingus wanted to record the album Blue Moods with Miles Davis , which contained four jazz standards , he asked Teddy Charles if he would like to do the arrangements for three of the pieces, Nature Boy, There's No You and Easy Living . Mingus himself wrote the arrangement for Alone Together and selected the then largely unknown drummer Elvin Jones from Detroit for the rhythm section.
The Davis biographer Nisenson speculated about the creation of the Blue Moods session that Davis and Mingus, who had known each other since Charlie Parker's guest appearance in California in 1946, were not very close, but Mingus lent Miles Davis money during his heroin addiction and wanted to have it paid back in the form of a session for his record label Debut .
Dannie Richmond , who later became a longtime Mingus confidante, recalls that Miles advised Mingus against: "He was crazy, it wouldn't work." The problems started with Davis not wanting to walk two blocks to the studio. because he had been promised a ride. He told the taxi driver who drove him that he hoped he wouldn't have to hit Mingus on the mouth.
Teddy Charles later reported in an interview that there was almost a falling out between the musicians in the studio before it turned out that the discrepancies were due to a mistake by the copyists , as it turned out when aligning the arrangements; Mingus, however, continued to see Elvin Jones to blame. After that there was a noticeable tension in the studio, which impaired the further course of the session.
In his memoirs, Miles Davis said, “Something didn't go right in this session, nothing really started and so the whole thing was out of fire.” Miles Davis no longer knew whether it was the arrangements, “but something definitely went wrong. "
Miles Davis made derogatory comments about the album after it was released, saying that some of the compositions by Mingus and Teo Macero from this workshop phase were “something like boring modern paintings. Some are depressed ”. Mingus responded angrily in an open letter published by Down Beat on November 30, 1955 :
- “I play or write me , the way I feel ... If someone has been escaping reality, I don't expect him to dig my music ... My music is alive and it's about the living and the dead, about good and evil. It's angry, yet its real beacause it knows it's angry. "
reception
According to the Metronome 1957 Yearbook, Blue Moods was one of the best jazz records of 1956.
For Alex Henderson, Blue Moods is an excellent example of cool jazz and proof that Miles Davis's conception of cool jazz was not lightweight and unemotional, but enabled cool jazz and hardbop to be equal parts of what Charlie Parker had created. Even if not all of the musicians in this session were downright cool musicians, Blue Moods certainly had the characteristic qualities of cool jazz - subtlety, restraint and understatement. There was a very laid-back, friendly and contemplative playing attitude.
Davis biographer Peter Wießmüller was more critical of the musical result of this session: “Anyone who expects something extraordinary from the […] studio meeting of the two recognized enfants terribles of the jazz scene, Miles and Mingus, will be disappointed. [...] Despite ideal conditions, this formation did not succeed in implementing Charlie Mingus 'idiosyncratic world of expression, which is already recognizable here. "Wießmüller mainly blames" Elvin Jones' sluggish rhythm and Britt Woodman's sluggish solo trombone "for this. However, the author emphasizes Miles Davis' play in Easy Living and especially Nature Boy in the Harmon-Mute-Sound, in which he "shows his fully developed qualities as a ballad improviser". Mingus convinces soloistically "with expressive volume and artistic 'guitar technique" "and indicates" the emancipatory aspirations of his bass playing as a melody voice. "Teddy Charles understands convincingly" to transfer Monk's tradition in crystal clear, percussive intonation to the vibraphone. "Most successfully sound Alone Together, which is “thematically and improvisationally based on such accompanying structures”. The Mingus biographers Horst Weber and Gerd Filtgen are also critical of the album: "It is thanks to the structuring accompanying work and the creative, crystal-clear solos of the vibraphonist Teddy Charles that the music does not fall apart completely."
Richard Cook and Brian Morton only gave the album three stars in the Penguin Guide to Jazz , but described it as a "very attractive session" and emphasized the extraordinary instrumentation , which was never used again. The "deep melancholy version" of Nature Boy, which casts a glimpse of the "sinking poetry of the future", is extraordinary.
Krin Gabbard believes that it is hardly possible for today's listener to hear the tension between Davis and Mingus.
Editorial notes
Brian Priestley quotes from the liner notes that Blue Moods said the wider pressing on the 12-inch LP gave the “ grooves wider and deeper”, the recording more volume and the bass more depth than on an EP; therefore it was released as the small label's first 12-inch LP, even if the four tracks would have fit on a 10-inch EP. The album was also included in the 12-CD compilation The Complete Debut Recordings in 1990.
The title of the album
- Miles Davis: Blue Moods - Debut DEB 120 (LP), OJC 043 (CD)
- Nature Boy ( Eden Ahbez ) - 6:14
- Alone Together ( Dietz / Schwartz ) - 7:17
- There's No You (Adair / Hopper) - 8:06
- Easy Living ( Rainger / Robin ) - 5:03
literature
- Richard Cook , Brian Morton : The Penguin Guide of Jazz on CD . 6th edition. Penguin, London 2002, ISBN 0-14-051521-6 .
- Miles Davis: The Autobiography . Heyne, Munich 2000
- Erik Nisenson: Round About Midnight - A Portrait by Miles Davis . Hannibal, Vienna 1985
- Brian Priestley: Mingus. A Critical Biography. Paladin Books, London and Da Capo Press, New York 1985, ISBN 0306802171 .
- Peter Wießmüller: Miles Davis - his life, his music, his records . Gauting, Oreos (Collection Jazz), approx. 1985
Web links
- Bill Closs, Original Liner Notes from the Blue Moods album
- Review of Alex Henderson's album Blue Moods on Allmusic . Retrieved February 28, 2011.
- Interview with Teddy Charles
Individual evidence
- ^ Priestley, Mingus (edition: Paladin, London), pp. 40, 55 f .; In 1946 Davis was involved in three titles by Baron Mingus Presents His Symphonic Airs , cf. Discography M. Davis
- ^ Priestley, Mingus, p. 64
- ↑ a b Nisenson, p. 82.
- ↑ a b c Priestley, Mingus, pp. 75 f.
- ^ A b John F. Szwed So What: The Life of Miles Davis 2002, p. 117
- ↑ Interview with Teddy Charles
- ^ Miles Davis, p. 261
- ↑ cit. n. Priestley, Mingus, p. 76
- ↑ Review of Alex Henderson's album Blue Moods at Allmusic (English). Retrieved February 28, 2011.
- ↑ a b Wießmüller, p. 104 f.
- ^ Horst Weber, Gerd Filtgen: Charles Mingus. His life, his music, his records. Oreos, Gauting-Buchendorf, undated, p. 91
- ^ Richard Cook, Brian Morton: The Penguin Guide of Jazz on CD. 6th edition. Penguin, London 2002, p. 373 f.
- ^ Krin Gabbard Black magic: White Hollywood and African American Culture 2004, p. 85
- ↑ cit. n. Priestley, Mingus p. 75