Billboard : 03/21/1960
Three stars

Charlie Mingus gets a chance in this set to display some earthy, done home, churchy style of music, mainly cast in the blues form. Some of it is very exciting but a lot of it seems superficial in spite of the shouts and yells. Mingus, as usual, is superb on bass, and Jackie McLean and Pepper Adams come thru well, too. Best sides are Moanin’, Tensions and My Jelly Roll Soul. Mingus has been better represented on wax, altho this is an interesting set.

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Cashbox : 04/02/1960
Jazz Pick of the Week

Mingus appears to have found his groove at last. He demonstrated that in his last outing for Columbia and now for Atlantic he delves again into blues and church music derivatives. There is tension, excitement and a gripping urgency to the music here. Huge credit must be given drummer Dannie Richmond, whose rhythmic sense is amazing, and who fits exceedingly well into the Mingus pattern. On Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting Mingus has caught the gospel spirit in a rich setting. Other selections are Cryin’ Blues, My Jelly Roll Soul and E’s Flat and Ah’s Flat Too. Electrifying session.

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Roanoke Times
Arthur Hill : 05/14/1960
New Breed of Jazz Cats

Who would have thought that the center of the next growth cycle in jazz would hesitantly, almost secretly, settle on a 38-year-old Los Angeles bassist?

Yet, as I type these notes, I can only wonder that the genius of Charles Mingus has been overlooked for so long.

As I have mentioned before, it’s not his playing style, though it is unusually imaginative and tasteful, but his writing ability which points they way to that “new jazz” perpetually around the critic’s corner.

The time has passed when simple emotional appeals will suffice. Now the jaded jazz appetite needs new intellectual devices to strengthen the art form and restore its vigor.

There seems to be a slow shift toward “compositional compartmentalization” with Mingus, saxophonist Ornette Coleman and pianist Bill Evans in the forefront of that shift.

In explanation of my term here is what Mingus says:

“I’d write for a big sound by thinking out the form that each instrument as an individual is going to play in relation to ALL the others in the composition. In a big band form I’d like to hear as many lines going as there are musicians.

“This would replace the old hat system of passing the melody from section to section. I think it’s time to discard these tired arrangements.”

An almost textbook example of what Mingus is trying to illustrate occurs on Diane, a selection from Mingus Dynasty.

Identify in melody to Alice’s Wonderland, reviewed here some time ago, Diane is what Mingus calls “a melodic atonal composition.”

It is also one of the greatest jazz performances of all time, comparable in many respects to the work of a Charlie Parker or Lester Young, or, for that matter, early Louis Armstrong.

[Artist22464,Roland Hanna’s piano, Mingus on bowed bass, and Jerome Richardson‘s flute, provide an unusual and beautiful effect on the opening bars of the ballad.

The value of the composition is that it proceeds at a slow enough pace to allow some close study of Mingus’ methods. You can hear each instrument pursuing its own course and at the same time visualize their relationship to the whole composition.

The effect of this bit of Mingus in slow motion is a lyrical but non-cloying piece, written in no key or all keys as required by the atonal designation.

My only complaint is the use by Mingus of a descending sound pattern for the ending. He has used it so often before that it disturbs me to find it tagged on here to an otherwise excellent composition.

Also of value on the album are Song with Orange and Far Wells, Mill Valley. The latter is exhaustingly annotated in the liner notes.

While lacking the variety of the Columbia album, Blues and Roots offers further insight to the world of Charles Mingus.

As the title suggests, the album is conceived along primitive lines, real “soul” being the object.

The session is a fine one, too, particularly Mingus’ solo on Tension. There is a fantastic background for a Booker Ervin tenor sax solo provided by Mingus and, I believe, Mal Waldron, on Moanin’ (not the same selection as the Bobby Timmons composition).

And the aware for the most original jazz title so far this year has to go to Mingus for E’s Flat, Ah’s Flat Too.

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San Bernardino County Sun
Jim Angelo : 05/14/1960

A seeming paradox is this far-out and ultra-modern yet down-to-earth-and-blues-drenched session over by the amazing Mr. Mingus. The set was composed primarily as an answer to some critics who complained that the progressive Mingus “didn’t swing enough.” It’s an effective answer, too, a barrage of bluesy soul music that swings like crazy. The ensemble playing is effective and the solos are adventurous with Mingus’ powerful bass heard and felt throughout. Most devotees of the modern genre will like this one.

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San Francisco Chronicle
Ralph J. Gleason : 04/12/1960
Ugh! Agh! Oogh! And All That Jazz

To tell you the truth, I think it was Lionel Hampton who started it all. The grunting, I mean.

Hamp was the first jazz soloist I can remember who interspersed huge grunts, groans and exclamations on his solos.

Look what he started. Today anybody who’s not a horn player (and thus physically unable to grunt while playing) seems to feel it necessary to contribute a great deal of non-musical noise. Slam Stewart, with Hampton an early exponent of the voice as an instrument technique, at east tried to go along with the melody. Erroll Garner and Oscar Peterson, two more recent devotees of this form of self-expression, just do it, melody of no.

Now the more erudite jazz critics these days are fond of the idea of the jazz soloist encompassing the “human cry” in his solo. I don’t know how this can fit with tympani, but a lot of drummers seem to feel a few uhs and aahs help a lot.

Terry Gibbs and Chubby Jackson don’t grunt as much as they shout. A good roar of approval is supposed to make the solos better. A stout “YEAH!” in self-approval when a particularly nifty phrase is turned is not in bad taste.

You get it mostly in the personal appearances. Gibbs’ vocal contributions at the recent concert were at least the equal of his musical offerings.

But it is becoming more and more a part of records, too. Don’t take that LP back and complain about a bad recording. It may not be a turntable rumble, just a piano player humming (!) to himself.

Ornette Coleman gets such a human cry quality that sometimes in his solos you think there’s no horn. And Charlie Mingus gets so many ah ums going on you wonder why he bothers with an instrument. In fact, it won’t be long, I predict, before someone will make a jazz LP with only the voice and no instruments at all. A whole LP full of ughs and ahs and ums and ees and ohs and ahs. I don’t say it will sell, but it certainly will be different. Not so different as all that, though. Listen to a few of the recent releases!

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San Francisco Examiner
C.H. Garrigues : 07/31/1960
Is Jazz at the End of Its Rope or at a Crossroads?

(A review of Ah Um, Jazz Portraits, Blues and Roots, and Mingus Dynasty)

In recent years there has been an increasing uncertainty among jazz reviewers as to the future of jazz. Many of the most discerning and experience among them have expressed the view, that jazz is near the end of its rope, creatively. They maintain that little has been accomplished in the last decade except to colonize and cultivate the ground discovered and explored during the bop revolution of the early 40s.

Their view of the problem may be based upon a misconception: the idea that jazz must always be “going forward,” “advancing” into new areas, I am not sure this must be; I am not aware that either baseball or love have made any significant advances in the last two decades yet I cannot bring myself to believe either of these two considerable adjuncts to the enjoyment of life will cease to be practiced because of lack of novelty.

Nevertheless, jazz does face a problem which most critics and all thinking jazzmen are well aware: the problem of improvisation vs. the performance of written music. It is this problem which, I think, jazz has failed to solve.

Essentially, jazz is, almost by definition, improvised music – or music which is partially improved within a set pattern. Original New Orleans jazz was almost wholly “collectively improvised” with all the horns playing together within the pattern set by the rhythm section.

But as jazz progressed, collective improvisation has been almost wholly abandoned. The contemporary jazz performance consists of a series of solos, often almost wholly disconnected, in which everyone (even the bassist and the drummer) gets his chance to blow a stated number of bars whether he has anything to say or not. The result is that, more often than not, most of the blowing time is taken up by men who, adequate though they may be in many respects, have very little to communicate to their audience beyond the fact of their supposed virtuosity.

Perhaps the one jazzman out of the bop era who has most seriously attempted to transcend these limits is Charlie Mingus. For the last dozen years or so he has been struggling (on the stand and in the studio) with the problem – a problem which, for him, has been transformed into the problem of producing a jazz music as profoundly creative as the music of Beethoven or Bartók.

Essentially, Mingus (though he is undeniably the greatest of bassists) thinks of himself as a writer, a composer.

But since jazz can only be partially written (the notes can be written, the dynamics indicated, but there is no known notation for subtleties of inflection, of placement of accent, of rhythm, of the reorganization of the time span), the task of writing, as it confronts Mingus, involves not only the production of a written score, but the communication – endlessly over and over – to the musicians of the intent of the score. In this way each musician in the band tends to become an extension of the Mingus-self, rather than a fulfillment of his own self.

But jazz musicians are notoriously an individualistic lot; if a musician is asked to be some other self than his own, he is likely to decide that he’d as well be working in a studio job where the pay is steady.

And so Mingus’ task involves not merely writing the score, not merely teaching it to the musicians (he plays the various parts to them on the piano and works out on the stand the accents, inflections, nuances which cannot be notated) but also of finding capable musicians who are willing to become an apostolate for him. These are hard to find.

The records listed here constitute, individually and collectively a testament of how difficult has been Mingus’ task and how well or ill he has succeeded, during the last year, in accomplishing it. They are not, I think, records which will recommend themselves highly at first to the usual jazz fan, the hipster who last year dug Miles and this year digs “Cannonball” and next year will dig Ornette Coleman.

But they are records which, I think, must be taken into serious consideration by all serious enthusiasts who hope for jazz a more productive future than the endless repetition of repetitive solos by an endless succession of competent tenor players, alto players, trombone players, and trumpet players. (And they are also, I suspect, records which might be heard with profit by hardy souls among fans of modern classical music who have the fortitude to plunge into the very forefront, the most inexplicable area, of jazz and conquer it by their sheer courage.)

They are not, for all of that, records which I would unqualifiedly praise – even from the Mingus point of view. It seems to me that in his almost desperate need to communicate (and this through other selves than his own) Mingus has been forced to compromise. Unable to communicate the profound, and unwilling to communicate the banal, Mingus has been forced to content himself with the communication of the picturesque.

As a result of this, I believe, Mingus has tended increasingly in the last year, to fall back upon the use of vocal shouts and grunts as an essential part of the score, as well as the use of weird tremolos or “shakes” by the horns, and the composition of pieces which are essentially descriptive of places and times than musical.

Any criticism beyond these observations must be for me somewhat tentative. The earliest of the albums (Jazz Portraits) was received for review nearly a year ago and the others in the succeeding months. Despite countless playings, I have not reached the point where I get from them all that Mingus put in them.

A part of this reaction is due, quite frankly, to the inability to get past the vocal shouts and the tremolos. It has seemed to me that when musical communication breaks down the break cannot be healed with spoken words or shouts. Instrumental music must transcend the voice; it cannot be otherwise. (Even though Beethoven, when he had said all that could be said in the instrumental movements of the Ninth, turned then to the human voice for the “Hymn to Joy.”)

But, on other grounds, it seems to me that the task Mingus has set for himself is well nigh impossible. Were he a horn player, and so capable of direct and immediate communication with both his band and his audience, his task would be much easier. But the bass is not an instrument which can communicate in this way – not even in the hands of Mingus who handles it as deftly as though it were a guitar. And so he is compelled to speak with other men’s voices. And I am not certain this can be done in jazz.

Nevertheless, the problem which Mingus confronts is the problem which tomorrow’s jazz must solve. And it must solve it in somewhat the way Mingus has attacked it: by giving each soloist free blowing room but finding soloists who can blow meaningfully within the compositional forms, and intent, of the composer.

The Mingus direction thus becomes, I suspect, the most meaningful in jazz. The question of whether jazz is to continue to develop into an authentic art form or whether it is to revert to the status of a folk art, rigorously saved for posterity by a few, will depend very much on whether the Mingus problem can be solved.

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Down Beat : 05/26/1960
Don DeMichael : 4 stars

Outside of maybe Ornette Coleman, Mingus is producing the most provocative music in jazz. There’s little beauty as we know it in the Mingus philosophy; it abounds in anger; tension; sarcasm, and, above all, raw, naked emotion. The blatant minor seconds that are found throughout are like drops of acid. The wild, almost-cacophonic ensembles threaten to degenerate into chaos at any moment. I doubt if there are any aside from Mingus who completely understand his message; but despite everything, I get the feeling that this is vital and important music.

Mingus wrote all the music and is the driving force behind the performances. His shouts seem to stimulate the others and give the proceedings tent-meeting atmosphere. The Meeting track goes right to church music for its inspiration; it’s quite similar to Better Git It in Your Soul of the Mingus Ah Um album. Jelly-Roll Soul is the same as Jelly-Roll from that album.

McLean, Adams and Ervin come close to catching the Mingus approach, but only Mingus is completely one with his own spirit and compositions. He is outstanding in his solo work.

Whether you accept or reject this music or stand quizzically between these extremes as I do, you must admit that this is something worth careful and thorough listening.

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Liner Notes by Charles Mingus (as told to Diane Dorr-Dorynek)

My music is as varied as my feelings are, or the world is, and one composition or one kind of composition expresses only part or the total world of my music. In the notes for another album, I go into more detail as to why my pieces are so different from one another and don’t have one specific, unalleviated mood, sound or style. At a concert or night club I call tunes in an order that I feel is right for the particular situation and what I’m trying to say in that situation. Each composition builds from the previous one, and the succession of compositions creates the statement I’m trying to make at that moment. The greatness of jazz is that it is an art of the moment. It is so particularly through improvision, but also, in my music, through the successive relation of one composition to another.

This record is unusual – it presents only one part of my musical world, the blues. A year ago, Nesuhi Ertegun suggested that I record an entire album in the style of Haitian Fight Song (in Atlantic LP 1260), because some people, particularly critics, were saying I didn’t swing enough. He wanted to give them a barrage of soul music: churchy, blues, swinging, earthy. I thought it over. I was born swinging and clapped my hands in church as a little boy, but I’ve grown up and I like to do things other than just swing. But blues can do more than just swing. So I agreed.

I decided to memorize the compositions and then phrase them on the piano part by part to the musicians. I wanted them to learn the music so it would be in their ears, rather than on paper, so they’d play the compositional parts with as much spontaneity and soul as they’d play a solo. And I decided to use a larger group to play in a big band form I’d like to hear that has as many lines going as there are musicians. I called musicians that I knew had great ears for playing and understanding my music.

The first tune, Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting, is church music. I heard this as a child when I went to meetings with my mother. The congregation gives their testimonial before the Lord, they confess their sins and sing and should and do a little Holy Rolling. Some preachers cast out demons, they call their dialogue talking in tongues or talking unknown tongue (language that the Devil can’t understand). The solos are taken by John Handy, Willie Dennis, Artist4439,Horace Parlan], Booker Ervin and Dannie Richmond.

The Cryin’ Blues is a blues without the usual tonic, sub-dominant, tonic, dominant changes. Booker Ervin opens with the group. After the bass solo, Horace Parlan solos on piano, and Jackie McLean plays with the ensemble on the out chorus.

Some time before making this album I’d bought a book of Jelly Roll Morton tunes that I’d planned to arrange. I then misplaced the book, and later I wrote My Jelly Roll Soul – an impression of or afterthoughts on Jelly Roll’s forms and soul. The solos are by Jimmy Knepper, Horace Parlan, Jackie McLean and Dannie Richmond and I pass the progressions around in bars of four and two.

E’s Flat Ah’s Flat Too is composed in pyramid lines and canon form. The solos are by Mal Waldron, Booker Ervin and Horace Parlan.

In Moanin’, each musician plays separate lines, simple blues lines. The solos are by Jackie McLean, Pepper Adams and Booker Ervin.

We played down to earth and together, and I think this music has a tremendous amount of life and emotion.