Beset with personal and professional difficulties from the 1960s on,
Charles Mingus' fortunes turned in 1970. He assembled a new band and began recording -- the seminal
Let My Children Hear Music -- and touring again. Beneath the Underdog, his long-awaited autobiography, was published in 1971 to rapturous acclaim. The sextet for the recoding -- veteran saxophonists
Charles McPherson and Bobby Jones, pianist John Foster, drummer
Roy Brooks, and 19-year-old trumpeter
Jon Faddis -- were booked at Ronnie Scott's for two-and-a-half weeks during a summer European tour. The last two nights were professionally recorded by a mobile unit.
Mingus also cut a couple of edits and packaged them with the concert tapes, which have been discreetly spliced in. In 1973,
Columbia dropped all its jazz artists (except
Miles Davis) from its roster, leaving these tapes to rot in a vault for 50 years. They have been painstakingly restored to full fidelity by
George Klabin and Fran Gala. The physical package, released on
Mingus' 100th birthday, underscores this release's historic import. Its large booklet contains biographer Brian Priestly's excellent historical essay plus 1972 interviews with
Mingus and
McPherson. Producer
Zev Feldman interviews
Sue Mingus,
McPherson, Fran Lebowitz,
Christian McBride,
Eddie Gomez, and Mary Scott,
Ronnie's widow. Rare photos are also included.
This band captures
Mingus' '70s aesthetic perfectly. The epic-length opener "Orange Was the Color of Her Dress, Then Silk Blues" melds gutbucket party music to gospel with panoramic colors, dynamic textures, and exploratory improvisation. Foster repeatedly engages "Ysabel's Table Dance" from
Tijuana Moods, while the bassist is in excellent interplay with
McPherson and Jones, foreshadowing a later version on 1975's
Changes Two. The 20-minute "Noddin' Ya' Head Blues" commences with a bracing, four-minute unaccompanied solo from
Mingus. There is blues shouting from Foster, a dizzying, high-pitched solo from
Faddis, and a soaring exchange between the pianist, the bassist, and
Brooks' musical saw. "Mind Reader's Convention in Milano" travels across modalities connecting blues to North African and Latin musics.
Brooks delivers a dazzling drum solo before its cacophonous hard-swinging conclusion. "Fables of Faubus" reflects
Mingus' journey into modernism without forsaking bop's rhythmic advances or the influence of
Ellington's elegant harmonic invention. The bassist's conversations with his sidemen lead to a long, winding solo adorned with fine arco playing. The salute to
Louis Armstrong on "Pops (When the Saints Go Marching In)" finds Foster imitating the trumpeter's gruff singing voice as the sextet expand the margins of the root tune with alacrity and humor, while Jones delivers a killer clarinet break and
Faddis' solo reveals a debt to NOLA's jazz tradition. "The Man Who Never Sleeps" is introduced by the trumpeter's dirtiest, loosest -- and arguably most soulful -- playing. The saxophone solos are comped wonderfully by Foster, as
Brooks breaks and double-times with enthusiastic swing. The set closes with a brief, athletic, modernist read of
Benny Goodman's and
Charlie Christian's "Air Mail Special." While
The Lost Album wasn't actually missing, it was abandoned to history on a dusty shelf. Thankfully, it's been resurrected to cast favorable light on
Mingus' creative renaissance. ~ Thom Jurek