Mingus, Mingus, Mingus, but two others

By Strings

I know pride precedes the fall as they say, but I can’t help but be a bit smug when it comes to pointing out two of my many favorite blasts from the past. “Let My Children Hear Music” [Columbia/Legacy CK 48910] and “Changes One” [Rhino R2 71403] are my two favorite Charles Mingus, even though neither contains my favorite Mingus tune “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat” (Mingus’ tribute to the late Lester Young). Why am I so smug? Well, because it seems that Mingus himself at one time named each his favorite album. (He might have said that about others, but for my purposes, I’m not even going to look into that!)

This is one of those “youdon’t- have-much-space-son” weeks so I’ll make this very short:

“Let My Children Hear Music” shows Mingus as more than just a great American jazz composer. It places Mingus in the ranks of great American composers—period!

It’s essentially an orchestral record arranged and conducted by Sy Johnson, which masterfully demonstrates Mingus’ power as a writer and how jazz can be a powerful orchestral form.

From the opening strains of “The Shoes of the Fisherman’s Wife Are Some Jive Ass Slippers” which opens with a quote from “The Old Rugged Cross” to the eerie Mingus-composed and recited poem “The Chill Death” which opens the song of the same name, to the closing wind-announced driving, slightly Latin-tinged closer “The I of Hurricane Sue,” written for his wife, this is jazz at its finest.

You get the best of big band sounds with brilliant individual solos that rival the best of those from the bop era. Like the aforementioned tracks, the titles are a trip too—“Adagio Ma Non Troppo,” “Don’t Be Afraid the Clown’s Afraid Too,” “Taurus in the Arena of Life” and “Hobo Ho” (check out the interplay of the bass and sax at the beginning) ‘Nuff said!

Oh well, I’m out of space, so I can’t say much about “Changes One” other than you need this record! It’s some of Mingus’ best small group writing, especially the closer, “Duke Ellington’s Sound of Love,” based partly on changes from Ellington’s Billy Strayhorn penned “Lush Life.” (I must admit, I do like the version on “Changes Two” a bit more some days thanks to the lovely vocals by Jackie Paris, but this one’s a killer!) Okay, done!

This is part of the October 21, 2009 online edition of Frost Illustrated.

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