Charlie Mingus.#2
May 12, 1960

"You haven't been told before that you're phonies. you're here because jazz has publicity, jazz is popular.You like to associate yourself with this sort of thing. But it doesn't make you a connoisseur of the art because you follow it around.A blind man can go to an exhibition of Picasso and Kline, and not even see their works, and comment behind dark glasses, .Wow! They.re the swingingest paintings ever, crazy!. Well, so can you. you've got your dark glasses and clogged up ears."

This is one of the milder portions of an off-the-cuff speech made one night from the bandstand at the Five Spot by Charlie Mingus, preserved on tape and reproduced in an enlightening piece by Dian Dorr-Dorynek in The Jazz World, recently published by Ballantine Books. The speech bares Mingus. long-pent-up frustrations and brings to the reader the sort of moment of truth many jazzmen wish they had the courage to express.

Mingus. basic intensity and integrity can be found, too, in his Blindfold Test reactions. Following is the second segment of a two-part test, the previous one having appeared in the last issue. These comments, too, were tape-recorded , and Mingus received no advance information on the records played.

The Records

1. Lambert-Hendricks-Ross. "Moanin." (from The Hottest New Group In Jazz; Columbia).

I just don't know what to tell you about that.I heard Sarah Vaughan last night, and she was singing a song, and the trumpet player was playing two bars, and she.d echo behind it.but she wasn't singing what he was playing. And this.well, I think he.d be a good poet. A much better poet. He.s trying to tell a story.he always has. And I'm glad he can.

The group? I think they.ll make a lot of money. They.ll always make money.more than I.ll ever make. (L.F.: Don't you think the group.s different?) Different from what? King Pleasure? I heard some little bitty young kids singing like that in Chicago. When Bird first came up, they used to stand up by the jukebox and make up words to the songs. It'. not that original, man. Ten years ago people were doing that. I remember some words the kids wrote for a song of Hamp.s: Bebop.s taking over, oo-wee; better bop while you're able, see; open your ears, bop's been here for years".something like that; and that was 11 or 12 years ago.

2. Sonny Stitt with Oscar Peterson Trio. "Au Privave" (Verve).

Well, you heard that thing he did on the second chorus, the bad note.he probably did that a whole lot of times on the record, and they spliced it out. There must have been a lot of splicing, or else they had an engineer who liked to twist the buttons, because the sound kept changing, it was as if a different soloist was coming up to the microphone.

Is that stereo? Yes.That's too bad. And the piano player.he sounded like this was his first record date and his last one, so he wants to get everything in and plays all the notes he can in that solo, in the style of Horace Silver; and it could be Horace, I don't know. Maybe he was very anxious that day. How could I know if I don't listen to those cats anymore?

I put some old Bird record on the other day, and I realized that nobody's playing like him yet. I wish you'd tell me who this is just for my own kicks.

Rating? Well, let's put it like this. If I were in a record store and I'd listened to all the seven records you've played me so far (including those in the first part of the test), I wouldn't buy any of them. And I've got some money.

3. Mahalia Jackson. "I Going To Live The Life I Sing About In My Song" (from The World's Greatest Gospel Singer; Columbia).

I'm presently in the process of buying some records. I don't have that one, but I believe I know who it is. And I would buy that one. She's on my list. And I think that this is what everybody need a whole lot of - not only in their playing, but in their way of living.

As far as rating this.maybe you should use a different kind of stars for rating this from the stars you use ranting jazz records. A moving star. Make it five moving stars.

4. Dizzy Reece. "The Rake" (from Star Bright; Blue Note). Reece, trumpet; Hank Mobley, tenor; Wynton Kelly, piano; Art Taylor, drums; Paul Chambers, bass. Recorded by Rudy van Gelder in 1959.

The drummer sounded like Art Blakey, and I like Art so much.but, man, I don't think you machine makes it because everything sounds blurry.the tenor player, Hank Mobley, sounds as if he.s trying to play like Sonny Rollins. I never before heard Hank trying to sound like that. Or else it's the way they.re recording. Rudy van Gelder makes those kind of records. He tries to change people.s tones. I.ve seen him do it; I.ve seen him do it; I.ve seen him take Thad Jones and the way he sets him up at the mike, he can change the whole sound. That.s why I never go to him; he ruined my bass sound.

I.ve got a feeling that if that is Art, it sounded like the trumpet could have been Clifford Brown. But I don't know when they could have made a record like that. I'm not talking about the solo, I'm talking about the ensemble feeling that suggests Clifford Brown.

The bass player sure was in tune.I knew that right from the start. He was in tune with himself. And I.ve never know Art with a piano player like that.it's kind of confusing.

The over-all emotional feeling that I get when I enjoy music, I couldn't her it.yet I know it must be there if it was Art playing. I won't say it didn't swing because I never knew a time when Art didn't swing; it's just not coming off on this record to me.

Play that trumpet solo again.I would say it's Clifford Brown. A lot of people who don't know Fats Navarro would have to like Clifford. I hear the kind of crying feeling, the soul that you got from Fats. Now I wouldn't buy it because it was Clifford; the fact that somebody.s dead doesn't change anything for me. I'm going to die, too.

Afterthought

You didn't play anything by Ornette Coleman. I.ll comment on him anyway. Now, I don't care if he doesn't like me, but anyway, one night Symphony Sid was playing a whole lot of stuff, and then he put on an Ornette Coleman record.

Now, he is really an old-fashioned alto player. He.s not as modern as Bird. He plays in C and F and G and B Flat only; he does not play in all the keys. Basically, you can hit a pedal point C all the time, and it.ll have some relationship to what he.s playing.

Now aside from the fact that I doubt he can even play a C scale in whole notes.tied whole notes, a couple of bars apiece.in tune, the fact remains that his notes and lines are so fresh. So when Symphony Sid played his record, it made everything else he was playing, even my own record that he played, sound terrible.

I'm not saying everybody's going to have to play like Coleman. But they're going to have to stop copying Bird. Nobody can play Bird right yet but him. Now what would Fats Navarro and J.J. have played like if they.d never heard Bird? Or even Dizzy? Would he still play like Roy Eldridge? Anyway, when they put Coleman.s record on, the only record they could have put on behind it would have been Bird.

It doesn't matter about the key he's playing in. he's got a percussional sound, like a cat on a whole lot of bongos. He.s brought a thing in.it's not new. I won't say who started it, but whoever started it, people overlooked it. it's like not having anything to do with what.s around you, and being right in your own world. You can't put you finger on what he.s doing.

it's like organized disorganization, or playing wrong right. And it gets to you emotionally, like a drummer. That.s what Coleman means to me.
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