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Product Details

Charles Mingus
"At UCLA 1965"

Sunnyside Records- SSC 3041( 2006)
file under: Mainstream/Bebop, Post Bop

Charles Mingus - bass, piano
Jimmy Owens - fluegelhorn, trumpet
Lonnie Hillyer - trumpet
Hobart Dotson - trumpet
Charles McPherson - alto saxophone
Julius Watkins - French horn
Howard Johnson - tuba
Dannie Richmond - drums

Released 40 years ago but unavailable on CD until today, the title immediately announces the trials and tribulations that led to this extraordinary concert, summing up its original intent (“music written for Monterey”), the failure of that event (“not played”) and the triumphant closing chapter (“performed at UCLA”) which premiered a large body of compositions Mingus had been working on all year for the Monterey Jazz Festival, that found its true audience at a college concert the following week. It is an unvarnished behind-the-scenes look at the struggle Charles Mingus sometimes faced in his efforts to get his demanding compositions performed. It includes musical confrontations on stage, the difficulties band members experienced with brand new music, his own furies and, ultimately, his refusal to edit out the warts, to tell it like it was. This fearless exposure of the creative process in all its contradictions had led earlier to his concept of the jazz workshops—performances on stage in which the trials and errors of creating music were presented to viewers, unedited. He understood both the fascination for an intelligent audience and the pragmatic reality that by calling his performances workshops, he was able to rehearse his complex works on stage with impunity before a paying audience. - from Sunnyside Records

"Jazz Times readers select Mingus At UCLA as one the top five reissues of 2006." - Jazz Times, January 2007



"The appropriately unwieldy full title of this fascinating but rough and far from ready document, Music Written for Monterey, 1965 Not Heard...Played in its Entirety at UCLA, refers back to Charles Mingus being given only 30 minutes at the Monterey festival to showcase his brassy new octet and new compositions. Not to be denied, the legendary bassist and composer recorded a subsequent performance at UCLA by the same band (including tuba and French horn players, three trumpeters including the remarkable, infrequently heard Sun Ra veteran Hobart Dotson and alto saxophonist Charles McPherson) and put it out as a double album himself--or sort of put it out. Only about 200 copies saw the light of mail-order-only release. In 1984, it received a more respectable but still limited vinyl release. Now, issued as a two-disc set on the imprint of his widow, Sue Mingus, it's back in all its ragged glory for all to hear, complete with false starts and utterances and asides by the leader. The music ranges from epic spiritual meditations to angular bebop treatments, touched by politics and the spirit of free jazz (at times, McPherson's sound reflects "new thing" master Ornette Coleman's). With Mingus struggling to keep everyone on the same page, if not the same stage--at one point, he orders the brass players off to rehearse--the music struggles for momentum. But when it sticks, grounded by his magnetic, reverberent bass, its blend of earthiness, tunefulness, and elliptical power is the stuff of genius." - Lloyd Sachs, Amazon



"We find Mingus at the height of his compositional and bandleading powers...this 1965 recording finds Mingus leading a crack octet through an intense and angry set of pieces...Inconsistent, fiery, graceful and perplexing, this one is pure Mingus and it's essential." - Jason Bivins, Signal To Noise

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2CDs- $18.00

Charles Mingus - At UCLA 1965


Track Listing
(click linked titles for mp3)

1. Opening Speech [:42]
2. Meditation on Inner Peace [17:54]
3. Speech introducing musicians [1:41]
4. Meditation on Inner Peace [:54]
5. Speech [:14]
6. Once Upon a Time, There Was a Holding Corporation Called Old America (1st false start) [:08]
7. Lecture to band [:27]
8. Once Upon a Time, There Was a Holding Corporation Called Old America (2nd false start) [1:22]
9. Ode to Bird and Dizzy [10:18]
10. Speech: call octet back [:54]
11. They Trespass the Land of the Sacred Sioux [7:11]
12. The Arts of Tatum and Freddy Webster [10:01]
13. Speech [1:24]
14. Once Upon a Time, There Was a Holding Corporation Called Old America [11:01]
15. Speech to Lonnie Hilyer [:35]


Links
Sunnyside Records website
Charles Mingus website
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