This is my favorite Mingus recording. I love the unpredictable changes.

Along with "Mingus Presents Mingus", this has always been my favorite CM recording. Partially, I'm sure, because it was the first thing I ever heard of his back in the summer of '72. Absolutely knocked me out. Looking back on it now, one reason might have been my just-prior infatiation with Zappa's jazzier efforts, things like Waka Jawaka and Grand Wazoo (that may have appeared soon after, now that I think about it). Within a couple of years (I was 18), I found the FZ things to be pretty weak, but even then, hearing Mingus, I had the distinct inkling that this stuff was the real thing.

Listening to it nowadays, I still get a great feeling from it, perhaps tempered a bit by a few things: the knowledge of Sy Johnson's enormous input into the project somehow (ridiculously, maybe) reduces the Mingus-quotient in my head and blurs my appreciation slightly. Also the edits leap out at me much more than they did in my youth.

But Hobo Ho still rocks and Adagio Ma Non Troppo retains its delicate beauty. And the liner notes, I believe only fully available with the original LP, are just classic.

"Let my children hear music! You can do what you want with your own."

I've never heard this recording, yet consider myself a huge fan of Mingus music. I've been back and forth over the last few years on picking it up but never jump, thinking that they'll reissue it the day after I purchase it.

I never thought this was top-tier Mingus, I prefer almost everything from the 1959-1965 era.

to my ears, encountering his work after he'd passed on (so obviously from a different perspective at Walt and Brian), his seventies work (including the Changes discs) never quite recaptures that controlled wildness that he was such a master at creating in his small groups.

Yeah, listening as objectively as I can, I'd probably agree that things like Ah-Um or Wonderland are "better", but what can you do?

I also find myself in the apparent minority in feeling that the Changes records are cold and have a kind of glossy sheen to them that puts me off. Lotta people love 'em, though. Mingus Moves, however, is pretty bad....

I do think he recovered a bit with Cumbia:Jazz Fusion which, imho, holds up very well.

funny that this comes so close to the recent sun ra thread. but i will restrain myself. if you listen to some of the early mingus compositions from his school days (which bear a lot more resemblance to zappa) you can hear the album in question as a giant step evolution of where his orchestral imagination was headed. al, you should definitely hear it. it stands out among all the albums in a special way. i think there are moments where it is too sweet for me. but that is rather an accomplishment for someone who was pretty bitter by then. i still prefer the jazz workshop recordings over anything else (for me, all the jazz wkshop versions of pieces on ah um are much more driven, i think, especially with mingus singing and egging on in the background) but "let my children" always caught my attention in serious way. it has been years since i heard it. a tape of it surely exists in that box in south carolina. brian, can you sketch out the sy johnson involvement a bit more? the poem always did strike me as a young man's poem (must be a "man" when death is a woman? that's an extreme bias on my part perhaps) but the way it is used compositionally makes it perfect because i feel there is a certain kind of "ages of man" idea running through the record. it fits with the idea that there is no wasted experience. that the music and the life declared there would be a place for such a seemingly juvenile poem. btw, i found an original saturn record in athens two days ago. a steal at 18 euros. the other highlight was hearing jani christou's later works. i wanted to cut this into the feldman thread but does anyone have any affection for scriabin’s poem of ecstasy? this is a work my perceptions change toward over the years. at first i was overwhelmed. then the next times just thrilled. but a few years later I heard it and really could not understand my earlier reactions. I listened carefully for the sections i thought i knew i loved best and...nothing happened to me. a year later again: still, numbness. does anyone have a favorite recording of (or even dare to admit to listening to) that? sorry to tip off topic...

"brian, can you sketch out the sy johnson involvement a bit more?"

I'm going from memory here (a brief google didn't turn up much), but I've heard several interviews, with Johnson and others (probably on WKCR during their annual Mingus festival), about the LMCHM sessions. I think, as with Epitaph, the amount of written out music was minimal and/or sketchy so that Johnson essentially had to do the orchestrations, transcribe and elaborate from Mingus piano playing and occasionally had to write some connecting music, etc. He gets arranging credit on the disc for some pieces but, to hear him and some others tell it, it was in reality almost a split project. (Maybe analogize it, to an extent, with the Magic Band contributions to Trout Mask Replica). fwiw, I recall Jack Walrath saying pretty much the same things about the Changes sessions, i.e. that he had a lot more input into the arranging and the compositions themselves than Mingus would acknowledge.

Funny, I've never heard this one either; in fact I've never bothered with Mingus' output post-1968 or so. For me the top-tier Mingus is on Candid and, to a lesser degree, Impulse. I also dig "Pre-Bird" even though it's uneven. But Mingus seems to me the most uneven and problematic of all the "masters." In a good way! His output challenges the monolithic, unbroken-line jazz pantheon-paradigm... whatever that's supposed to mean.

I shouldn't try to post when I'm at work...gotta go

In answer to Jeff's question, I've never been a huge fan of Scriabin. I don't really dislike him, but often wonder what the excitement was about during his heyday. Maybe the lights.

Tom, I think you should hear LMCHM, regardless of the date of its creation. It's a really interesting record, different from all the other Mingus recordings I'm familiar with.

mingus used "mental score paper", right?

jimmy knepper's expressed experience (see town hall 1962) with mingus also jibes with the johnson and walrath stories. only jimmy seemed much more bitter about not getting his due.

for my bright copper pennie, this album is the last *great* mingus record. not least for some incredible alto soloing on the part of mr. charles mcpherson.

At least Johnson and Walrath didn't earn a blackjack across the kisser for their troubles!

Brian, are you sure it was the Changes records Jack Walrath made that comment about? I recall reading him saying that about the "Me, Myself and I" record.

I agree with you about the glossy sheen on the Changes records. I heard that band in clubs several times (Mingus with George Adams, Jack Walrath, Don Pullen, Dannie Richmond). It was an awesome band, and the music was great in performance, but the records didn't do either the band or the compositions justice.

Richard, as I said, I'm going from memory and those memories are likely more than 20 years old, but I distinctly recall a couple of radio interviews in which a pretty pissed-off sounding Walrath claimed he never got credit for things that included what he felt were basically rewrites of Mingus' material and I'm pretty sure it included the Changes sessions; I could be wrong, but that's my memory. At the time, it sounded to me like he might have been over-reaching (he kinda sounded pretty assholish), but who knows?

btw, I may as well recount this story here as well. Back around 1973-4, KCR did a Mingus festival and had the great man himself up in the studio for an interview. At one point, the DJ (Fred Seibert perhaps?) asked Mingus what he thought of electronic music in jazz. Paraphrase below:

"What do you mean?"

"Like, Sun Ra?"

"Who's he?"

"Umm....or like Miles"

"Miles who?"

"Uh...Miles Davis?"

"Miles Davis? He's dead, isn't he?"

"....no....?"

"Damn, I thought the cat was dead. You know, a couple years ago, I was walking past the Fillmore and saw a sign that said Miles Davis was playing, so I went in. There was some cat on-stage playing trumpet and he had, like, an electric CORD coming outta his trumpet! Now, I don't know who that was, but it wasn't Miles Davis!"

Thanks for the reply, Brian, and for that great story. Right at the moment I'm listening to NPR's Terry Gross do one of her wonderfully clueless interviews, with Paul Motian. She asks him about working with Monk. "Did you learn anything from Monk?" "No." "Uh, well, did he give you any tips or anything?" "No, man."

Motian did go on to tell a good Monk story. Gross doesn't really bother me, but she is way out of her depth.

I think this record is only OK by Mingus standards - the strings get in the way of it for me.

I'm with Djill: go Candid when you want to go Mingus and you can't go wrong.

I've been listening to the cheap 4CD box on Proper documenting early Mingus (late forties to early fifties) and while his basswork is nowhere near what I find myself naturally focussing on in the music, some of his early compsitions that folks like Lionel Hampton were willing to record appear to be as bright and deep as several several solar eclipses.

http://www.properdistribution.com/latest-releases/album-details.php?pg=5&id=305

Jeff G. - what box of tapes in south carolina? what part of south carolina?

thanks for replies, although i didnt get a poem of ecstasy reccomendation. i wont tell other stories abt how nasty cm could be. but instead also say i like his piano playing. and i think let my children hear music is a fine record, not really comparable to any others. unwrinkled, its not worth turning over the whole of charleston to find it. and no i aint from there. did you send out the land announcement to your friends? hope so, things is gettin lean over here. and believe me, you need to hear jani christou's late works

pish posh:

1. Antibes (esp. germane are Gburek's comments toward Mingus shouting and sweating in the aft), so many reasons why this is king

2. Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus

3. Black Saint (at a distant show price)

My favorite mingus lp sare "Right Now", "Blues and Roots" and " Black Saint and the Sinner Lady". The groups with Charles McPheason are also pretty amazing and over looked.
One of the important things about Mingus as a bassist is that techincally he is the first jazz bassist to play on the level of the great classical solo bassists such as Dragonetti (1700s- 1800s), Bottesinni (1800s) & Kousivitsky (1800s-1900s). Cecil Taylor told me that Mingus auditioned for
Kousivitsky when he was the conductor of the Boston symphony.
Mingus played Kousivisky's three solo works for double bass at the audition. Kousivitsky then said something like; "Mingus, you are the most virtuostic bass player I have ever heard, but your skin is not light enough." Meaning not for Kousivitsky, but the world at that time. Apparently Mingus was crushed by the experience. 20 years later or so Boston actually did hire the first African-American bassist to play in an American orchestra.
So, in a certain way Mingus is the first important jazz musician in the history of the double bass.

agreed

1. antibes
2. cm presents cm
3. the creme of trax from the atlantic lps . . .

oh, and that long track on "me, myself an eye" is pretty goddamn no-wave if you ask me.

word up.

ww

Schau, replace (3) with Mingus*5 and I'm there. I need my regular dose of 'Haitian Fight Song'

I can live with that. There's a great "Mood Indigo" on that as well. As good as it is I think Black Saint almost garners too much praise. I could also most certainly live w/WW's "best of" from the Atlantic period, all of those records are indispensable. At #4 give me Mingus Dynasty.

Mingus5 kills me, esp. the renamed "Pork Pie" (Theme for Lester Young) and the hell-for-leather "Hora Decubitus." (Which is a renamed...) As CM says, it's just about swinging, and those three superhuman solos in a row.

i'm a big fan of the short-lived and often tumultuous (lots of turnover at the piano bench) shafi hadi / clarence shaw bands myself... the bethlehem sides, tijuana moods.

but carving up mingus like this. eh. its a constellation, and they're all stars in the design after all.

Damon Smith : "So, in a certain way Mingus is the first important jazz musician in the history of the double bass."

I always thought Jimmy Blanton was the first not to play "doom doom" on bass, and so the first important jazz guy on bass ?!...

"Damon Smith : "So, in a certain way Mingus is the first important jazz musician in the history of the double bass."

I always thought Jimmy Blanton was the first not to play "doom "doom" on bass, and so the first important jazz guy on bass ?!.."

-In terms of jazz history there are a ton of important bass players before Mingus: Pops Foster, Wellman Braud, Red Callendar, Slam Stewart, Pettiford, Blanton, etc.
In terms of the history of the double bass, there were already virtuoso soloists dating back to the 1700s, Mingus was the first jazz bass player to not only play at the level of a classical soloist, but surpass it (for his time period at least).

So, Damon, if I get your point, Mingus is the first important double bass player in the jazz world by reference to classical standards, is that it ?

"In terms of jazz history there are a ton of important bass players before Mingus: Pops Foster, Wellman Braud, Red Callendar, Slam Stewart, Pettiford, Blanton, etc."

Let's not forget the great Steve Brown, a white bassist who was one of the few true musical "peers" of Bix Beiderbecke, and also one of the first New Orleaners to adopt the "slap-bass" playing style.

Let's not forget either John Kirby, another great, great bass player whose style developed prior to Blanton's.

Incidentally, did Mingus record much work with the bow, rather than pizzicato?

Some on the Red Norvo trio recordings.

Some on the Town Hall album.

I think parts of "Adagio Ma Non Troppo" from LMCHM feature Mingus' arco but it's hard to say for certain as, iirc, there were 5 or 6 other bassists on the session (Ron Carter, Milt Hinton and Richard Davis among them, I think).

There’s some spooky arco stylings on the Café Bohemia dates; I’m thinking of the “Drums” tracks w/ Roach, but I can’t recall if it’s over-dubbed cello there. As Reuben mentioned, several killer examples on the Norvo sides, specifically “Time and Tide” and “Prelude to a Kiss.” And of course, the rosin-evaporating fireworks of “Ysabel’s Table Dance” from New Tijuana Moods.

Some of his best arco is on "Right Now" on "Meditations". Also "Percussion Discussion" on the Charles Mingus Quintet + Max Roach. I believe there is some on "Mingus at Monterey" and "live at Antibes".
His tone and intonation is pretty remarkable considering he was using gut strings, which amoung other problems are much less accurate.

Has Sue Mingus finally reissued "Music Written for Monterey, Not Heard"? That's always been one of my favourites.

Thanks for the pointers--some instances I'd forgotten from albums I have, some albums I don't have. Hm, is there really arco on the Antibes album? I don't remember any....