American Record Guide
Martin Williamson : March, 1958

Mingus has no fear of originality. A colleague has justly called Jimmy Knepper the first original trombonist J.J. Johnson, and, like Mingus, he knows how to handle lyricism without double-time embarrassment. His fluent reed-man Curtis Porter uses excitingly individual motifs (but is not so cohesive a soloist as he undoubtedly will be). It is fine to hear Clarence Shaw reviving “growl” trumpet in this context. Probably Mingus will have to live for a while under the shadow of his achievements on his two Atlantic LPs. At any rate, although there are signs of a healthy assimilation and balance in conception throughout here, only Fifty-first Street Blues seems to meet the high standards set on these recitals.

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Audio
Charles A. Robertson : April, 1958

The Charles Mingus Jazz Workshop offers a challenge to the jazz musician and its leader has experience no trouble in finding top men for his studio dates. During the past year he had the good fortune to form a small cohesive group and work over his writing with it in public performance before recording. It was a constructive period in which his ideas were tightened or expanded, and the results are conveyed here with the vigor and emotion that comes from complete understanding. Most productive in his association with Fred Knepper, a young trombonist who, as Mingus notes, “is all eras on that instrument.” In the course of exploring his horn with the curiosity and inventiveness of the New Orleans men, plus the added knowledge of the more advance modernists, he recognizes no limitations – a point of view also somewhat of a watchword for Mingus in his bass playing and composing.

Only Memories of You, a showcase for the muted trumpet of Clarence Shaw, is not by Mingus, and is five originals comprise retrospective examinations of his two homes in East Coasting and West Coast Ghost. Celia is named for his wife, and Conversation is marked by the quick conception of pianist Bill Evans. Under the Mingus wing, drummer Dannie Richmond, as he indicates on 51st St. Blues, and Shafi Hadi on alto and tenor sax are developing the competence gained in rhythm and blues into the creative impulse required in jazz.

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Billboard : 12/23/1957
Score of 79

Set holds wide appeal in that it is simultaneously adventurous and accessible. Mingus gives evidence of talent for writing integrated, individual jazz compositions well rooted in jazz tradition. Soloists have ample room to spread out, and pianist B. Evans, trombonist J. Knepper, trumpeter C. Shaw, and bassist Mingus are heard to advantage. Should be equally appealing to “mainstream” or more modern buyer. Try West Coasting or Celia as demo bands

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High Fidelity
John S. Wilson : February 1958

The musical turmoil that roars and sputters inside Charlie Mingus frequently has wound up in his past recordings as shock-implemented chaos, obscuring rather than illuminating his thinking. Here for the first time the strong flavor of Mingus is preserved over two sides of a disc with consistent clarity and control. This is an important disc not only because it brings an original jazz mind into focus, but also because it gives Mingus’ trombonist, Jimmy Knepper, a proper presentation. Here Knepper demonstrates his unique way of moaning with agonized soulfulness behind a soloist and his beautifully lyrical playing on his own solos. To my ear, he is the warmest, most thoroughly jazz-rooted, and most interesting trombonist to appear since Jack Teagarden. This disc is a landmark both for Mingus and for jazz.

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Kansas City Call
Albert Anderson : 01/31/1958

Want to go East Coasting with a West Coast guy?

Then you had better get Charlie Mingus‘ latest recording for Bethlehem records, titled East Coasting With Charlie Mingus.

The LP album will certainly take you on a musical stroll with the star West Coast bassist, whose swinging entreaties are sure to make your imaginary journey entrancing.

East Coasting is not Mingus’ first jazz album as a front man, but it is certainly his finest. With a repertoire that mixes the old with the new, the album matches almost any other contemporary work on market. It also introduces some fine sidemen – trombonist Jimmy Knepper, whose own album, Introducing Jimmy Knepper, is doing good sales business, alto-tenor sax star Shafi Hadi, trumpeter Clarence Shaw, drummer Dannie Richmond, and pianist Bill Evans.

On East Coasting, the sextet does itself proud playing a gay and highly entertaining selection of tunes somewhat of a cross between the more lighter texture of modern jazz and the more sentimental type of ballading. What’s more, the music is danceable.

On at least three numbers, Mingo (TJT note: !?!?) dominates the scene playing his own compositions. But he is at his best, I think, on Celia, a thing that borders on the sweet side, and into which Mingus projects a sort of strutting beat befitting the album’s title.

Tunes on the waxing are Memories of You (mellow), East Coasting (fast), and West Coast Ghost (instrumental), on Side One, and Celia, Conversation, and 5th Street Blues (groovey) on Side Two. Jazz fans should like East Coasting.

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Miami News
William G. Moeser : 01/19/1958

Charles Mingus, the major domo of the Jazz Workshop, has come up with another thoroughly expressive and inventive package in Bethlehem’s East Coasting. The progressive bassist with the prolific pen charts five originals and the Razaf tune, Memories of You. The trombone styles of Jimmy Knepper are warm, thoughtful gems throughout. If this is the direction jazz is moving it certainly is on the right track.

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San Bernardino County Sun
Jim Angelo : 01/25/1958
Album of the Week

An East Coast school of jazz? A strong hint in that direction is contained in this Charlie Mingus set, a remarkable example of avant-garde jazz. Generally recognized as one of the real creative geniuses, musician-composer Mingus holds with none of the fashionable attitudes in contemporary music. He prefers, instead, to write as he thinks and feels, utilizing his own ideological avenues of expression. There’s no “art for art’s sake” present in his work, just original, meaningful communication in ultra modern framework.

The other musicians on this session are definitely Mingus-oriented, most of them having been affiliated with the Mingus Jazz Workshop for some time. Repertoire consists of one standard – Memories of You – and four of the leader’s originals: East Coasting, West Coast Ghost, Celia, Conversation, and Fifty First Street Blues. Especially tasty is the work of Knepper and Shaw.

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Saturday Review
Wilder Hobson : 03/15/1958

I have followed the jazz recordings of the composer-bassist Charlie Mingus with constant respect, sometimes with distaste, sometimes with much admiration and pleasure. He is one of the most serious, scholarly, exploratory men in the field and has seemed – whether he feels it is so or not – to have ranged through several voices in the attempt to discover his own. In his new East Coasting, however, he speaks the familiar, pervasively blue language of jazz with his own subtleties of line and harmonic richness. This is a golden jazz record in which the lyric spirt of the New Orleans tradition is expressed wholly naturally with latter-day musical sophistication. Mingus’ arrangement of Memories of You is followed by five Mingus originals, and there is a good deal of choice improvisation, especially by trombonist Jimmy Knepper, who, as Mingus puts it, “is all eras on that instrument.” The other side men, all given the chance to show their solo excellence, are Shafi Hadi, alto and tenor saxes; Clarence Shaw, trumpet; Dannie Richmond, drums; and Bill Evans, piano.

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Virginian-Pilot
Robert C. Smith : 01/19/1958

No discussion of thoughtful musicians would be complete without mention of Charlie Mingus, the man responsible for the new force that has entered what is popularly called East Coast jazz. For Bethlehem, Mingus has recorded East Coasting. Utilizing the extraordinary piano talents of Bill Evans and a new trombone discovery, Jimmy Knepper, Mingus has fashioned another “must” album for those who want jazz to advance without sacrificing emotional impact.

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Down Beat : 04/03/1958
Don Gold : 4 stars

Mingus is a three-dimensional figure in a world too often overrun by cardboard assembly-line products.

As a bassist, he is a major performing jazzman. As a composer and theorist, he is equally significant. When his efforts are les than successful, the listener feels (at least this one does) that something is being accomplished. When he succeeds in communicating his complex musical ideology, the result is inevitably illuminating.

This session, somewhat less than completely rewarding, was cut in August, 1957, in New York. In addition to Knepper, a vital part of Mingus’ group, those present included Hadi (Curtis Porter), the former rhythm-and-blues reed man; Richmond, a rhythm-and-blues tenor man turned drummer, and a recent import from Detroit, trumpeter Shaw. Evans, a vital young pianist, completed the ensemble.

The most meaningful contributions are made by Mingus. Knepper, and Evans, with Hadi and Shaw being less impressive. Richmond supports subtly and satisfactory.

Knepper is an impressively versatile trombonist, with an implied knowledge of jazz tradition. His playing is difficult to categorize, and this, in itself, is a sign of valued individuality. Evans is an excitingly fresh pianist, constantly in command of himself and his instrument. What impresses me here is his devotion to the material at hand. Hadi plays fluently but is not the individualist that the previously named three are. Shaw is the least impressive, although he has moments of achievement here. Working with Mingus should contribute to a growing maturity on his part as a jazz musician.

Mingus, a remarkable bassist, utilizes his compositional prowess here on five of the six tunes included in attempting to expand the perimeter of jazz in structural terms. While not fully successful, he does indicate the great strength he possesses, essential for the kind of pioneer effort he has undertaken.

Memories is given a starkly direct treatment, with thoughtful solos by Evans and Knepper. Coasting is an interesting bop era theme. Ghost, the longest track (11 minutes) begins and concludes on a churchlike theme, with solos by everyone except Richmond. Celia is a lyrical ballad for Mingus’ wife. Conversation begins as a ballad and then turns to the blues, with exchanges between the horns on diminishing levels (the final exchange is of two-beat length); it includes an excellent Evans solo. Blues is a composition Mingus wrote several years ago and indicates the vitality so much a part of his writing for many years.

The material is not as significantly evocative as some of Mingus’ previous contributions, but it is of value. If jazz is to progress, musicians like Mingus must lead it. And Knepper and Evans are perfect companions for Mingus in the venture. As thought-provoking, often exciting, jazz, this LP is recommended.

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Liner Notes by Nat Hentoff

Charles Mingus‘ Workshop is fueled by his emotions. These are not primarily exercises in form or attempts at “absolute music.” All of Mingus’ writing (and he has arranged the standard and all five of his own originals in this collection) is forcefully intended, as is his playing, to tell a story. For Mingus, music is his primary, essential means of communication with others. He tells in his work of his fears, his loves, his inflammable conflicts, his night-to-night battle to find and be himself. Since his music emerges from specific emotional needs, form in his work always follows function. His first concern is with what he wants to say, and the subject matter determines the way the piece is then structured.

The British art critic, John Berger, some time ago in The New Statesman and Nation offered a distinction between “subject matter” and “content” that may illuminate further the nature of Mingus’ work. Berger pointed out that “there is a fundamental confusion about the relationship between form and content… I should emphasize that content is not the same thing as subject matter: it is what the artist discovers in his subject. It is its content that the artist distils from life and which, through its influence on the spectator (or listener) as he comprehends it, flows back into life. The function of the form of a work is to concentrate, to hold the pressure of both the artist’s and spectator’s experience of the content.”

The pressure of Mingus’ experience, as he writes and plays from within it, is considerable and is sometimes close to overpowering. In writing of a bass solo Mingus played at the first Great South Bay Jazz Festival, Whitney Balliett of The New Yorker commented: “Mingus put such vigor and emotion into a blues called The Haitian Fight Song that, peculiarly, his instrument became a totally inadequate medium for all it was forced to do.” This feeling that Mingus sometimes looms up and over his bass, so huge is his emotional momentum, occasionally carries over into his writing as well; and there is the feeling that he – and his men – are about to burst through even the flexible, specifically designed-for-freedom forms of his compositions. And that’s another point: to work with Mingus, a musician must himself have a large capacity for feeling and for expressing that feeling on his instrument. The Charles Mingus Jazz Workshop is no place for the inhibited.

This collection opens with a standard that has long attracted Mingus, Memories of You. He has altered the song’s regular chord progression and utilizes the changes he customarily plays when he speaks a bass solo on the song. His intention was to make the arrangement relatively simple since “the melody is strong enough by itself,” and he brings the horns in one at a time. Worth noting is the sustained tone quality of trombonist Jimmy Knepper, to this listener the most remarkably personal and yet adaptable of the younger modern trombonists. As Mingus notes, “Knepper is all eras on that instrument.”

The title of East Coasting occurred to Mingus after he wrote the piece. “I heard several of the elements of the bop era in it,” he explains “several more or less familiar riffs; the use of minor 9th chords, even though I use them in different ways, more like Tatum did and the cycle of fourths in places.” The work begins in D natural and goes to F# in the bridge. Mingus is fond of using keys that are not usually played in jazz (Conversation is an A natural) because, he claims, if the musicians are compelled to play in keys rather new to them, they are less inclined to rest on their familiar riffs and are stimulated into increased inventiveness.

Mingus explains that West Coast Ghost refers to himself. “I’m living in New York and everybody considered me ‘east coast’, but I’m ‘west coast’ in that it was my home since I was three months old and I did a lot of my learning there.” Mingus intends the designation only to indicate his geographical-emotional roots, not to ally himself with what has generally and loosely been termed the “west coast jazz style.” He is a member of no school, however vaguely constituted, of either coast or in between. “I’m writing now the way I’ve always written. Whatever coast he’s on, a man should be himself. And I don’t write in any particular ‘idiom.’ I write Charlie Mingus.” The first section of the piece has, Mingus believes, the feel of church music, and the work then stretches into extended solos. Worth noting is the emotional accuracy with which young pianist, Bill Evans, who sight read most of the parts on this record date, fitted into Mingus’ demands on his players. Evans, like Knepper, is a particularly personal voice among members of his generation but he too is capable of meeting nearly any musical challenge because, again like Knepper, he has so thorough a knowledge and command of his instrument. Both Evans and Knepper participated in the grueling preparations for the Brandeis University concert in June of 1957 of six newly commissioned works by jazz composers and classical writers intrigued by jazz. Each piece presented its own intricacies, but the two were able to fulfill their roles in each with not only exactitude but the differing emotional stances that each required. Both, in short, are complete professionals but also have powerful individual stories to tell of their own.

Celia, one of the more lyrical originals Mingus has written, is named for his wife. “It’s the way I like feeling about her.” Celia Mingus, who has had musical training and is a careful, impressively sensitized listener to jazz, is a woman of a forthrightness and courage equal to her husband’s. She also has a reservoir of perceptive wit, including the easy ability to laugh at herself, that leavens Mingus’ frequent somber moods. Like Mingus, she also is a immensely understanding, warm human being who does not stifle her emotions.

Conversation is, in a way, a split piece. Essentially a ballad-type song, it moves into the blues after the opening. The title comes from the exchanges between the instruments in the blues section, leading into their talk in four-bar comments, then two-bar, then one-bar, then two-beats. Before the instruments regroup to play together at the end, there’s a piano solo by Evans of which Mingus says enthusiastically, “Notice he didn’t come in and just play. He could have come in and run all over the piano; he has the technique for it. But he started his solo by developing from what the horns had said and he kept building on that.”

51st Blues was awarded that title by Celia Mingus, since that’s the street the Minguses live on. Mingus wrote the work five or six years ago out of an experience he had in a class headed by a renowned New York teacher of jazz. “The pupils all kept trying to play a certain riff and they were doing it wrong. So I wrote it out to see if they were able to realize just what it was they were working on, and they didn’t. The piece grew out of that riff. It’s a blues, but the changes are not the standard blues changes.”

Of Mingus’ personnel on this record, all but Shaw and Evans have been with him in the Workshop for several months. Shafi Hadi (Curtis Porter) comes from Philadelphia, grew up in Detroit, had several years of rhythm and blues experience, and has been in jazz since the end of 1956. He is 28, and is particularly personal on alto. Drummer Dannie Richmond, 23, born in New York and raised in Greensboro, NC, was a rhythm and blues tenor player who abandoned both rhythm and blues and the tenor last year, and converted himself into a jazz drummer.

Jimmy Knepper, 29, was born and raised in Los Angeles, working with a considerable number of name bands, including Kenton, Herman and Thornhill, and played for a time with Charlie Parker. “He won’t tell you how great he is,” says Mingus, “but this cat really plays. He can do anything on his horn, shout or cry or laugh. I keep wanting him to blow some more on most numbers, and that’s a good feeling.” Bill Evans, 28, was born in Plainfield, NJ, and he’s gathered experience with Herbie Fields, Jerry Wald, Tony Scott and has worked as a soloist at the Village Vanguard in New York.

Clarence “Gene” Shaw, a new voice from Detroit, was born there in 1928. He started to play trumpet after he had been released from the Army in 1948, and worked with Wardell Gray, T-Bone Walker, and Kenny Burrell, among others, jamming between gigs with Donald Byrd, Thad Jones and others of his unusually productive Detroit jazz generation. He came to New York in October 1956, established himself in a day job but intends passionately to resume fulltime playing as soon as he can. I first heard him at Great South Bay and was moved by the immediately audible fact that he is his own man on the trumpet. As Mingus puts it, “He has more than just originality; he has the good originality in that he’s not original just to be original. All he needs is to blow more. He’s so concerned about being original,” Mingus added, “that he objected at first when I asked him to buy a Harmon mute for Memories of You. He was afraid he’d sound like Miles Davis if he used it.”

As for Mingus himself, he has been working through one of his most constructive periods in the past year or two. “I finally decided to be myself; it’s so much simper that way.” Because he is so independently himself and is not annealed any of the fashionable attitudes in contemporary jazz, he is sometimes put down by other musicians. “Some of them say I have no ‘soul.’ Maybe I have a different kind of soul. I don’t want to act any parts, to worry myself about being hip. I’m only concerned with communicating what I feel.”

I ran across an observation on music by Thoreau recently, and I thought of Mingus: “When I hear music I fear no danger, I am invulnerable, I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest.”