Mr. Mingus

[king ubu]

Glad to see this interest in Mingus. I too have wondered why he has not received more attention for his many complex and artistically awesome compositions.

there are plenty of threads on Mingus, for instance:

Mingus' most unappreciated album

Music Written for Monterey... and one more

Debut box set

Sue Mingus interview on AAJ

Town Hall Concert (OJC)

Let My Children Hear Music

The Great Concert of Charles Mingus

The Birdland 1961/62 sessions

Live at Montreux 1975 DVD

Mingus At Monterey

Reed players with Mingus

Changes

Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus

and I'm sure there are other interesting threads not linked above...

[B. Goren.]

This has:

Peggy's Blue Skylight

Self Portrait in Three Colors

Nostalgia in Times Square

I X Love

Reincarnation of a Lovebird

Pithecanthropus Erectus

Free Cell Block F

Goodbye Pork Pie Hat

Remember Rockefeller at Attica

A pretty demanding program.

Today is C.M's Birthday. For this reason this CD will find later his way to my CD player (and also some other Mingus' recordings).

Happy Birthday Mr. Mingus.

BTW: Today is also Mr. PC's Birthday. Both of them have left us too early.

[ValerieB]

Happy Birthday Charles! will never stop missing you. as i hope you know, Sue is doing a damn good job of keeping you around us!

and Happy Birthday to my ex-neighbor, Paul! you are also remembered well.

[fasstrack]

I wonder why almost all of his compositions have been overlooked by other jazz artists. Everyone plays Monk tunes, or Ellington, but why not Charles Mingus?

I was listening the the birthday broadcast today on WKCR and asking myself why it wasn't killing me when it used to. I was thinking that Mingus was perhaps overrated as a composer and wondering why.

Maybe it's the length of the pieces---the big canvas---and that often the complexity seems for its own sake.

Theatricality is fine also and obviously so is humor. Mingus is very good at both, but a bit sprawling to take in. When I finally caught up with Roland Kirk a few years ago, I mean listening seriously, I thought some of his recordings were cinematic---like mini-movies. He really knew how to make the most of recording techniques to get a wide-ranging vision in a few minutes. Mingus is wide ranging but doesn't seem to have or choose to have the self-editing skills. He sort of lets it hang out, and that's courageous but can be tough to take in at one time. That could be one reason he's not played, musicians can be as lazy and slaves to habit as anyone else and maybe that wall of difficulty and epic length keep some from making the effort. Just as a criticism I also find, frankly, that he makes a lot out of comparatively little, recycling a lot of the same type lines in many pieces. I think Monk, by comparison, had much wider scope and also perhaps more accessibility (which I believe your question addressed in part). Also a lot of the humor came from the players, like Jaki Byard, Eric Dolphy, and Mingus himself.

I think some of the pieces that work best and were his most popular---like The Clown or Scenes from the City---have narration so they really do function as a kind of aural cinema. I don't know if they're so strong that they'd work as well as stand-alone instrumentals. Also the bluesier and gospel type pieces like Better Get it in Your Soul, Nostalgia in Times Square, Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting, Porkpie Hat, etc. have the strongest melodies and the earthiest feeling, and are the most direct so they get played most. He doesn't have that many memorable melodies IMO---and, let's face it, if you can't whistle it you may not want to hear it again.

What did knock me out today was his bass soloing. Weird, but I found it more compositional, terser, and more humorous than his compositions. Also his arrangements (settings is a better word---he really wasn't an arranger) of Ellington and standards, especially Memories of You, are some of the finest in jazz.

He was definitely a major talent. But for me I prefer Monk of the really original composers of that period. He was just as humorous or complex when he wanted to be---but he said it with less. Herbie Nichols is also quirky and interesting.

[JSngry]

It's a small world full of small people. Mingus was anything but small.

People watch movies on cell phones & get pissed off when they have to wait. How the hell they gonna play "Fables Of Faubus" or "Meditations On Integration", especially when they think that repeating the answers to "Cherokee" or "Giant Steps" is freakin' ART?

[Quasimado]

I'm not sure about Giant Steps, but many musicians like the challemge and beauty of Cherokee and other jazz standards, and do the best they can, and (sometimes) know what went before. Art is for "Artists".

Q

[JSngry]

And Craft is for "Craftsmen". Craftsmen are quite frequently inventive & delightful people whose work reflects those qualities, but equating Craft with Art is what enables stuff like WalMart & ultimately cheapens & destroys both.

[Quasimado]

Give me "craftsmen" anyday, without the "artist" bullshit. The real artists come along from among the craftsmen, when things are ready for it to happen.

Q

[JSngry]

Oh, things are always ready to happen. It's just a matter of who's ready to do them. And people who don't have vision or ambition usually won't be. Which is not to say that those who do will be, just that those who celebrate craft as an end unto itself will end up doing what's already been done by somebody else. All well and good, at least until that's all that's left.

[Quasimado]

Nobody's saying you have to celebrate craft as an end to itself. But craft is where things come from ... it takes time, and many people (musicians in our case) enjoy it along the way, and then an artist comes along and moves it into the next phase ...

Q

[Guy Berger]

I wonder why almost all of his compositions have been overlooked by other jazz artists. Everyone plays Monk tunes, or Ellington, but why not Charles Mingus?

I think some of the pieces that work best and were his most popular---like The Clown or Scenes from the City---have narration so they really do function as a kind of aural cinema. I don't know if they're so strong that they'd work as well as stand-alone instrumentals. Also the bluesier and gospel type pieces like Better Get it in Your Soul, Nostalgia in Times Square, Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting, Porkpie Hat, etc. have the strongest melodies and the earthiest feeling, and are the most direct so they get played most. He doesn't have that many memorable melodies IMO---and, let's face it, if you can't whistle it you may not want to hear it again."

Respectfully speaking - I can't understand how anybody would conclude that Mingus didn't write many memorable melodies. Besides the pieces mentioned here we have Duke Ellington's Sound of Love, Orange Was the Color, Meditations, Haitian Fight Song, Eh's Flat Ah's Flat Too, Fables of Faubus, Moanin', Jelly Roll, Diane... That's an impressive body of work, to say the least, and in a wide range of idioms (he wasn't a one-trick pony).

More generally to this topic, I think ejp's comment (#5) on this thread nails it, along with valerie (#2) and jsngry (#14). It's not just being overlooked - even if the desire is there, the resources frequently are not.

These aren't the kinds of tunes that a bunch of guys can just get together and blow on. You need lots of ability and imagination from the players as well as lots of rehearsal and chemistry - something that isn't all that common, because we're usually listening to one-offs and pick-up groups. As ejp says, with Ellington you don't hear many recordings of the more intricate, "orchestral" works - A Tone Parallel to Harlem, Tourist Point of View, etc. And as far as Monk - there are endless performances of Straight No Chaser, Round Midnight and Blue Monk but far fewer of Gallop's Gallop or Brilliant Corners.

Guy

[JSngry]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ed65Je_mjUs

[kh1958]

Almost all of Mingus' compositions work for me. He has the highest percentage of beloved (by me) compositions of anyone in jazz--and it's an amazingly diverse set of compositions, yet at the same time unified by the same recognizable vision.

[fasstrack]

I wonder why almost all of his compositions have been overlooked by other jazz artists. Everyone plays Monk tunes, or Ellington, but why not Charles Mingus?

I think some of the pieces that work best and were his most popular---like The Clown or Scenes from the City---have narration so they really do function as a kind of aural cinema. I don't know if they're so strong that they'd work as well as stand-alone instrumentals. Also the bluesier and gospel type pieces like Better Get it in Your Soul, Nostalgia in Times Square, Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting, Porkpie Hat, etc. have the strongest melodies and the earthiest feeling, and are the most direct so they get played most. He doesn't have that many memorable melodies IMO---and, let's face it, if you can't whistle it you may not want to hear it again."

Respectfully speaking - I can't understand how anybody would conclude that Mingus didn't write many memorable melodies. Besides the pieces mentioned here we have Duke Ellington's Sound of Love, Orange Was the Color, Meditations, Haitian Fight Song, Eh's Flat Ah's Flat Too, Fables of Faubus, Moanin', Jelly Roll, Diane... That's an impressive body of work, to say the least, and in a wide range of idioms (he wasn't a one-trick pony).

More generally to this topic, I think ejp's comment (#5) on this thread nails it, along with valerie (#2) and jsngry (#14). It's not just being overlooked - even if the desire is there, the resources frequently are not.

These aren't the kinds of tunes that a bunch of guys can just get together and blow on. You need lots of ability and imagination from the players as well as lots of rehearsal and chemistry - something that isn't all that common, because we're usually listening to one-offs and pick-up groups. As ejp says, with Ellington you don't hear many recordings of the more intricate, "orchestral" works - A Tone Parallel to Harlem, Tourist Point of View, etc. And as far as Monk - there are endless performances of Straight No Chaser, Round Midnight and Blue Monk but far fewer of Gallop's Gallop or Brilliant Corners.

Guy

I agree with a lot of what you are saying, and if Mingus wasn't a Tin Pan Alley type composer, so what? He was Mingus and unique.

I don't happen to think he was really a melodist, at least not in a narrow sense. I brought this up, naturally reflective of my own biases, to address the question posed: why is Mingus not played that much---comparitive to the other people mentioned. The things I said are what I think, but if Mingus took the scenic route a lot in his writing, great. It fit his personality and worked for him. There's more than one way to skin a cat or write a composition and that's what makes life interesting.

The pieces you mentioned I can't conjure up just now, and I don't have the recordings. I'll listen again. I know Moanin' and Jelly Roll Soul show what a great bluesman Mingus was. In fact he had so many diverse things going on I think he had to write the way he did---sprawling and on big canvases. It's almost like an AABA form wasn't sufficient for all he wanted to say.

So he wasn't an aphorist or a 'short story writer'. Hemingway was great but so was Melville. And you can take your pick---or enjoy both for what they are.

[StarThrower]

How about the Mingus Big Band? I only have a few Mingus covers in my collection by the Either/Orchestra, Joni Mitchell, Mark Murphy, and Pentangle.

[rpklich]

I heard Mingus live a few times. His smaller bands had charts. There weren't too many "head" arrangements. The music is difficult. Thats why its not heard alot, with the exception of a few tunes.

[paul secor]

Listened to A Modern Jazz Symposium today. My feeling is that most of today's artists don't have the passion that's necessary to play Charles Mingus' compositions and have them sound like anything. And they don't have Mingus to push them to have that passion.

[flat5]

Not sure what you mean, Paul. Lots of players have passion.

I think 'Reincarnation Of A Lovebird' is underplayed.

[sgcim]

We used to play "Diane" a lot; without the introduction. It's just the same changes as "You Are the Sunburn on my Ass- I mean Sunshine of my Life" ; - ). A friend of mine said Mingus ripped off some things from Jack Walrath towards the end of his life.

Some of his tunes were so closely associated with Eric Dolphy, it just feels weird playing them without him- "Fables of Faubus, Folk Form #1, etc...

[Gheorghe]

about playing Mingus´compositions:

When I was young and a part time musician, we did "Cumbia & Jazz Fusion" for a while. Was quite an interesting experience with all those different mood´s in it, the first part with that call and response figure and the ostinato bass, the straight ahead part, the earthy two beat section in D flat with the vocals "who says Mama´s lil Baby likes Shortnin´Bread ? " and the fade out. Still remember it very well, even if this was a long time ago. We did it at clubs and people liked it.