CHARLES MINGUS
Music Written for Monterey 1965 Not Heard...
Played in its Entirety At UCLA
Sue
Mingus Music
Read
the Jazzitude review of Charles Mingus/Tijuana Moods
Read the Jazzitude review
of Charles Mingus/East Coasting
In 1964 Charles Mingus and his group played
the Monterey Jazz Festival in a performance that represented
a complete triumph for the composer and bandleader. The
group performed a lengthy Duke Ellington Medley as well
as two original Mingus compositions: “Orange Was the
Color of Her Dress, Then Blue Silk” and “Meditations
on Integration.” So enthused was Mingus by this performance
experience that he returned to Monterey in 1965 with an
ambitious agenda of original music that he planned to perform
with his octet. Unfortunately, due to time considerations,
Mingus’ set was reduced to a mere half hour, and most
of that music was never heard. Fortunately, the tapes were
rolling in September of ’65 when the group performed
much of the music prepared for Monterey at a UCLA concert.
Mingus’ own label pressed 200 two-record LP sets of
the performance, entitled Music Written for Monterey
1965 Not Heard…Played in its Entirety at UCLA,
then promptly ran out of money. In 1971 when Capitol studios
cleaned out its vaults, the master tapes were destroyed.
This new CD version is remastered from a mint condition
copy of the original LP, and has been supervised by Fred
Cohen and Mingus’ widow, Susan Mingus.
Mingus referred to his groups of the 1960s
as Jazz Workshops, and his concerts were more like dress
rehearsals than the performances most groups gave. Mingus
would stop and start the band, demonstrate what he wanted
them to play at the piano, shout exhortations and criticisms,
and generally give his audience insight into his creative
processes that most musicians would not feel comfortable
presenting. In her liner notes to this reissue, Sue Mingus
says: "It should be obvious that no established record
company at that time - or any other - would have released
a recording with so much dissension and so many irregularities.”
That’s certainly true. For after a couple of false
starts and an attempt to make his point at the piano on
his composition “Once Upon A Time There Was a Holding
Corporation Called Old America” he dismisses much
of the horn section of the band to rehearse, and carries
on with a quartet that plays “Ode to Bird and Dizzy,”
a kind of bebop medley that incorporates tunes such as “Hot
House” and “Night In Tuisia.”
The rest of the performance is largely solid,
though there are other rough spots as well. “Meditation
on Inner Peace” goes very well, save for near the
end when Mingus and drummer Danny Richmond enter too early.
Both “Ode to Bird and Dizzy” and Mingus’
arrangement of the traditional “Muskrat Ramble”
reflect his sense of jazz history, while his own compositions
give the sense of looking forward and take the audience
into the composer’s creative process. The beautiful
“They Trespass The Land of the Sacred Sioux”
is heard here for the first time. “Don’t Be
Afraid, the Clown’s Afraid Too,” a vehicle for
trumpeter Hobart Dotson, was heard in 1972 on Mingus’
album Let My Children Hear Music. So too was “Once
Upon A Time There Was a Holding Corporation,” which
was reborn on that album as “The Shoes of the Fisherman’s
Wife are Some Jive Ass Slippers.”
There are some good solos recorded here and
some very solid performances, as well as some that fall
short of the mark. This is not an essential Mingus disc
for the casual listener, but for those who are deeply interested
in Mingus’ work and the methods by which he worked
with his band, it’s a veritable goldmine.
