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Charles Mingus: Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus To Pre Bird Revisited
by Chris May
In his liner notes for Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus To Pre Bird Revisited, Bill Shoemaker sets out the context in which the two featured albums should be considered. He observes that so enormous was Charles Mingus' artistic vision that no two (or perhaps three) albums can encompass its totality. How true that is, even of the pairing of two Mingus albums that are as different as could be: Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus (Candid, 1960) and Pre Bird (Mercury, ...
read moreCharlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, Charles Mingus, Max Roach: Hot House: The Complete Jazz at Massey Hall Recordings
by Richard J Salvucci
This is the stuff of legend, one for the ages. It all started here; the greatest jazz concert of all time. How many times has the Massey Hall Concert (Toronto, 1953) been described that way? For the average All About Jazz reader, Massey Hall happened before he or she was born. Besides, there were other famous jazz concerts such as The Carnival of Swing (Randall's Island, NY, 1938), Benny Goodman's 1938 Carnegie Hall Concert (that remained unreleased until 1958), Gene ...
read moreCharles Mingus: At Antibes 1960 Revisited
by Mark Corroto
At Antibes could easily be an all-time favorite Charles Mingus recording if he had not produced such extraordinary sessions as Mingus Ah Um (Columbia, 1959), Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus (Candid, 1961), The Black Saint And The Sinner Lady (Impulse!, 1963) and Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus (Impulse!, 1964). Listeners can make their own picks, but this live recording from 1960 at the Antibes Jazz Festival in Juan-les-Pins, France, has a power unique unto itself. One can almost feel the ...
read moreCharles Mingus: At Antibes 1960 Revisited
by Chris May
Charles Mingus' exhilarating blend of roots and the avant-garde only rarely seems as binary* (see below) as it does on this recording from the 1960 Antibes Jazz Festival. Most often on a Mingus album, you do not hear the joins. This time, on one level, you do. Mingus leads a pianoless quintet completed by Booker Ervin on tenor saxophone, Eric Dolphy on alto saxophone and bass clarinet, Ted Curson on trumpet and Dannie Richmond on drums. Bud Powell ...
read moreThe Vocal Music of Charles Mingus, Part 2
by Ellen Johnson
Part 1 | Part 2 Early Years: 1945 to 1953 Charles Mingus demonstrated his prowess as a songwriter even in the early stages of his career. Surprisingly, he started writing songs as early as 1945, a fact that often goes unnoticed. This collection of early vocal compositions includes titles such as “The Texas Hop" (1945), “Baby, Take a Chance with Me" (1945), “Ain't Jivin' Blues" (1946), “Weird Nightmare" (1946), “Pacific Coast Blues" (1948), “Boppin' in Boston" (1949), “I've ...
read moreThe Vocal Music of Charles Mingus
by Ellen Johnson
Part 1 | Part 2 Part ICharles Mingus is not typically the first name that comes to mind when discussing jazz vocal repertoire, but perhaps it should be. Since the 1940s, Mingus wrote songs in collaboration with other musicians and even penned his own lyrics. His oeuvre encompasses popular songs of the era as well as intricate vocal compositions that rival those of his self-proclaimed mentor, Duke Ellington. Despite their artistic merit, only a few of these pieces ...
read moreYoungsters, Phoenixes, Mingi
by Patrick Burnette
We look at three 2022 releases this time (albeit one recorded way back in 1972) along with the first harbinger of the new year. There's an electronic sounding long-playing debut by a pair of YouTube wunderkinder (all played in real-time, we promise), a straight-ahead tenor sax trio, another star-studded portfolio album from a rising sax star, and a sprawling live opus from the music's greatest bassist/composer. For a chaser, a sprawl of pop matters that ranges from gospel tunes to ...
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