Peggy's Blue Skylight

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Peggy's Blue Skylight is a jazz composition by Charles Mingus . He wrote the title in 1958 and named it after his close friend Peggy Hitchcock: “She wanted to replace the blue plastic shield of a fighter plane and with it the skylight [of her apartment] so that the sky would always be blue. The government didn't allow her to do that. "

Structure of the song

Peggy's Blue Skylight builds on bars 13 to 15 of another Mingus composition, Reincarnation of a Love Bird , in its opening phrase . According to Gunther Schuller , it is one of the ballads and song- like titles from the repertoire of the bassist and composer. Peggy's Blue Skylight is in the classic song form , but the sixteen-bar A part is only played halfway after the B part. The piece is laid out as a medium swing at medium speed .

Recordings and performances

Mingus had the composition Peggy's Blue Skylight first center in 1961 in London in the overdub process (bass, piano) while working for the feature film All Night Long by Basil Dearden recorded (1962), in which he u. a. was assisted by Harry Beckett and Harold McNair . With his sextet he recorded the composition at the session for his Atlantic album Oh Yeah on November 6, 1961 ; The title did not appear until 1964 on the album Tonight at Noon . The Mingus band performed it during the six-month guest performance in New York's Birdland . After Mingus had made it part of his large-format work Epitaph , he recorded it in a big band arrangement on October 12, 1962 at the historic Town Hall concert in New York City .

Mingus took the composition back into his band repertoire in 1964 and played it a. a. in April 1964 at his European concerts in Paris, Liège, Stockholm, Stuttgart and Wuppertal . In 1970 he took Peggy's Blue Skylight back into the program and presented the song around autumn 1972 at his appearances at the Warsaw Jazz Jamboree and at the Berlin Jazz Days , but also on his 1977 Tentett album His Final Work with Lionel Hampton . When he recorded the title in Epitaph 1990, Gunther Schuller combined sequences from the arrangement of the All Night Long recording from 1961 and the earlier composition Reincarnation of a Love Bird from 1957; the bridge was from (the unreleased) Don't Come Back .

Further effect

Experimental filmmaker Joyce Wieland was a fan of Mingus and heard the piece when her apartment neighbor Paul Haines played it on the piano. She found the title Peggy's Blue Skylight amusing because she had a cat named Peggy. The pianist Paul Bley then played the song in the soundtrack of their short film Peggy's Blue Skylight, begun in 1964 (but not completed until 1985) . The composition was also recorded by other jazz musicians, such as Kenny Drew junior ( Portraits of Mingus and Monk ) or the String Trio of New York . The cover versions by Steve Lacy / Eric Watson , Joe Lovano , Andy Summers , Kirk Knuffke , Bob Mover and Eliane Elias are also worth mentioning . The song is now also part of the sixth episode of the Real Book and can therefore be regarded as a jazz standard .

Web links

  • Inclusion in the catalog of the German National Library: DNB 357816811

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gene Santoro: Myself When I Am Real: The Life and Music of Charles Mingus. Oxford 2000, p. 142.
  2. ↑ Quoted from: Charles Mingus: More Than a Fake Book . Hal Leonard Corporation, New York 1991, ISBN 0-7935-0900-9 , p. 107.
  3. ↑ a b Brian Priestley : Mingus. A Critical Biography . Quartet Books, London / Melbourne / New York City 1982, ISBN 0-7043-2275-7 , pp. 128 ff.
  4. ↑ a b Cf. Gunther Schuller: Liner Notes on Epitaph . P. 22 f.
  5. ↑ See Andrew Homzy , In: Charles Mingus: More Than a Fake Book . Hal Leonard Corporation, New York 1991, ISBN 0-7935-0900-9 , pp. 106f.
  6. ↑ There partly with Henry Grimes as second bass player. See Todd S. Jenkins: I Know What I Know: The Music of Charles Mingus. 2006, p. 90.
  7. ↑ This version, also called Peggy's Discovery , was initially not published, but only when the concert was re-released on CD.
  8. ↑ with Joe Gardner (trumpet), Hamiet Bluiett (saxophone), John Foster (piano), Roy Brooks (drums)
  9. ↑ See discography
  10. ↑ See Iris Nowell: Joyce Wieland: A Life in Art. 2001, pp. 239, 492.
  11. ↑ Discogs
  12. ↑ This opinion is also shared by the critic François Couture in his review of Eugene Chadbournes album Any Other Suggestions cf. https://www.allmusic.com/album/mw0001189701