Charles Mingus, Music Written for Monterey 1965,

[Lazaro Vega]

The double CD re-issued domestically on Sunnyside.

Hobart Dotson, trumpet

Lonnie Hillyer, trumpet

Jimmy Owens, flugelhorn/trumpet

Charles McPerson, alto saxophone

Julius Watkins, French horn

Howard Johnson, tuba

Mingus, bass/piano

Dannie Richmond, drums

[medjuck]

Hey I just ordered it from CD Universe (going through Organissimo Forums of course) and they just list it as "usually ships in 1-2 days" without mentioning a release date. Maybe they already have it in stock!! Let's hope.

[kh1958]

Hey I just ordered it from CD Universe (going through Organissimo Forums of course) and they just list it as "usually ships in 1-2 days" without mentioning a release date. Maybe they already have it in stock!! Let's hope.

I bought one at the Mingus Big Band performance at the Iridium last week.

[Lazaro Vega]

Is there another thread here about this release?

[ValerieB]

it takes my breath away to say/think/write it, but i was there!!! and it was my very first monterey jazz festival.

[Lazaro Vega]

Wow Valerie...Mingus says on this recording his Monterey set was all of 20 minutes, so this is music they had planned to play there but ran out of time. The first piece, Meditations on Intergration, would have filled their spot on the festival.

This release has a comfortable, rehearsal-like quality to it. A few false starts, some off mic banter with the crowd, and the crowd's laughter in response, but when it comes together, incredible music.

You're fortunate to have heard Mingus in his home state.

Edited September 22, 2006 by Lazaro Vega

[jazzbo]

Earlier thread:

http://www.organissimo.org/forum/index.php...=23132&st=0

[ValerieB]

Wow Valerie...Mingus says on this recording his Monterey set was all of 20 minutes, so this is music they had planned to play there but ran out of time. The first piece, Meditations on Intergration, would have filled their spot on the festival.

This release has a comfortable, rehearsal-like quality to it. A few false starts, some off mic banter with the crowd, and the crowd's laughter in response, but when it comes together, incredible music.

You're fortunate to have heard Mingus in his home state.

20 minutes?!? i sure don't remember it being anything but a full set which probably would have been 60-90 minutes.

i'm fortunate to have heard Mingus in Calif. but even more so to have heard him more times than i can count in NY!

[kh1958]

Wow Valerie...Mingus says on this recording his Monterey set was all of 20 minutes, so this is music they had planned to play there but ran out of time. The first piece, Meditations on Intergration, would have filled their spot on the festival.

This release has a comfortable, rehearsal-like quality to it. A few false starts, some off mic banter with the crowd, and the crowd's laughter in response, but when it comes together, incredible music.

You're fortunate to have heard Mingus in his home state.

20 minutes?!? i sure don't remember it being anything but a full set which probably would have been 60-90 minutes.

i'm fortunate to have heard Mingus in Calif. but even more so to have heard him more times than i can count in NY!

Were you at Monterey in 1964 (Mingus played a full set, released as Mingus at Monterey) or 1965 (a truncated set, allegedly provoked because Mingus was following the great performance by John Handy (Live at the Monterey Jazz Festival) and they supposedly left early playing When the Saints Are Marching In)?

[ValerieB]

actually, i'm pretty sure i was there both years.

[deadcoldfish]

Hey I just ordered it from CD Universe (going through Organissimo Forums of course) and they just list it as "usually ships in 1-2 days" without mentioning a release date. Maybe they already have it in stock!! Let's hope.

cduniverse sez: Street Date Sep 26, 2006

so they could have it in stock !!!

[DMP]

I saw this group at the Village Gate, in the summer of '64. Something else!!

[Claude]

For those who don't know the album or who want to check the sound quality:

The track "Don't Let It Happen Here" from the new CD can be downloaded on AAJ (it's a 160kbs MP3 file):

http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/jazzdownload.php?id=1651

[Kalo]

As a Hobart Dotson completist, I'm glad this has finally been issued legitimately.

[brownie]

As a Hobart Dotson completist, I'm glad this has finally been issued legitimately.

You mean the original double LP release on the Charles Mingus label was not legitimate?

[cannonball-addict]

Here is the official word from MingusMingusMingus.com (Sue Mingus' official website for all things Mingus). Note: it discusses both Music Written for Monterey Not Heard... Played in its Entirety at UCLA 1965 AND the concurrent release by the Mingus Big Band Live in Tokyo 2005:

Charles Mingus lives! Although the late composer and bassist passed in 1979, as we approach his 85th birthday year, the complex, passionate, and supremely personal compositional work lives on through the frequent performances and recordings of the bands his widow Sue Mingus has assembled - the Mingus Dynasty, the Mingus Big Band, the Mingus Orchestra, and the Epitaph Orchestra - and through upcoming releases of landmark Charles Mingus performances, available for the first time on CD. Two live recordings, Music Written for Monterey, 1965 Not Heard...Played Live in Its Entirety at UCLA and Live in Tokyo at the Blue Note, 2005 will be released simultaneously Sept. 26 on Sue Mingus Music, distributed by Sunnyside.

One documents the jazz giant in 1965; the other documents the big band that bears his name, forty years later. But more than mere historical documents, both provide a rare glimpse into the creative process of the maestro and composer, and the musicians that live and breathe new life into his music today. Music Written for Monterey, 1965 Not Heard...Played Live in Its Entirety at UCLA captures Mingus leading an octet performing at the University of California, Los Angeles. To expand the story of the title: Mingus had triumphantly performed at Monterey Jazz Festival in 1964, and returned the following year with a collection of difficult new material that he intended to debut there. However, Mingus' set was truncated to a half an hour, and most of the set list was scrapped. A week later he premiered and recorded the material at UCLA, which demonstrates in raw, you-are-there detail why Mingus liked to refer to his live shows as workshops, where he could continue to rehearse new material (not written down for the other musicians) until he was satisfied with the spirit and sound. That this "workshop" concert was also recorded opens a window on Mingus' creative process, and the listener is privy to the inner workings of the composer, his outward shouts and reprimands.

It is an unvarnished behind-the-scenes look at the struggle Charles Mingus sometimes faced in his efforts to get his demanding compositions performed. It includes musical confrontations on stage, the difficulties band members experienced with brand new music, his own furies and, ultimately, his refusal to edit out the warts, to tell it like it was. This fearless exposure of the creative process in all its contradictions had led earlier to his concept of the jazz workshops- performances on stage in which the trials and errors of creating music were presented to viewers, unedited. He also understood the fascination with "process" for an intelligent audience. "All these years I've been trying to promote Mingus the composer, and downplaying Charles the larger-than-life character," Sue laughs. "By putting this CD out, here I am playing right into that image of Charles. But what eventually transpires after the musical fist fights, extraordinary solos, hirings and firings and a feast of new composition - is musicians achieving incredible musical heights as they resolve their conflicts in the fire of the music."

Released by Mingus' own label forty years ago, Mingus pressed only 200 copies before he ran out of money, and then the masters were destroyed in 1971 when Capitol cleaned out its vaults. This two-disc CD was re-mastered from the original vinyl. (Sue Mingus and Fred Cohen also issued a limited edition version of the LP in 1984.) In the liner notes to At UCLA Sue writes, "It should be obvious that no established record company at that time, or any other, would have released a recording with so much dissension and so many irregularities. Mingus opted for the truth of the performance, and we witness not only the flaws and failures but the sheer joy as he shrieks his approval, encourages his drummer, exhorts his trumpet player and jumps from the piano chair to the bass and back in order to conduct his compositions."

Mingus's band included trumpeters Hobart Dotson, Lonnie Hillyer and Jimmy Owens; alto saxophonist Charles McPherson; French horn player Julius Watkins, tuba player Howard Johnson; drummer Dannie Richmond; and Mingus on bass. Tunes included "Meditation on Inner Peace," "Don't Be Afraid, the Clown's Afraid, Too," and "Once Upon a Time There Was a Holding Corporation Called Old America" (a later version was titled "The Shoes of the Fisherman's Wife Are Some Jive-ass Slippers"), and a rare opportunity to hear Mingus perform on otherwise unavailable compositions "They Trespass the Land of the Sacred Sioux," "Don't Let It Happen Here," and "The Arts of Tatum and Freddy Webster," and arrangements of "Muscrat Ramble" and a be-bop medley, "Ode to Bird and Dizzy."

--------------------------------------------

the best part of this set is when Mingus fires most of the band when they screw up "Once Upon a Time There Was a Holding Corporation Called Old America" and they attempt to play it twice before he calls the band back when they finally read it correctly the third time.

Hilarious! A must have!!!

[jazzbo]

As a Hobart Dotson completist, I'm glad this has finally been issued legitimately.

You mean the original double LP release on the Charles Mingus label was not legitimate?

Apparently ALL releases of this have been legitimate, the orginal lps, the reissue lps, and now the cds!

[medjuck]

OK I admit it: I can't hear/understand about haalf of what Mingus says. Is there a transcript anywhere? (Something like what Peter Losin does on his Miles discography.)

[kh1958]

From Dusty Groove upcoming releases:

Charles Mingus -- Charles Mingus In Paris -- The Complete America Recordings . . . CD . . . Late October, 2006

[Claude]

From Dusty Groove upcoming releases:

Charles Mingus -- Charles Mingus In Paris -- The Complete America Recordings . . . CD . . . Late October, 2006

Isn't that the same music as on the "Great Concert Of Charles Mingus" 2CD set, released by Universal in 2004? The Paris concerts from April 17 and 18, 1964. Or was that set incomplete?

http://www.cduniverse.com/productinfo.asp?...=lk_organissimo

http://www.jazzdisco.org/mingus/dis/c/

Edited October 6, 2006 by Claude

[brownie]

Claude, this should be the two albums Charles Mingus recorded in Paris for the French label America in November 1970.

The albums were 'Blue Bird' and 'Pithycanthropus Erectus'.

Mingus group had Eddie Preston, Charles McPherson, Bobby Jones, Jaki Byard and Dannie Richmond.

[sidewinder]

Here's the 'Blue Bird':

This one and 'Pithycanthropus' were also reissued in the USA on the Prestige 'Reincarnation of a Lovebird' twofer.

[Claude]

Thanks! This looks like an interesting reissue.

[king ubu]

Those are the two albums with Bobby Jones, right? I love his "Hill Country Suite" on Enja a lot (just trio, with Freddie Waits!).

[jazzbo]

Yes, with Bobby Jones. . .I like that Enja too and he did great work with Charles.