mingus for morons
When it comes to jazz, pretty much everything I know is bullshit. I traffic in half-truths and shallow assertions and hope that no one ever asks a followup (if they do, I’m all ears no mouth). If I’m completely honest with myself — and I’m doing my best to be — then I must admit that only three jazz albums have meant anything to me in the same way that, say, Pavement or Neil Young has: the soundtrack to Robert Altman’s Kansas City (’20s/’30s jazz comp that I loved in college), Thelonious Monk’s Alone in San Francisco and Charles Mingus‘ The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady. I’ve dabbled and flirted with Miles and Ornette and Sonny and Dizzy and all the rest, but it’s never been love at first, second, third or fourth sight.
That’s the big preamble, the advance apology to all of the experts as the dilettante comes staggering in. Here I am today deigning to write about Charles Mingus of all people. I mean, honestly, WTF? But as I’ve thought about this over the past few weeks, I’ve felt less sheepish about stepping out here. Surely there are others whose ventures into jazz have been similarly high on gesture and low on return, and who would like to hear a complete and utter idiot talk about what they’ve found to connect with? Just maybe?
Let’s start with this, then: holy shit do I love Charles Mingus. I can’t tell you what kind of jazz he makes (bop? post-bop?)(I am declaring this whole post free of any crib-note Wiki/AMG research. Scout’s honor. That’s the faker’s guide, and this is all about honesty.) — and certainly it varies by album — but it’s incredibly vibrant, even when it sounds really sad.
That’s my favorite part, how mood and instrumentation and arrangements are divorced from each other, how even when the music is cheerful in tone (trumpet = positive for the most part in my idiot worldview) there’s this kinda resigned mood that it always falls back on. It’s like fake-laughter: you can guffaw like a fucking laugh track but in two seconds you know if it’s genuine. He can be romantic and beautiful and wistful and audacious and sly and cunning and a million other things, but happy not so much.
I get a lot of that from the two Mingus recordings that I spend most of my time with:
1. The Black Saint and Sinner Lady
2. “Original Faubus Fables” from Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus
I realize that Ah Um is the highly regarded one, and a month or two back I decided to finally spend some time with it after feeling a bit like I had fallen in love with the wrong woman due to its universal admiration. And yes it’s good (as much as I know what that term even means in this context) and yes there are parts I like very, very much, but in comparison to the two pieces I just mentioned, Ah Um mostly seems to benefit from really good titling. The album title is memorable and the song names are great: “Pussy Cat Dues,” “Self-Portrait in Three Colors,” “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat,” etc. It just sounds like a classic jazz album, you know? Very evocative.
Anyway, I am hardly qualified to speak more broadly on this (I have no idea when any of these records came out or even their relationship with each other, and will only learn as much once I’m finished with this, keeping with the no-cheating policy), but I wanted to put just a bit of context in before I talk directly about the Mingus works that I’ve connected with.
I spend most of my time with the Black Saint record. (Its become one of my most-listened to records, period.) It has this interesting post-music feel to it. It’s its own language, evolved from the music that you and I know but extrapolated into bits and smaller bits that are reassembled in a constant stream. It’s like watching a Twitter feed of notes: this comes next because it comes next and it all just spirals out from there, whatever narratives that develop partially figments of our imagination and entirely a demonstration of the talent level of the players. Or, to put it even simpler, it just *flows*.
Black Saint has a handy structure. The first piece (am I allowed to call them songs?) is called “Solo Dancer,” the second “Duet Solo Dancers,” the third “Group Dancers” and the fourth and final piece “Trio and Group Dancers” (it is also bananas). Musically these titles are very descriptive; even I can understand the logic: the album builds from simple to complex as the record goes on, with themes coming back throughout. (BTW isn’t that just a great structure for a record in general? Why don’t more people do this anymore?)
Black Saint is considered a “Latin” Mingus record, and best I can tell it’s because of a finger-picked flamenco guitar part in “Trio and Group Dancers,” which serves as a bit of a warmup to the big twelve-minute expansion with hints of mariachi and this insanely interesting structure where measure-by-measure the pace quickens — some instruments more than others — and it all kinda collapses into itself, this big implosion, and then back comes the stately, refined piano motif — untempered by a trumpet howl — that winks at modernism (so says I) and then locks into an elliptical flutter of a horn line that’s catchier than anything I know what to do with. (It kinda sounds like Vince Guaraldi.)
I don’t feel like I’m doing this record justice, but it’s this perfectly encapsulated thing, its four sections perfect quadrants, each touching a different mood and all of them, ultimately, something that feels a lot like falling in love, that “oh well let’s go for it” feeling of committing to an imagined life, a conscious devotion that feels permanent but, as this love moves on and the next comes along, is ultimately temporal. So I guess what I’m saying is that it’s unsentimental in the best possible way. It has seen it all and knows the score but just can’t help wanting to get swayed by that feeling once again.
Where Black Saint feels like the impulsiveness of being all-heart and no-brain, “Original Flaubus Fables” is pure playground, a goofy, show-offy thing that’s incredibly endearing.
The refrain is a familiar one, a nine-note trombone flirtation that I feel like I’ve heard a million times. And so this particular performance starts off pretty straight, leaning hard on the hook but with a low-in-the-mix male voice pantomiming the horn refrain, its tone casual and conversational. It’s also disarmingly political. We get our first political injection before the song begins, the vocal (Is it Mingus or someone else?) opening: “Oh lord don’t let them kill us/ Oh lord don’t let them stab us/ Oh lord, don’t let them bother us/ Oh lord no more swastikas,” and then it flirtatiously shimmies into the piece. Later the vocal returns: “Oh I am made so sick/ And ridiculous/ Two four six eight/ They’ll brainwash and teach you hate.”
As “Original Flaubus Fables” continues over its nine minutes, it devolves. It shifts into what I will stupidly call “free jazz,” by which I mean a whole lotta caterwauling. And just as it loses its thread in a long devolvement, up the theme pops again, and it bounces around like that for a while before finally stopping because, well, it seems a bit exhausted.
I’m downloading more and more Mingus, looking for more records to like, and so far I’ve enjoyed Town Hall Concert and At UCLA 1965 quite a bit. I’ve also been listening to Bitches Brew a lot (growing on me) and Lester Bowie’s The 5th Power (a great recommendation from a while back).
What I’d like to leave with is a request for recommendations, and also to hear from people about records they feel no compunction being morons about — you engage with it despite being largely illiterate of its history and context, and in fact that’s become part of the charm. Those records are the best.
Thanks for reminding Mingus!
And good luck at Kickstarter – great site!
For a bunch of “half-truths and shallow assertions,” this was quite a good read — kudos!
Faubus, by the way refers to Orval Faubus, the segregationist Arkansas governor. I like that it’s tone is more mocking than strident, at least musically. Columbia wouldn’t let him sing the lyrics when he recorded the song for Ah Um.
I recommend Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus, which is also from his Impulse years. “II B.S.” just plain rocks, and he also reworks a few familiar compositions (“Better Git It in Your Soul,” “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat”).
“you engage with it despite being largely illiterate of its history and context, and in fact that’s become part of the charm.”
every metal record ever that I’ve ever liked would fit nicely under this banner. I might have to do a few “____ for morons” posts, as I am a rich mine of ignorant opinions.
I’ve got a slightly larger jazz library, though like you I’m not well-versed in the genre as a whole. My first love is Thelonious Monk. I find him a very ‘indie’ artist in that his playing style is completely wrong by general standards — he’s always hitting these unexpected notes that seem like mistakes by any normal melodic rules, except that they all work brilliantly once you re-focus your ears a little bit.
I haven’t heard much Mingus at all … I’ll have to give a listen to your recommendations. Thanks!
You end with a request “to hear from people about records they feel no compunction being morons about — you engage with it despite being largely illiterate of its history and context, and in fact that’s become part of the charm. Those records are the best.”
While it is axiomatic that one need not know ALL the back story [e.g., need not have studied history of art or history of music or whatever) to just enjoy the art, I must disagree that knowing nothing — “being illiterate of its history and context” in your words — somehow means “those records are the best.” Huh? What are you saying ?
That it is better to be uninformed, unaware, & inexperienced, better to be a tabula rasa who hears music in a vacuum devoid of any personal, social or cultural backdrop against which you might enjoy even more what the music evokes and often refers to?
I could say it’s just utter idiocy and that I’m stunned at those who agree with this assertion, as if this self-indulgent philistinism somehow empowers you to be better listeners, or to appreciate more freely what the music is built upon. But I won’t go that far…
Like many fans, critics, scholars & others, I strongly believe that learning more about a composer, a performer, or a genre, if only by just repeatedly listening, is a really good way to grow in appreciation of what the music can be and can achieve. I have seen many naive listeners grow enormously in their appreciation & enjoyment of jazz by just learning a bit about the piece, the composer, the performers, or about other parallel, related or contiguous performances & traditions.
Jazz can be challenging, intellectually & aurally, because in jazz more than in any other art form the confluence of tradition and creation invites you, the listener, to interact more than just digging the groove at an elementary rhythmic, melodic or harmonic first glance. Jazz musicians (and other improvisers) are the only artists who actually create anew their art in performance by rebuilding, reforming, reshaping, reinventing & thus re-creating the very stuff of their art form.
So, no, you need not know all about scales & chord progressions, or even recognize the standards, to get some enjoyment. BUT you will enjoy it a LOT more if you have a little more understanding of what it’s all about when you hear it. That enlightened, or at least semi-educated, listening is truly the best.
there’s something magic about “getting” a recording before you actually know anything about it. then the process of learning is really something more like remembering, as if you caught all the connections in an unconscious glance and then later had to piece it all back together, like interpreting a dream. for instance: my knowledge of jazz is for shit, but I know Wes Montgomery is the shit, and one day I’ll understand the contexts and comparisons, and, of course, appreciate his records even more.
adam that was very, very well put
Yancey, If you want to check out some more jazz, try starting off Duke Ellington’s “Blue Pepper” off the far east suite album–it’s from around 1966. That song cannot be denied. Cab Calloway is another cotton clubber whose early work (early 1930s) is pretty fun and he has a fairly deep stash of happy prohibition era songs that are about falling in love with strippers and smoking opium. Everybody knows “Minnie the Moocher” but try “I learned about love from her” or “The lady with the fan.” (note: it helps to know that “kicking the gong around” was slang for smoking opium) A couple others in no particular order: Rahsaan Roland Kirk. He was a little gimmicky in that he would play multiple wind instruments at once and went to the trouble of learning circular breathing to pull off some crazy stunts, but he was weird enough and talented enough that it didn’t overshadow the music. You’re likely already familiar with some of his stuff from movie soundtracks and from being sampled. Finally, you’ve likely heard of John Zorn, but if you are coming to jazz from rock, you may want to check out his first Naked City (1990) album as a starting point. It alternates between cheesy and brutal noise and is best seen as a study in contrasts, or perhaps as jazz channel surfing. Among living artists, a lot of stuff that Bill Frisell plays on (like naked city) tends to be good. For instance, the first ginger baker trio album is an easy one to get into. Sun Ra from the 60s is a good thing as well. I don’t know much current stuff that is going on though.
Thanks for giving it to us straight. As a jazz fan, I got here through Mingus. I loved rock music, then it got heavier and heavier for me, getting into metal. Then, one day in grad school, I heard this frantic “boom boom boom” of a bass line and what sounded like call and response gospel, Dixieland, and frantic happy horns all mixed into one. I left my girlfriend in that spot outside a pub and went inside to listen to the rest of the song (the funny thing I realized later was that there was a three dollar cover, but when I strolled past the bouncer muttering “I just have to hear the rest of that song,” instead of beating me to a pulp, he just stopped, stared, then smiled at me), which was “Better Git It In Your Soul” by Mingus. Twenty years later, it’s still one of my top five favorite pieces of music and I’ve gotten some 500 jazz cd’s via legitimate ways and also by hook and by crook. It just shows what Duke Ellington said before that “there are two types of music…there’s the good kind…and the other kind.” Like said earlier, there’s something to connecting with a piece of music for whatever reason; the other academic connections or whatnot can come later. Mingus is one of my Holy Jazz trinity along with Miles Davis and John Coltrane. But it’s not because they “should” be; it’s just because they “are.” Thanks for sharing.