Charles Mingus - East Coasting (1957)

Early Mingus with a small but perfectly-chosen group, and five top-notch compositions by the man himself topped off with a rendition of Memories Of You.  East Coasting is a gorgeous, accessible album, not least with Bill Evans behind the keys, and the mellow moments of this record are particularly enjoyable - the lengthy take of Celia is probably my highlight.  There are moments that cook and swing too, in the lengthy quick-slow arrangement of West Coast Ghost and the breezy title track.  Defintely deserves to be as celebrated as the better-known, major label entries in Mingus' catalogue.

link

pw: sgtg

Previously posted at SGTG:
Jazz Portraits: Mingus In Wonderland 
Oh Yeah

Tijuana Moods
The Black Saint And The Sinner Lady  
Mingus Plays Piano  
Let My Children Hear Music

Mingus Moves
Changes One & Two
Cumbia & Jazz Fusion
plus:  

The Quintet: Jazz At Massey Hall
Blue Moods  
Money Jungle  
BBC Proms Tribute by Metropole Orkest

Carla Bley - Escalator Over The Hill (1971)

A jazz-rock/Weill-esque opera/Indian-influenced avant-garde behemoth, complete on three LPs and later two CDs, four years in the making, from Carla Bley (composer), Paul Haines (librettist), and a cast of dozens of voices and musicians.  So much has been written about EOTH over the years that it's difficult to think what to add.  Perhaps the hundred-odd minutes of inspired insanity contained in this major labour of love are best just jumped straight in to, so here goes.

The thirteen-minute overture sits nicely alongside Bley's other work of the era in its dramatic, portentous sweep.  Then a swirl of "phantom" voices, tape effects and organ introduce the first characters, with Warhol star Viva acting as narrator throughout.  As an 'opera' (or rather, "chronotransduction"), Haines' text is so void of narrative logic it might as well be Einstein On The Beach - all that can be gleaned from the libretto is that it loosely concerns the inhabitants of a dilapidated hotel.  These include a couple named Ginger and David, who are voiced at certain points by a pre-solo fame Linda Ronstadt, and the singer from Manfred Mann who I grew up knowing as Uncle Jack.  Other voices include the musicians, such as Don Preston and Jack Bruce, as well as Bley/Mantler's daughter Karen Mantler making her debut on record, then about five years old.

The musical pieces then vary in length from under a minute to several, taking in more mind-blowing big band arrangements, small-group explosions with stinging lead guitar (check out John McLaughlin on Businessmen), gloomy piano with free-jazz skronk attacks, and more.  Eventually, the music reaches its absolute summit in the stretch corresponding to the third LP in the original box set.  A.I.R. (All India Radio) would soon be covered by Jan Garbarek among others; here it is in its original version.  The epic Rawalpindi Blues takes in more McLaughlin brilliance amid a coming together of the "Traveling Band" and the "Hotel Band", and if that wasn't enough, it gets a just-as-good nine minute coda.  One more short piece leads in to the stunning finale, which after eight and a half minutes (on record) ran into a lock-groove - on CD, this loop of humming drone plays out for nearly 19 minutes, then has a final snippet of calliope music as a 'hidden track'.  In a way, this is the ideal ending to a truly unique musical experience.

Disc 1 link

Disc 2 link

pw: sgtg

Carla Bley at SGTG:

A Genuine Tong Funeral

The Jazz Composer's Orchestra

Fleur Carnivore

Appearing Nightly

Trios

Gary Burton Quartet With Orchestra - A Genuine Tong Funeral (composed by Carla Bley) (1968)

Some classic Carla Bley this Friday and next, starting with "A dark opera without words... based on emotions towards death - from the most irreverent to those of deepest loss", as she described it.  Written between 1964 and 1967, Bley expanded the work with sections specifically for vibraphone quartet when Gary Burton expressed an interest in it.  Thus the final version came together as this enjoyably strange record, with members of the Jazz Composer's Orchestra supporting Burton's quartet.

With 15 tracks, several under a minute long, A Genuine Tong Funeral is a great insight into Bley's versatility as a composer as far back as the mid-60s.  The dirge-like themes that might be expected for such a weighty concept are just as likely to be sitting alongside jaunty, upbeat passages, or the occasional full-on blast of free jazz skronk towards the end.  Burton proves to be the ideal musician to front the project, giving its spindly complexity an accessible cool.  ECM's Dreams So Real from the following decade might be the deserved classic of 'Burton Plays Bley', but this ambitious little oddity is just as worthy of recommendation in its own right.

 

link

pw: sgtg

 

Gary Burton plays Carla Bley at SGTG:

Dreams So Real

Gary Burton at SGTG:

Gary Burton & Keith Jarrett

Fluid Rustle (Eberhard Weber)

Lyric Suite For Sextet (with Chick Corea) 

Carla Bley at SGTG:

The Jazz Composer's Orchestra

Fleur Carnivore

Appearing Nightly

Trios 

Charles Mingus - TIjuana Moods (rec. 1957, rel. 1962)

A nice bit of summery Mingus, inspired by a trip to Tijuana and recorded in July-August 1957, but due to contractual/financial complications the recording went unreleased by RCA until five years later.  After a swinging opener in Dizzy Moods, inspired by the titular figure's Woody 'N You, the music starts to take a more explicitly Mexican turn with the castanet-led Ysabel's Table Dance for an exhilarating ten minutes.  

 

The album's second half kicks off with the brief but complex Tijuana Gift Shop with its memorable ducking and weaving melody, then another lengthy track follows.  Los Mariachis features Mingus calling out the way through a bluesy introduction (which will be returned to), then more Latin-inflected melodies and rhythms fill out the subsequent sections to give another highlight to the album.  To close, we get a gorgeous rendition of Ted Grouya's jazz standard Flamingo.  A cracking early Mingus album that deserves to be just as celebrated as its better-known siblings.

link

pw: sgtg

Previously posted at SGTG:
Jazz Portraits: Mingus In Wonderland 
Oh Yeah  
The Black Saint And The Sinner Lady  
Mingus Plays Piano  
Let My Children Hear Music

Mingus Moves
Changes One & Two
Cumbia & Jazz Fusion
plus:  

The Quintet: Jazz At Massey Hall
Blue Moods  
Money Jungle  
BBC Proms Tribute by Metropole Orkest