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Marc Myers: Why Jazz Happened
by Ian Patterson
Why Jazz HappenedMarc Myers266 pagesISBN 9780520268784University of California Press2012Jazz's timeline and the iconic figures of each of its successive stylistic movements are well known to aficionados. Less well understood, however, are the underlying conditions that created these changes. Advances in recording technologies, social trends, radio, the incursion of pop and rock, and socio-political factors all played major roles in shaping the evolution of jazz, says music journalist and ...
Continue ReadingCharles Mingus: Mingus Ah Um: 50th Anniversary Legacy Edition
by Stuart Broomer
This special edition marks the 50th anniversary of bassist Charles Mingus' 1959 Columbia masterpiece, one of the great records in a year that included Miles Davis' Kind of Blue (Columbia), John Coltrane's Giant Steps (Atlantic) and Ornette Coleman's The Shape of Jazz to Come (Atlantic). The Legacy edition is a two-CD set that also includes Mingus' second Columbia record of 1959, Mingus Dynasty, as well as alternate takes. It restores portions that were edited out on the original LPs in ...
Continue ReadingCharles Mingus: Mingus Ah Um
by Matthew Miller
Drop the needle on Charles Mingus' bluesy call to prayer on “Better Git It In Your Soul" and Legacy's decision to include Ah Um in its vinyl series comes into sharp focus. There's simply no better way to hear the 1959 Columbia masterpiece than on 12" vinyl and, while it may be hard to detect the business logic behind the series, the meticulous remastering by Allan Tucker makes clear the aesthetic motive. During the last decade, the ...
Continue ReadingMingus Big Band and Cyrus Chestnut Trio at The Kimmel Center, Philadelphia
by Victor L. Schermer
Cyrus Chestnut Trio and Mingus Big BandThe Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts Verizon Hall Philadelphia, Pennsylvania February 22, 2008 There is a saying to the effect that “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade." That is what the Kimmel Center did with two problems that arose on this particular concert evening. First, T.S. Monk cancelled his engagement due to illness. But Cyrus Chestnut was recruited as a substitute and ...
Continue ReadingCharles Mingus Sextet with Eric Dolphy: Cornell 1964
by Chris M. Slawecki
Confrontational, sprawling and historic, this resurrected March 1964 performance by one of his favorite bands--Johnny Coles (trumpet) and Clifford Jordan (saxophone) with favorite sons Dannie Richmond (drums), Jaki Byard (piano) and Eric Dolphy (reeds, flutes)--presents the muse of bassist Charles Mingus in all its terrible glory.
Split here between two CDs, this performance begins with two more or less solo pieces. Byard renders an amazing unaccompanied performance on “ATFW," his combination tribute to Art Tatum and Fats Waller," ...
Continue ReadingCharles Mingus Sextet with Eric Dolphy: Cornell 1964
by Samuel Chell
Following upon the first-time release of Mingus At UCLA 1965 (Universal 2007), which afforded penetrating if uneven glimpses into bassist Charles Mingus' creative process, this two-disc release offers more satisfying music and a fuller picture of an earlier and smaller but more distinguished Mingus ensemble--the fabled 1964 touring unit that would be recorded later that same year in Europe. Though Eric Dolphy understandably will always be a magnet, each of the soloists is heard to maximum advantage on this earlier ...
Continue ReadingThe Unfinished Score
by Raul d'Gama Rose
In the act and art of writing--whether word or music, prose or poetry, a writer is almost completely lost in the creative challenge; the adventure that unfolds as words or notes start to appear on the page or in between the lines and spaces of a score sheet--both of which start off blank--is both exciting and terrifying. Perhaps this is why the so-called 'jazz' musician AND the subject of my by-now-infamous manuscript--Charles Mingus considered himself a vessel through which ideas ...
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