From the archives
Geoffrey Smith on a CD set that captures the brilliant bassist Charles Mingus in his spontaneous prime
A Charles Mingus gig was unlike any other.
The bassist’s massive, passionate, turbulent personality held sway over the proceedings, sometimes hectoring both musicians and listeners, but always creating the unique musical effect he called ‘spontaneous composition’. Mingus led his bands through his potent, complex originals almost as if they were encountering the pieces for the first time, so that improvisation and composition grew out of each other, forming an organic whole in the surging energy of the moment.
That blend of spontaneity and structure lies at the heart of jazz, and Mingus was one of the few composer/leaders who could make it the essence of his performance. Which is what gives the newly released five-cd set Mingus: Jazz in Detroit
(BBE 453ACD) its particular excitement. Recorded in 1973 at a combination club, gallery and community centre in the Motor
City, this handsome, scrupulously produced and documented box enshrines the authentic Mingus experience: two extended live sets by his quintet just as you would have heard it in his prime.
The programme is vintage Mingus, too. Beginning with his seminal opus ‘Pithecanthropus Erectus’, it comprises three other major works – ‘Peggy’s Blue Skylight’, ‘Celia’ and ‘Orange was the Color of Her Dress, Then Blue Silk’ – two rarities (including a waltz, ‘Dizzy Profile’) and two blues. Quarrying the possibilities of this rich musical mix are a team of Mingus associates ranging from able to inspired: trumpeter Joe Gardner, tenorist John Stubblefield, pianist Don Pullen and drummer Roy Brooks respond wholeheartedly to the intense, romantic, yearning, kaleidoscopic world of Mingus’s imagination.
There was no place like it in jazz, and it’s a thrill to visit it anew in these discs. And for me, the greatest thrill is the climactic ‘Noddin’ Ya Head Blues’, which unrolls its slow, insinuating groove for almost half an hour, crowned by a stunning ten-minute piano solo by Don Pullen, with Mingus beside him all the way, showing that his jazz roots go very, very deep.
The greatest jazz players and their music are explored in Geoffrey Smith’s Jazz, a weekly programme broadcast on Saturdays from 12am-1am