I still remember the first time I heard a Charles Mingus album; my “jazz tutor” Bob Carlton put on Mingus Ah Um, with the rollicking horns and bass of “Better Git It In Your Soul” just exciting my ears, preparing me for the agonizing “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat”. That first side of the album captured everything that was attractive about Mingus; the intensity, swing, tradition, volatility and shift of musical moods. After him, everyone else seemed tamed and sterile.
I got, absorbed and memorized all of his albums, and that’s what makes this three disc discovery by Resonance Records all the more worthwhile, as represents a Mingus period in transition and therefore forgotten and unrecorded. Recorded over a pair of nights in 1972 at Ronnie Scott’s famous London club, the album captures a band that was as exciting as it was transitory. Mingus’ heartbeat of a drummer, Dannie Richmond, had left to tour with the rock band Mark-Almond, but Roy Brooks more than adequately fills in, adding some energy and vigor that stimulates the leader. Alto saxist Charles McPherson is still around, but we now have trumpeter Jon Faddis, Bobby Jones on tenor sax and clarinet and John Foster holding down the piano. There are essentially only six songs here, (with two quick ditties as “out-tros”), so the band really stretches out, ranging from a concise seven minutes to a couple half hour marathons, with everyone getting a chance to show their wares on their own and in unison.
Mingus mixes older material like “Fables of Faubus” with relatively recent pieces from his albums Three Or Four Shades Of Blues as Brooks pulls out his saw and bows away with some earthy vocals by Foster on “Noddin’ Heard Blues”. Faddis sears over the pulse of “Orange Was the Color Of Her Dress…” as the rhythm team recreates the sensuality of “Ysidra’s Table Dance” with Jones howling on tenor sax. There’s a mix of bop and beyond on the wild ride of “Mind Reader’s Convention” with Foster and Faddis swinging hard while Brooks goes from deep grooves to avalanche cavalcades. Mingus himself mixes anger, angst and art with McPherson on “Fables of Faubus”, changing moods completely for a celebration of “Pops (AKA “When The Saints Go Marching In”)” with Jones’ clarinet joining with McPherson for a New Orleans shuffle. Mingus’s recent “The Man Who Never Sleeps” is a lazy blues that oozes melancholia , while the two closing snippets, “Ko Ko” and “Air Mail Special” reveal the marrow of Mingus’ mind.
It must have been something to see, as you can really feel the heat of this one. A missing chapter of Mingus’ War and Peace career.