Metronome
Bill Coss : April, 1955
LP Rating: B+

This LP, the best Mingus has done, is not for secularists or for those unaccustomed to direct, unsubtle thinking whatever the dress. Heart is a wonderful example of such a statement. (No doubt about the award’s reason.) 2 and 5 are more-or-less spontaneous improvisation, 5 based on All the Things You Are, with the form evolving from one musician’s sensitivity to the rest. (John LaPorta and Mingus get closest together on side 5.) Sides 4 and 6 are exercises in counterpoint, purposely utilizing standards for graphic example. (Contrary to the notes, it’s an alto that carries the Body.) Eulogy is church music, everyone a wailer, with LaPorta the most eloquent deacon. The rating, then, is relative to my belief that higher ones should be saved for sides like Eulogy. But dig the horn-like Mingus, especially on sides 4 and 6. Space alone forbids a more thorough review, but everyone excels.

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Down Beat : 03/09/1955
Nat Hentoff : 3 stars

Charlie Mingus is accompanied in this collection of his originals and arrangements by John LaPorta (clarinet and alto) ; Teo Macero (baritone and tenor); George Barrow (baritone and tenor); and Nichois (drums), and Mal Waldron (piano). They provide him with the necessary careful and skilled support, because these are not easy works to play, just as they are not all easy to assimilate at a first or second hearing. After several listenings, there are still sections of each piece that seem to be trying so hard to come complexly alive that they remain made of manuscript, but the feeling of each comes through and, so too I believe, does the intent.

Mingus’ main difficulty at present is that he occasionally mistakes the complex for the meaningful and forgets there are places where simplicity is a good deal more telling than any amount of straining at the bounds of the acceptedly “consonant.” There are other times, of course, when it’s essential to be “dissonant.” It takes experimentation and growing, however, to know where and why both the simple and the farther out fit in, and this LP is part of Mingus’ growth.

The important thing is that unlike his occasional composer associate, Macero, there is real feeling behind Mingus’ writing, and he has many years of jazz apprenticeship so that there is always a vitality in his work, even in the parts that sound forced (Tea for Two and Body and Soul strike me as the least effective because they’re the most didactic).

I’d recommend your listening to the LP, and more than once. You may not like it, but it will indicate to you one man’s way of moving further into the possibilities of jazz, and it’s an honest way, whether it fully works out yet or not. Good notes by Mingus.

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Liner Notes by Charles Mingus

GREGARIAN CHANT and GETTING TOGETHER are new innovations on an old idea. I played this type of head arrangement as far back as 1946 at the Down Beat Club in Los Angeles with a combo called “Stars of Swing” which included such musicians as Buddy Collette, Britt Woodman and Lucky Thompson. I feel that this style of playing is actually the sincerest method of musical expression, but it is usually impossible to attempt such “delicacies” with musicians who do not enjoy the unusual freedom or understand the thought of the leading instrument. Teo, John, George, Rudy and Mal, of course, are just as responsible as I am for the final construction. My intention was to keep the composition (or compositions, really) as tonal as possible. The several lines make it complicated enough for this initial presentation. Since I don’t believe that such music can be classified as “atonal” or “weird music” (as atonal is often classified), I would identify it as “a little beyond the elementary.” If and when these present constructions are accepted, I will venture to delve a little more into the so-called dissonance of free form improvisation—which one may then label “atonal.” However, I wish to think of it as the way I feel, or rather, the way we feel—nor weird, different, or atonal—just music I hear and would like an audience to hear.

PURPLE HEART on the other hand is frankly elementary. I wrote it as simply as possible for Miles Davis to record with baritone, bass and drums only. Although simple, it has a continued thought from beginning to end.

EULOGY FOR RUDY was written as a tribute to the late Rudy Williams, a fine musician and tenor man and integral part of the much-praised Savoy Sultans of a few years back, whose untimely death by drowning last summer deserves more than passing notice. Like PURPLE HEART, the arrangement is written around my own personal feelings on the subject at hand which, of course, may be obscure to the listener but there are some clues—such as the inclusion of part of “Cabin in the Sky” behind Teo’s mournful solo.

TEA FOR TWO was written to show that it is easy to listen to several lines at once—especially in this case where all the lines are already familiar to the listener. Since all the melodies used were based on the chords of TEA FOR TWO. I used this one title, but you can hear Body and Soul, Perdido, and even Prisoner of Love if you listen closely. The results are simply counterpoint-one, -two, three, and -four.

BODY AND SOUL. Here again I used a counterpoint melody—You Can’t Take That Away From Me on tenor opposed to BODY AND SOUL on clarinet, with the baritone using about the same form as the tenor except that his line descends to more or less basic organ point.