Music Written for Monterey 1965, Not Heard ... Played in Its Entirety at UCLA

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Music Written for Monterey 1965, Not Heard ... Played in Its Entirety at UCLA
Live album by Charles Mingus

Publication
(s)

1966

Label (s) Jazz Workshop , East Coasting Records, Sunnyside Records , EmArcy Records

Format (s)

2 LP / 2 CD

Genre (s)

jazz

Title (number)

10 or 11 (without announcements)

running time

87:23 and 1:27:32, respectively

occupation

production

Charles Mingus (Reissue: Sue Graham Mingus )

chronology
My Favorite Quintet
(1966) 		Music Written for Monterey 1965, Not Heard ... Played in Its Entirety at UCLA The Great Concert, Paris 1964
(1970)

Music Written for Monterey 1965, Not Heard ... Played in Its Entirety at UCLA is a jazz album by Charles Mingus that was recorded on September 25, 1965 at a concert at the Royce Hall of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and was released by Mingus in 1966 on his own label Jazz Workshop . The concert, organized by Mingus as a "workshop", let the visitors participate in Mingus' creative process; the listener is also initiated into the composer's inner processes, his calls and rebukes.

Background of the album

In the middle of 1965 Mingus initially worked with a quintet line-up, but performed only rarely (e.g. in Minneapolis, recorded on My Favorite Quintet ) and otherwise mainly occupied himself with composing, but not for his working band , which in the meantime (after Exit of pianist Jaki Byard ) was reduced to the size of a quartet. He composed new material for an octet instrumentation which, as a medium-sized band, had sound possibilities similar to the nonet of Birth of the Cool by Miles Davis from 1949/50. In addition to the regular musicians Charles McPherson , Lonnie Hillyer and Dannie Richmond , Mingus brought trumpeters Hobart Dotson , Jimmy Owens , horn player Julius Watkins and tuba player Howard Johnson on board. With this line-up, the band leader worked for several weeks between June and September 1965 in the New York jazz club The Village Gate . Mingus had designed the rehearsed music for performance at the Monterey Jazz Festival ; it was not performed there in its entirety, but only a week later in Royce Hall at UCLA in Los Angeles.

After his great success at the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1964, Mingus' performance the following year was a great disappointment: By organizing the performance as a workshop instead of a performance, Mingus intended the audience to participate in the artist's thoughts as composer-director-producer "to illustrate the creative process exactly as its product." After half an hour he stopped when he felt that his time window was limited and that the audience was not paying him the due attention. Only three of the prepared pieces were presented there, only to conclude the concert with When the Saints Go Marching In .

After the memories of Charles McPherson, Mingus declined parts written for the musicians involved; Mingus had given him z. B. played his part over the phone while the alto saxophonist on the other end of the line tried to play Mingus' idea on his instrument, only that Mingus rejected his idea the next day.

Music of the album

The concert at UCLA, which was documented on the CD edition, also over time, was recorded by the recording team. It started with a verbal introduction by Mingus:

"I'd like to let you know who's in this group — the same people who were at Monterey, and actually, we're gonna play the music we planned to play there, and for some reason uh ... this is not an apology ... we only had twenty minutes. No one knows who the guy was with the red beard — Jesus or Buddha, Moses Muhammad somebody, but he said 'Get off.' And they can't find him, neither can I. "
Royce Hall auditorium where the concert took place

This was followed by an extensive, chamber music- oriented composition by the bassist, “Meditation on Inner Peace” (which is not connected with “ Meditations on Integration ”), shaped by the bassist's arco playing . Mingus and drummer Dannie Richmond, however, got in too early at the end of the piece. According to Brian Priestley , the performance at UCLA illustrates “the intolerance towards his musicians” when he insulted them in front of the audience after the unsuccessful beginning of his new composition, “Once Upon a Time There Was ...”, based on Kurt Weill insulted with obscene gestures. The young audience responded with a humorous laugh. Then he demonstrated his ideas on how the piece should be played to the musicians on the piano and then stopped the piece entirely. Mingus sent the octet's brass section - Jimmy Owens, Hobart Dotson, Julius Watkins, and Howard Johnson - backstage to practice because of their “ mental tardiness ” .

Instead, an "Ode to Bird and Dizzy" (aka "Bird Preamble"), a medley of bebop themes such as " Hot House ", "Parker's Mood", " Ornithology ", followed in a quintet line-up (Mingus, Richmond, McPherson and Hillyer) , "Bebop", "Shaw Nuff", " Salt Peanuts " and " A Night in Tunisia ", composed by Charlie Parker , Dizzy Gillespie , Denzil Best , Fats Navarro , Max Roach , Oscar Pettiford and Tadd Dameron (like Mingus on the album cover listed). This was followed by Mingus' new composition "They Trespass the Land of Sacred Sioux" - again with a large cast and melancholy - in which Mingus played the piano and thus contributed melodic and rhythmic ideas that were processed by McPherson in his solo, while Watkins " a bitonal, out-of-pace cavalry attack ”inserted. According to the New York Times , the strong brass- oriented cast was unusual for a Mingus band, "and the arrangements indulge in brass chorale chords."

The following "The Arts of Tatum and Freddy Webster" was dedicated to the trumpeter Freddie Webster . The soloist was Howard Dobson, whose playing is reminiscent of Benny Bailey and Johnny Coles . Mingus was unmistakably satisfied with the performance of his composition, which he expressed with "everything is fine now" . After another address by the band leader, there was another performance of "Once Upon a Time, There Was a Holding Corporation Called Old America"; Mingus played the piano here. In a section of the waltz Mingus called out to an old companion, Dannie Richmond, enthusiastically: “Love, Dee. It's you and me. ”“ Soon after, the cheerful bandleader is singing with the music in pointed falsetto, perhaps to give the musicians their parts, but it is more likely that he was expressing his irrepressible delight that the performance was successful. ”Six Years later, Mingus re-recorded the composition under the title "Shoes of the Fisherman's Wife" on Let My Children Hear Music (1971).

The short “Muskrat Ramble” by New Orleans jazz veteran Kid Ory in the form of a musical parody (with Lonnie Hillyer as the soloist) is followed by the Mingus composition “Don't Be Afraid, The Clown's Afraid Too”, played with one by Dotson Fanfare begins and contained a harmonically altered section from Dvořák's Humoresque (1894) as a tribute to the jazz version of Art Tatum . In the Mingus composition “Don't Let It Happen Here” that concludes the concert, Mingus uses the connection between lyric poetry and music by using held chords in the style of Aaron Copland to adapt a text by Martin Niemöller (“Als die Nazis The communists fetched, I was silent; I wasn't a communist. ”), which refers here to the riots in Watts a month earlier ( I'm as guilty of genocide as all the rest of you who do nothing ). It ends with the lines:

Then one day they came and they took me,
And I could say nothing because I was as guilty as they were,
For not speaking out and saying that all men have a right to freedom.

After the recitation, Mingus drove the band into fast-paced themed play that is vaguely reminiscent of the " Haitian Fight Song " from 1955; Jimmy Owens played a flugelhorn solo here.

Charles Mingus was then able to continue working with the octet with a concert in San Francisco and then had to reduce the group to a septet (in which trombonist Tom McIntosh replaced the two additional trumpeters) and finally to a sextet when he was born on December 21, 1965 a six-week engagement in New York's Five Spot began. One of the few other opportunities to perform was a solidarity concert for faculty members at St. John's University in February 1966.

Track list

Charles Mingus in 1976 in Manhattan (New York)
  • Charles Mingus: Music Written for Monterey 1965, Not Heard ... Played in Its Entirety at UCLA (Sunnyside SSC 3041, EmArcy 0602498427590)

1st disc

  1. Opening Speech - 0:42
  2. Meditation on Inner Peace Part I - 17:57
  3. Speech Introducing Musicians - 1:41
  4. Meditation on Inner Peace Part II - 0:51
  5. Speech - 0:15
  6. Once Upon a Time There Was a Holding Corporation Called Old America (1st False Start) - 0:08
  7. Lecture to Band - 0:27
  8. Once Upon a Time, There Was a Holding Corporation Called Old America (2nd False Start) - 1:22
  9. Ode to Bird and Dizzy [aka "Bird Preamble"] ( Charlie Parker , Dizzy Gillespie , Denzil Best , Fats Navarro , Max Roach , Oscar Pettiford , Tadd Dameron , Lonnie Hillyer, Charles McPherson, Danny Richmond) - 10:18
  10. Speech: Call Octet Back - 0:54
  11. They Trespass the Land of Sacred Sioux - 7:11

2nd disc

  1. Speech: Introduction to Hobart Dotson / The Arts of Tatum and Freddy Webster - 10:01
  2. Speech - 1:24
  3. Once Upon a Time, There Was a Holding Corporation Called Old America - 11:01 am
  4. Speech: Introduction to Lonnie Hillyer - 0:35
  5. Muskrat Ramble (erroneously listed this way since the first edition, but it is the Twelfth Street Rag by Euday L. Bowman ) ( Kid Ory , Ray Gilbert ) - 3:11
  6. Pause - 0:11
  7. Don't Be Afraid, The Clown's Afraid Too - 8:21
  8. Don't Let It Happen Here - 10:53

Unless otherwise stated, all compositions are by Charles Mingus. The track list corresponds to the CD edition of the concert recording; the original LP edition is much shorter.

Editor's note

Mingus was only able to sell 200 copies of the double album recorded in Mono by mail order on his own record label before he ran out of money for his company. The original master tapes were stored at Capitol Records and were destroyed during a clean-up in 1971 without notice to the owner. Fred Cohen of the Jazz Record Center and Susan Mingus oversaw the 1984 re-release, which is based on the first edition. That edition also contained a 7-inch single of They Trespass the Land of the Sacred Sioux, recorded when the Mingus Octet performed in Monterey. The booklet of the later CD edition contains, in addition to the original liner notes written by Mingus, a collection of his handwritten notes and an excerpt from a comic strip that he designed to promote his record distribution.

reception

Scott Yanow only rated the album with three (out of five) stars in Allmusic and noted that there were some strong moments in this recording; Overall, however, it is an "inconsistent, albeit colorful achievement."

For the Mingus biographers Horst Weber and Gerd Filtgen, the UCLA recording is a “masterpiece”; Meditation on Inner Peace “contains the most beautiful solos that Hillyer and McPherson ever recorded. Mingus can also be heard with wonderfully cleanly voiced Arco contributions; Julius Watkins elicits original sounds from the French horn that have never been achieved on this instrument. "

For John Pareles the recording is important because it gives the opportunity to see otherwise unpublished Mingus works such as “They Trespass the Land of the Sacred Sioux”, “Don't Let It Happen Here” and “The Arts of Tatum and Freddy Webster ”as well as his arrangement of“ Muscrat Ramble ”and the bebop suite“ Ode to Bird and Dizzy ”.

The Austin Chronicle (2007) critic found the album “ The nonessential but sometimes daring” ; UCLA 1965 is "a loose, broken, politically meant octet thing in the jazz workshop style" (loose, fractious, politically minded, jazz workshop-type octet affair) . One of the highlights of the album is 'Don't Let It Happen Here', otherwise it's only something for die-hard Mingus fans. "

Dannie Richmond (1981)

Marc Medwin, in his review in Dusted, pointed out the workshop character of UCLA's performance of Mingus' compositions; "Mingus was able to lead the ensemble as if it were a rehearsal or a recording session, with all the associated highlights and pitfalls, vis-à-vis a paying audience, a format that he had used for the previous ten years." So it came about that Mingus had to explain the introduction to “Once upon a Time, there was a Holding Corporation called Old America” on the piano and ironically announced to the audience: This is gonna be a long concert, so relax yourselves . The piano-less group, which played the bebop piece "Ode to Bird and Dizzy" during the subsequent brass rehearsals, is reminiscent of Mingus' Candid sessions around 1960; Dannie Richmond's explosive but controlled drumming is particularly noteworthy, which illustrates why Mingus used him so regularly on the drum chair .

Francis Davis wrote in the Village Voice (2007) that the concert recording shed light on "a lost chapter in Mingus' life" shortly before he fell silent for six years, working on his autobiography and grappling with his bipolar mental disorder. “You can think of the concert as a dressed-up (or unprocessed) rehearsal of Let My Children Hear Music , and so it is nothing less than essential. Besides, where besides Sun Ras Jazz in silhouette do you have the opportunity to hear Hobart Dotson as a soloist? "

In his review of the new edition (2006) of the recording in All About Jazz, Samuel Chell found “Mingus' choice of instrumentation for his octet strange to say the least. One could argue that the three trumpeters get in each other's way and ultimately do not serve to reinforce the textures of Mingus' harmonies and bass-driven progressions . It is possible that Julius Watkins' French horn was chosen to cover the registers that are otherwise assigned to Jimmy Knepper's trombone [...] ”. In contrast, the inclusion of Howard Johnson's tuba made sense in every respect, not only because of its unmistakable contributions to the traditional New Orleans number ("Muskrat Ramble"), but also because Mingus allowed it without the bass voice being missing. to switch to the piano.

For Chell the first half of the concert is the more convincing, especially in terms of sound - even if for Mingus the performance probably only came together in the second half. Particularly noteworthy is the opening composition, “Meditation On Inner Peace”, an “astonishing invitation”, which “shows the band leader playing arcs in the cello register above the undiminished roar that is fed by the tuba. Gradually the melancholy musical devotion takes on an intensity as the other musicians make their individual contributions to the increasingly layered lament, which achieves a tonal and emotional climax with the percussive magic of drummer Dannie Richmond ”.

The “Ode to Bird and Diz” is “a playful exchange and a surreal collage”; The undoubted highlight of the medley of bebop numbers is the "frostiest version" of "Hot House" that has ever been recorded. Charles McPherson's playing on the alto saxophone with his references to the standards “ Alone Together ” and “If I Should Lose You” then contributed to the elegiac mood . In the opinion of the reviewer, the solo by Hobart Dotson suffers from the difficult reception conditions; therefore the trumpet never sounds integrated into the rest of the group, which sounds "noncommittal and mushy" when playing the harmony parts.

“Muskrat Ramble” came across as a bit like a “comical break” in the concert, “even if it is undoubtedly a serious hint to the [jazz] tradition”, even if McPherson's imitations of the style certainly leave something to be desired. But the polyphonic texture of the New Orleans number makes the transition to “Don't Be Afraid, The Clown's Afraid Too”, a fugue whose performance is successful with interruptions. The finale of the concert, “Don't Let It Happen Here”, underlines Mingus' ability as a narrator as well as his ability to combine a poetic-political text with the appropriate musical equivalents. In summary, Chell comes to the conclusion that in view of the sound problems, the present recording of the composer's dazzling, capricious UCLA performance is to be regarded as an indispensable 'document' and provides insights into Charles Mingus 'creative processes as well as his private, elusive' self 'provides. His widow Sue quotes him as follows in this regard:

I'm trying to play the truth of what I am. The reason it's difficult is because I'm changing all the time.

The CD edition received the Prix ​​de la Meilleure Réédition ou du Meilleur Inédit of the Académie du Jazz in 2006 .

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ In the edition in the East Coasting Records , Fred Cohen is named as the producer of the reissue
  2. ↑ The album was re-released in 1984 by Mingus' widow Sue Graham Mingus with Fred Cohen, first as a double LP , then in 2006 as a compact disc on Sunnyside Records in the United States and 2007 on EmArcy Records in Europe.
  3. ↑ Music Written for Monterey 1965, Not Heard ... Played in Its Entirety at UCLA on the Mingus homepage
  4. ↑ a b c d Brian Priestley : Mingus. A Critical Biography. Quartet Books, London, Melbourne, New York City ISBN 0704322757 , pp. 165 f.
  5. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Review of the album by Samuel Chell (2006) in All About Jazz
  6. ↑ a b Review of the album Music Written for Monterey 1965. Not Heard ... Played in Its Entirety at UCLA by Scott Yanow at Allmusic (English). Retrieved February 9, 2015.
  7. ↑ Sessionography (Onttonen)
  8. ^ A b Review of Marc Medwin in Dusted
  9. ↑ a b Horst Weber, Gerd Filtgen: Charles Mingus. His life, his music, his records. Gauting-Buchendorf: Oreos, undated, ISBN 3-923657-05-6 , p. 151 ff.
  10. ↑ a b c d e f g Review of the album in NYTimes
  11. ↑ cf. Charles Mingus: Hit in the Soul , The Wire
  12. ↑ Discogs
  13. ^ Review in the Austin Chronicle
  14. ↑ http://www.sunnysiderecords.com/reviews/Mingus-VV-1106.pdf