Charles Mingus

14 Songs For Turning 41

May 12, 2011 By Sean Murphy 1 Comment

To know the man, get to know his music. (Or, to paraphrase Al Pacino in Serpico, “If you love the man’s music, you have to love the man!”)

There are thousands of songs that I could choose; songs that elevate above the others and, in some ways, speak to me, or speak for me, or speak to things that I am unable to speak convincingly about. These are some of those songs, and they are all deeply connected with what I hope are the better angels of what I’m capable of being or even imagining.

Abdullah Ibrahim: “Mandela”:

Booker Little: “Opening Statement”:

Mozart, Symphony No 36 “Linz”, 2nd Movement (conducted by Karl Bohm):

Herbie Hancock: “Tell Me A Bedtime Story”:

Charles Mingus: “Orange Was The Color of Her Dress, Then Blue Silk”:

Roky Erickson: “Unforced Peace”:

The Who: “I’m One”:

The Congos: “Open Up The Gates”:

Jimi Hendrix: “Pali Gap”:

Vernon Reid (et al): “Up From The Skies”:

Charles Lloyd and Billy Higgins: “Supreme Love Dance”:

Khan Jamal: “The Known Unknown”:

Freddie Hubbard: “Here’s That Rainy Day”:

Gabriel Faure: “Requiem, Op 48, IV (Pie Jesu), (performed by Oxford Camerata)

Filed Under: Music Tagged With: abdullah ibrahim, Billy Higgins, Booker Little, Charles Lloyd, Charles Mingus, Freddie Hubbard, Gabriel Faure, Herbie Hancock, Jimi Hendrix, Khan Jamal, Mozart, Oxford Camerata, roky erickson, The Congos, The Who, Vernon Reid

The Song Remains The Same or, The Agony of Influence

April 7, 2011 By Sean Murphy Leave a Comment

Two thoughts from T.S. Eliot:

April is the cruelest month…

Whatever.

Good poets borrow; great poets steal.

Now we’re talking.

And here is where it gets interesting: debate rages (well, amongst the handful of people who are aware of –or care about– quotations like this, or literature in general) as to who actually said it. Pablo Picasso occasionally gets the attribution, as does the critic Lionel Trilling (replacing poets with artists in his version).

So, even trying to correctly identify the ultimate epigram about plagiarism can lead to charges of…plagiarism. Brilliant! And, upon reflection, could it be any other way?

Harold Bloom, one of the great white whales of literary criticism who managed to produce an exhaustive body of work while not suffocating on his own self-importance, is perhaps best known for his theory (and book) The Anxiety of Influence. In it, he espouses a detailed, passionate and ultimately over-the-top declaration that all poets are obsessed with their work surviving them (fair enough, and true of all artists to varying degrees), and grapple with the outsized impression their predecessors have left on the creative landscape. This leads to Oedipal struggles, and the opposite of hilarity ensues. Like most lit-crit, there are nuggets of unassailable truth that can be gleaned from the slog of pointy-headed pomposity. Like most lit-crit, it does art the disservice of having uninteresting theorists put themselves –and their jargon– ahead of the much-more interesting and worthwhile work ostensibly being analyzed. Like most lit-crit, it is pretty much unreadable, even for the relative handful of people who care –or are aware– of projects such as this in the first place. (Lit-crit is not unlike Scientology in this regard: the only people who profess unreserved belief in it are those who practice it.)

Speaking (or should I say, writing) as someone who has endeavored to cultivate a style in my poetry and prose that is sufficiently satisfying, I am quite aware of the shadows cast by those who did it first, and better than I could ever hope to do. Those reflections are both bright and dark, sour and sweet; they are indelible and impossible to ignore. And that’s the thing: you don’t want to ignore them. They inspire you as much as they intimidate you. As someone who has written a great deal about art and the people who make it, the primary impetus is always an ardent (sometimes unquenchable; other times irrational) compulsion to celebrate, and share the work. That’s all. That’s it; the rest is ability, execution and having an audience, however small, that is willing to read and respond.

When it comes to art that matters (and issues like integrity and influence), there is no question that the best artists are aware of and, to varying extents impelled by, the ones who came before them. Those touchstones can (and should) become building blocks, and the art evolves, accordingly. Thus, there are uneven, but obvious lines running from the work of, say, Poe to Joyce to O’Connor to Munro. Or D.W. Griffith to Orson Welles to Scorsese to Christopher Nolan. Or, to belabor the point, bluegrass to Chuck Berry to The Beatles to R.E.M., et cetera. The subsequent generation, when it comes to authenticity and certainly innovation, will always be, to a certain extent, lacking. On the other hand, there is invariably a polish and perfection found in later versions of earlier forms. When you trace the earliest jazz from Jelly Roll Morton and follow it through to Fats Waller, on through Ellington and Parker, and then its apotheosis in Coltrane, Miles and Mingus, it makes a perfect sort of sense: each built on the other, incorporating sounds and strategies all in the service of a unique style. That, it seems to me, is the fulcrum where influence meets integrity; the result is the art that endures.

Rachmaninoff:

Mingus:

All of which brings us to…Led Zeppelin?

Few, if any artists have been as controversial, or better practitioners of Eliot’s infamous dictum. It would seem both a backhanded compliment and an indictment to illustrate Led Zeppelin’s relationship to much of its early source material. Their plundering of myriad names and genres could be viewed as audacious, shameless, cynically calculated, intentional, cheeky and celebratory. I think it’s easy to argue that it’s all of these –and more– but it’s mostly celebratory and ultimately, unimpeachable. To be certain, on the earlier albums the band’s aesthetic was like flypaper, and any/everything that stuck was incorporated. They have been roundly, and rightly chastened for the unconscionable greed (at worst) and shortsightedness (at best) that enabled them to retitle (and in some cases, not retitle!) other musicians’ work and claim it as their own. The defense that it was obvious what they were doing is equal parts disingenuous and disgusting. On the other hand, the claim –made with fervor by the uninformed and the all-purpose haters, by no means a mutually exclusive pair– is that Zeppelin simply ripped off other peoples’ work and called it their own. The reality, as reality inexorably insists on being, is much more complicated than that.

Let’s get the unarguable (and indefensible) out of the way right up front: on the first album alone, more than half the songs were borrowed, based on, or outright swiped from artists ranging from old blues legends to Joan Baez: “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You”, “Black Mountain Side”, “Communication Breakdown”, “Dazed and Confused” and “How Many More Times” all were initially credited as original compositions (the band did not have the temerity to not acknowledge Willie Dixon as the writer of “You Shook Me” and “I Can’t Quit You Baby”). Here is some irony: one of the reasons so few rock fans knew anything about this is because most of the songs in question were virtually unheard of until Zep put their imprint on them. And to be clear: none of the songs are uninspired imitations; in all cases the original and/or source material served as a point of departure which the band, being remarkable musicians from the get-go, put their quite impressive imprint on.

So, unlike the types of songs that the British Invasion bands were covering, and giving credit for, their consciences may be clear but their motives, ironically, were much less benign. In terms of integrity, give me a band who has deep roots in terms of an appreciation and understanding of all types of music as opposed to nakedly opportunistic chaps knocking off already-popular songs. The Beatles and The Rolling Stones were certainly not covering any obscure songs; they were duplicating (poorly, for the most part) songs that had some measure of renown. By the time Led Zeppelin starting incorporating source material by Bukka White and Mississippi Fred McDowell, they were wearing their beloved influences on their sleeves and, arguably, trying to share the love (too bad, for all involved, it was not a “whole lotta love” in all senses of the word). Put another way, none of these songs Zep utilized were designed or intended to be hit singles; think of the eleven minute plus “In My Time of Dying” or the six-minute plus “Nobody’s Fault But Mine”.

Other than the understandably prickly subject of attribution, it could be (and probably never has been) argued that Led Zeppelin did by far the most work to bring attention and approbation to a goodly number of obscure-to-unknown musicians. Checking out their live sets from the ’70s, where encores frequently included tunes by Eddie Cochran and Chuck Berry, there is simply no misunderstanding their intent: they love this music; they cut their teeth on it, and it still made them happy. They made the audiences happy by playing it, and presumably they turned more than a handful of people onto the original goodies. After the shame and the out-of-court settlements, the song does not remain the same: there was no agony in their influences and they have been repaid, karmically and indelibly, by being copied by a thousand eager, inferior mediocrities. If imitation remains the most sincere form of flattery, Led Zeppelin remain the golden gods of swiping and celebrating. In the final analysis, Zep did what they did, and they did it better than anyone of their era (ever?), and as such, offered few apologies. They remain the prototype of what T.S. Eliot was talking about when he drew his useful distinction between those who aspire and those who transcend.

At some point a truly in-depth analysis/defense of Zep’s begging, borrowing and stealing is in order. For now, here are examples of some of the more (and least) subtle uses of source material.

Boogie With Stu:

Ooh My Head:

Hats Off To (Roy) Harper:

Shake ‘Em On Down:

Bring It On Home:

Filed Under: Music Tagged With: Bukka White, Charles Mingus, Harold Bloom, led zeppelin, Richie Valens, Sonny Boy Williamson, T. S. Eliot

No, Really: Jeff Beck is God

March 24, 2011 By Sean Murphy Leave a Comment

Since it happened to be Keith Relf’s birthday, it seemed appropriate to pay tribute to him on Tuesday. Plus, as I attempted to articulate in that piece, he warrants celebration as a unique and influential singer (and harmonica player).

That said, the issue of the guitar players in The Yardbirds still necessitates elaboration. For perfectly understandable reasons, people assume or don’t realize they are wrong to think Eric Clapton was the primary –and most important– guitarist in that group. Simply put, this is not the case. Clapton was there for the very early blue-sy recordings and Page was there for the short and sloppy swan song, but it was Jeff Beck who played on all their essential songs. Put simply, Jeff Beck was The Yardbirds, with all due respect (and I offer tons) to the other members.

Jeff Beck demands more attention, since he’s not gotten nearly enough of it over the decades. Not for nothing: he is the only guitar god who roamed the earth in the ’60s who is still very much active (and in top form) today. He is, pound for pound, the best living guitarist right now. I can’t think of anyone else who can begin to match his proficiency, his gob-smacking ability and his track record. He is an inspiration in terms of integrity and dedication (he does not just naturally get better; he is committed to his craft and treats it like it’s the most important thing in his world, which it clearly is).

Here is a brief career-spanning sampler of his greatness.

“Steeled Blues:

“Jeff’s Boogie”:

“Freeway Jam” (he manages to make fusion sound…cool):

“Goodbye Pork Pie Hat” (I can’t think of another, or better way to put this: the original, by the immortal Charles Mingus is one of my all-time favorite compositions –from one of my all-time favorite albums– and I sometimes think Jeff Beck almost takes it to another level. There is no point, or need, to compare –and for the record, Jeff Beck is God but Charles Mingus is GOD– but I only hope to underscore the fact that it takes more than audacity and goodwill to cover uncoverable songs, like this, and make them arguably better. As we’ve heard, Jeff Beck can shred like nobody’s business, but he also can play slow and soulful perhaps better than anyone else who has ever strapped on a guitar. It is, as is often the case when talking about the best of the best, extremely difficult to avoid cliches: but check out the feeling and soul oozing out of every line; this is something beyond sublime):

“Cause We’ve Ended As Lovers” (I can’t recommend the recent DVD Live at Ronnie Scott’s more enthusiastically; in addition to being a fantastic concert, it is filmed and produced wonderfully, affording constant close-up action on the magician going to work in a live setting and showing that musical deities can age gracefully and even improve (!!) as they get older):

“A Day In The Life” (Having always been overshadowed by Clapton (and Page), it was wonderfully fortuitous that Clapton was unable to MC the 25th Anniversary Rock and Roll Hall of Fame concert: finally the world had an opportunity to witness –because it could not ignore– the brilliance that has been woefully unappreciated for entirely too long…and speaking of uncoverable songs…getting better? Only Beck could do this once; only Beck could do this twice):

Filed Under: Music Tagged With: Charles Mingus, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, the beatles, The Yardbirds

Bright Moments vs. The Dying of the Light*

February 20, 2011 By Sean Murphy 6 Comments

L’amour de l’art fait perdre l’amour vrai.

Or, the love of art makes one lose real love (attributed to Richepin).

As quoted by Vincent Van Gogh in one his heartbreaking letters to his brother and patron, Theo. (Incidentally, it is often stated that no one understood Vincent’s work while he lived. This is a fallacy, an unfortunate and possibly unforgivable oversight. The fact of the matter is that Theo advocated his brother’s art, but he was ill-suited to play the role of pied piper, since all the rats were already at the bottom of the sea).

It is simple, and possibly correct, to presume that Vincent was speaking of the sacrifices inherent in creation, the things one must willingly forsake in order to perfect their art. He identified with those words, and put his work before his life. His mind was his mistress, his canvas his castle, and his paintings the offspring he would never have. He was unlucky at love, and less lucky at life: doubly betrayed when his courtship went unrequited. But Van Gogh was not aware, when he quoted those words, what life had in store for him. Perhaps he was not talking about creating art, but the actual love of it, which is at once less and more perplexing.

Art and life are irreconcilable, if you are an artist. At least that’s how the story goes.

Vincent Van Gogh stood in a field and decided to take his life, even as the paint dried on his final attempt—the last in a lifelong endeavor—to transfer what he saw, in his mind and in the world around him. Van Gogh: he felt it, and he left it for us; on the canvas: the most indelible of his many self-portraits. It is not only in his face, but the dark rings, spiraling out behind him, an inverse halo. His madness, trapped inside him is trapped alongside him, for all time, on the canvas. Unable to endure it any longer, his despair overwhelmed his discipline, leaving him dead at 37. His last effort, now celebrated and studied like all the others he created, would propel no patrons and furnish no fortune, like all the others he created.

That these original prints fetch minor fortunes and are found reproduced in department stores is not the quicksilver quirk of fate, it is God laughing at us.

Or, in the absence of any God or divine, organizing force (an increasingly obvious and easy assumption), what then? It is us, the audience, laughing at ourselves.

And yet.

In his own words, from 1882: No result of my work could please me better than that ordinary working people would hang such prints in their room or workshop.

Does this not absolve, in the long view, the unfortunate, fleeting indignities the artist suffered while he walked, unnoticed amongst his indifferent brethren, the same ones who celebrate him now, who proudly and purposefully purchase his prints, the same one who writes these words?

His suicide: cowardice? Hardly. The world gave up on him long before he gave up on the world.

Is this what it comes down to, this one simple question:

Do you believe in God?

Ultimately that question, and the answer, is of little consequence. Much more important: does God believe in God? Does God believe in us?

II.

Heaven and Hell, if they exist at all, reside in the mind. And regardless of where you end up, that’s all you take with you.

You hear plenty about the suffering artist syndrome, the suicides, the drinking and the desolation, because these are the things that people who write about writers write about. Certainly, the artists themselves express this angst in their art, but you seldom see the solipsism on the screen or the stage or in the grooves of the vinyl. But then again, these artists don’t need anyone to celebrate their achievements, because the art they created does so with exceeding adequacy and eloquence.

For instance:

You don’t hear too much about a man like Rahsaan Roland Kirk, who was born blind and eventually taught himself to play three saxophones—simultaneously. At first, as is so often the case when folks are confronted by inexplicable genius, they simply refused to believe it. When he was no longer possible to ignore, he was acknowledged, begrudgingly, as a sort of circus act. Eventually, after the man and his music (a music that could—and often did—encompass the entire history of jazz in a single evening’s show) refused to go meekly into that alley called obscurity, he began to receive, almost two decades after he burst onto the scene, a smattering of the approbation his talent warranted. Then, as if to compensate for this overdue good fortune, Fate dropped the gloves, serving up a stroke that paralyzed the left side of his body. Rahsaan did not have time to question his particularly rough road; he was too busy figuring out a way to play the music he continued to hear. He made his last album, Boogie-Woogie String Along For Real, while confined to a wheelchair, and fortunately this document of courage and soul is still available for anyone interested in checking it out.

Kirk often talked about bright moments: moments where you feel deeply connected to the music, the message, and the soul of the messenger. To be sure, he made it rather easy: all one need do is listen with the heart as much as the ears and the music takes care of everything else—you’re just along for the ride.

And yet, you’re not. You really do go somewhere: begin here and end up there: when you listen to Rahsaan Roland Kirk, the experience is never static, you are always on your way someplace.

This is what jazz music, and Kirk’s music especially, signifies for me. As a dedicated non-musician, I use jazz as a viable source of empowerment; while it remains first and foremost a very real and easily identifiable source of extreme pleasure; it is also a vehicle, something used to get you somewhere else. A stimulus that demands a response, inexorably capable of conjuring up words and concepts (and constructions) such as spirit, soul, God, karma—things that are (rightfully) almost unbearably oblique, or pretentious, or all-too-easily invoked, usually as readymade escutcheons for folks who ardently need a way to articulate the feeling they either can’t quite explain or desperately wish to get in touch with. Because they heard about someone else who might have felt it. Or they heard a whisper on the wind, a rumor of some dude who was blind and could see everything, who left a legacy documenting some of what he said and thought and felt, left it right out in the open for anyone with the eyes to hear and the ears to see.

III.

Check it out: Most compact disc players have carousels that fit five discs. Five albums, five hours, more or less, of uninterrupted music. And for most people, this is more than adequate. However, on the off chance you want to listen to the work Charles Mingus committed to record in the single year of 1957, a five-disc changer would not be enough. Because, as people who follow jazz music might not even be aware, Mingus made six albums that year. Six exquisite albums. 1957: that’s a year to remember, to celebrate an achievement from one of our great American composers. This is almost my time, Mingus remarked in a prescient interview. Maybe this year. I know one thing: I’m not going to let anybody change me.

He then proceeded to make six remarkable albums, each strikingly different in terms of sound and conception. A miracle of modern music: East Coasting, The Clown, A Modern Symposium of Jazz and Poetry, Tijuana Moods, Mingus Three and Tonight at Noon.

Needless to say, these efforts went pretty well unnoticed. They certainly made Mingus neither famous nor rich. The tensions and stresses of harnessing the hush and thunder of his restless soul culminated in a brief confinement in Bellevue in early 1958. How about them apples? Mingus, indefatigable and defiant to the end, went on to make his mark on music—again and again—up to and after amyotrophic lateral sclerosis confined the colossus to a wheelchair, where he literally sang his songs, composing them with his mouth when he no longer could lift a pen.

To know this music is to know the pain and profundity of existence: the hardship of an African-American’s life during the tumultuous period that preceded the Civil Rights movement, when being black was an automatic obstacle. Couple that with being an artist (of any color)—another facilitator of alienation and loneliness—to being a black musician, particularly a black jazz musician, more particularly a black Bebop musician, most especially a willful, brilliant black Bebop musician who wrote, recorded and conceptualized his own music. The opposition and odds were almost insurmountable. Almost.

That these men were, in spite of the challenges and animosity that they ceaselessly encountered, and endured, nevertheless able to translate their glorious vision into the sweet, soulful music we have left to us for posterity is a testament to their spirit and dedication: their sense of single-minded purpose, which combines passion and pathos in a unique alchemy unlike anything else in American history. This is one of the great paradoxes of our last century—which is rife with irony and the squalid reality of our collective, consistent weakness and frail judgment—that the very individuals who were heroically creating an art form that we now claim as an American commodity (i.e., our own shared accomplishment) was performed (and forbidden from being performed) in clubs and towns where the artists were, at best, tolerated—more often, overlooked. To be sure, they were certainly not celebrated.

Even by jazz musician standards, Mingus paid substantial dues in his extended apprenticeship years, struggling to find a sympathetic label and always worried about money. Of course he also endured the non-musical outrages of the time, being an outspoken and exceptional black man in a country that considered him at best a second-rate citizen. Mingus bristled at the ignorance and intolerance that sometimes suffocated him, and his work can be viewed as an ongoing dialogue between himself and the world. All the passions that informed his underdog triumphs are inextricable from the music he made: as much as any other artist from the last century, his life was his music.

In the final analysis, all of Mingus’s music is a self-portrait of a man who helped define the direction of post-bop jazz, commenting on the country that created him. Charles Mingus was, above all things, a fighter. Since nothing came easily to him, his struggles—as a musician, as a man—acted as the kiln in which his character was forged. This is how Mingus, mercurial and larger than life, manages to encapsulate so many aspects of the American story: he battled to find his artistic voice, then he strived—often stymied by rejection or indifference—to have that voice heard. Eventually, inevitably, he managed to create material that was too brilliant to be ignored.

The light died on all of these men much sooner than they wanted or deserved, but through their art they managed to make themselves immortal.

* From a non-fiction work-in-progress entitled Please Talk About Me When I’m Gone.

Filed Under: Myself When I'm Real Tagged With: A Modern Symposium of Jazz and Poetry, Boogie Woogie String Along For Real, Celia, Charles Mingus, East Coasting, I Talk With The Spirits, Jazz, Mingus Three, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Richepin, The Clown, Tijuana Moods, Tonight at Noon, Vincent Van Gogh

Richard Cohen, Charles Krauthammer, Salon.com and Me

November 24, 2010 By Sean Murphy Leave a Comment

Richard Cohen: Still Clownish After All These Years

Props to Salon.com for doing some heavy lifting in the service of exposing hackery this week, courtesy of their amusing –and recommended– “Hack Thirty” feature. In a mild upset, they have decreed the scarcely readable Richard Cohen the hackiest of the bunch. Hard to argue with: on style points alone and the odious mix of shamelessness and opportunism that is his trademark, Cohen is tough to top. Of course, given the chance, I would be unable to elevate anyone above the ceaselessly reliable and cretinous Charles Krauthammer.

But since I’ve been doing my part to expose Cohen’s clownishness for more than five years, I figured I’d celebrate his anointment. If you care to see the pieces dedicated to the ultimate Washington insider, you can check them out here, here and here. Having been a long-time (but as of 6/19/09, former) subscriber to The Washington Post, I’ve suffered through more than my fair share of Cohen columns.

In the open letter after his ridiculous Colbert article, one of my main issues was how supine and craven the MSM had been all throughout the Bush years. That Cohen, after being converted by the chicken-hawks in ’03, finally used his prominent media space to defend Bush was thoroughly intolerable. It makes me fairly nauseous re-reading this, all these years later:

For instance, you inexplicably call Colbert a bully for the ostensible impunity with which he lambasted Bush, to his face. This begs the immediate question: doesn’t it take a little more courage, not to mention perspicacity, to say in person, as a comedian, the very things well-paid writers like you were not able, or willing, to say in the safety of Op-Ed pages for the past several years? More to the point, how often has this president put himself in the position to be ridiculed, much less forced to answer simple questions from reporters?

Not only is it abundantly documented how obsessively Bush avoids unpleasant or uncomfortable intrusions upon his eggshell sensibilities, but one of the primary (and painfully apparent) goals of his protectors and paid apologists has been to shield him from being accountable, or even (seemingly) aware of any facts that run counter to the fantasies he and his cronies have conjured up in the safety of their well-fortified situation rooms. This is a man seemingly allergic to introspection, comforted by cliché and available for fabricated words of encouragement after the dust and danger have cleared. Indeed, the only people being bullied are the citizens (be they reporters or democrats or non-Kool-Aid drinking members of the GOP) who dare to question or critique the president or his policies. Maybe you’ve forgotten about the carefully screened audiences Bush spoke to and took the occasional, scripted questions from on the campaign trail (and his entire tenure has, under the shameless machinations of Karl Rove, been one ceaseless campaign), or the folks who were tossed out of these same spectacles for having anti-Bush stickers on their cars.

The hits, of course, kept coming. In one of the other pieces, I tried to succinctly articulate –after stating the obvious: that Cohen is a clown– why people like him (and Broder and Friedman) are so dangerous to a functioning democracy that should be able to count on it’s columnists:

When it suits him, when it’s convenient, Cohen could perhaps be described as left-leaning. But between his stances (on war, on Israel, apparently on torture) he is as effective –and insufferable– a mouthpiece as any neo-con crackpot. Indeed, he is even more effective (and harmful) because he is ostensibly writing as a “liberal” in an ostensibly “liberal” paper (Washington Post). Of course, this canard is easy to deconstruct, but in the shorthand illogic of our times, he is, by default, a liberal by virtue of even being a member of the MSM.

It was certainly courageous of Cohen to have his mea culpa on Iraq about three (four?) years after the fact. And, to me, he really jumped the shark during the Colbert incident (which prompted this open letter). Compared to the True Believers on the Right, Cohen’s clownishness is more innocuous than not; but considering he is regarded as a steward of progressive thinking (I threw up in my mouth just typing that), he is quite dangerous indeed. Watching a Washington, D.C. insider carry water for the worst administration in history is its own special sort of torture.

Filed Under: Politics Tagged With: Charles Mingus, Richard Cohen, Salon.com, Stephen Colbert, The Washington Post

The Real Life Fable of Charles Mingus and Orval Faubus

September 4, 2010 By Sean Murphy Leave a Comment

On Sept. 4, 1957, Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus called out the National Guard to prevent nine black students from entering Central High School in Little Rock.

Charles Mingus had many things to say, and he used his mouth, his pen, his fists, and mostly his music to say them. Of the myriad words that describe Mingus, passionate would trump all others. Mingus cared—deeply. Of the many compositions that could be chosen to define him, 1957′s “Haitian Fight Song” endures as the best articulation of the inequities that consistently inspired his best work. The song is, of course, about everything (as is pretty much all of Mingus’s music), but it is mostly about the tensions and turmoil inherent in the lives of the dispossessed. Not for nothing was his autobiography entitled Beneath the Underdog.

Two years later, inspired by real-time idiocy, Mingus took aim at Orval Faubus, the Arkansas governor who forcibly resisted integration in Little Rock, prompting President Eisenhower to send in the National Guard. “Fables of Faubus”, beyond being a masterpiece, epitomizes the power and purpose the best music is capable of achieving: it is a rollicking cherry bomb that combines righteous indignation with contemptuous mockery. Knepper’s exaggerated trombone blasts invoke a carnivalesque atmosphere, and Mingus eagerly steps in as ringleader, his bass-slapping equal parts violent and sardonic, while everyone joins in the merriment: they are having fun at Faubus’s expense, celebrating this well-warranted smackdown. The tune romps along, Richmond urging the band into double time throughout, while the horns function as sarcastic crows, looking down and chirping their amusement. Accounts vary as to whether the shouted lyrics (heard on subsequent live versions) were already written and omitted, or if they simply developed while Mingus performed in concert. Let it be opined that the “lyrics”, while enjoyable enough, are overly literal and not particularly original; the band is able to “say” everything that needs to be said in this take, and that remains the enduring achievement of this recording. Only Mingus could take such a distressingly serious topic and deflate the backward status quo that put a clown like Faubus in public office in the first place. This song stands alongside “Haitian Fight Song” and “Meditations (of Integration)” as Mingus’s abiding social statements.

Here is the alternate (live) version, with lyrics (including the delightful introduction wherein Mingus admonishes the crowd to make no noise, including moving the ice around in their cocktails). We will never, ever see another figure like Mingus: God bless that beautiful man.

Filed Under: Music, Politics Tagged With: Charles Mingus, Fables of Faubus, Haitian Fight Song, Mingus Ah Um, Orville Faubus

The Shape of Jazz That Came…

September 2, 2010 By Sean Murphy 1 Comment

1959 was a watershed year for jazz music (arguably the greatest single year for jazz in all history–which is saying a lot). Here’s a taste: Miles Davis Kind of Blue, John Coltrane Giant Steps, Charles Mingus Ah Um. That is like the holy trinity of jazz music; all from the same year. But in the not-so-silent shadows a young, relatively unknown alto saxophonist was poised to cause a stir that still reverberates today: Ornette Coleman’s provocatively titled The Shape of Jazz to Come.

Kind of Blue is correctly celebrated for establishing modal music, and a genuine evolution from bop and post-bop; Giant Steps is the apotheosis of the “sheets of sound” that John Coltrane had been practicing and perfecting for a decade; Ah Um is an encyclopedic history of jazz music, covering everyone and everything from Jelly Roll Morton to Duke Ellington. And each of those albums were immediately embraced, and remain recognized as genuine milestones today. But The Shape of Jazz to Come was incendiary and complicated: it inspired as much resistance as it did inspiration. Some folks (Mingus included) bristled that it was all so much sound and fury, signifying…little. But what Coleman (along with trumpet player Don Cherry, bassist Charlie Haden and drummer Billy Higgins — representing as solid a quartet as any that have made music, ever) achieved was, arguably, the most significant advancement since Charlie Parker hit the scene.

Of course, Parker was also misunderstood and dismissed when his frenetic, almost incomprehensibly advanced alto saxophone assault began to cause scales to drop from audiences’ eyes — if not their ears. Like any genuine iconoclasts of the avant garde, Parker and Coleman were not being new for newness sake; they had to fully grasp and master the idiom before they could transcend it. Tellingly, what was revolutionary and almost confrontational, then, seems rather tame and entirely sensible, now. Of course, it didn’t take 50 years for Coleman to resonate: he not only found his audience, John Coltrane –the all-time heavyweight champion– embraced his compatriot. He endorsed, and, crucially, he imitated. The Book of Revelation that Coltrane’s mid-’60s Impulse recordings comprise did, in many respects, grow directly out of the opening salvo fired by Coleman in ’59.

Flash forward ten years. Miles Davis was once again at the vanguard, nonchalantly picking up the baton dropped when free-jazz avatars Eric Dolphy and John Coltrane had their comet-like lives come crashing, way prematurely, to earth. By ’69, Miles had “plugged in”, augmented his quintet and went about the inconsequential task of changing music (again). To say that his endeavors were met with similar resistance as those of Coleman a decade before is putting it mildly. Indeed, while Ornette was eventually recognized, even lionized (witness his most-deserved 2007 Pulitzer for the masterful Sound Grammar ), the work Miles did in the late ’60s and early ’70s was met with a combination of incredulity, indifference and outright hostility (it also was warmly embraced by people with the ears to hear it). Much more on this era and the culmination of his experimentations which resulted in Bitches Brew, very shortly (stay tuned).

Suffice it to say, Miles led the charge that led to, depending upon one’s point of view, a radical expansion of jazz music’s possibilities or its lamentable bastardization. Certainly the (inevitable, unfortunate) proliferation of watered down fusion which resulted in the artistic stillbirth known as Smooth Jazz has little (if anything) to do with the shock heard ’round the world that Miles sounded off circa 1970.

What happened next is, again depending on one’s perspective, the languid death march of America’s music or a continuation of an art that seamlessly integrates virtually every noise and culture from around the globe. A certain, and predictable, cadre of critics submerged their heads in the sand and bitched about better days. The awake and aware folks who make and receive these offerings celebrate an ever-evolving music that resists boundaries and is capable of communication transcending language and explanation. At its best it is an ideal synergy of expression and integrity.

Anyone who knows anything understands that some of the best jazz music ever was created in the ’70s (no, really) and a great deal of amazing music was made in the ’80s (seriously). But in the ’90s and into the ’00s we’ve seen jazz music consistently –and successfully– embrace other forms of music (rock, rap, electronica, etc.) and end up somewhere that remains jazz, yet something else altogether. There are myriad examples, of course, but this small sampler of five selections might be illustrative, and enlightening. The uninitiated may be surprised, even astonished, at how alive and accessible this “other” music really is.

One could (and should) say more about artists such as Lester Bowie, Jamie Saft, Marco Benevento, The Bad Plus, Critters Buggin, Garage a Trois and Mostly Other People Do The Killing, all of whom have incorporated our (increasingly) info-overload existence into their sound. Slack-jawed and stale-souled haters may demur at even calling this Jazz, or course. And of course the last laugh is on them because most of these musicians would care less than a little what you call it. They understand that the shape of jazz that came is always turning into what we’ll be listening to tomorrow.

1. DJ Spooky (with William Parker, Joe McPhee and Guillermo E. Brown), “ibid, desmarches, ibid” (from Optometry):

2. Material, “Black Light” (from Hallucination Engine):

3. Matthew Shipp, “Cohesion” (from Equilibrium):

4. John Zorn, “Giù La Testa (Duck You Sucker!)” (from The Big Gundown):

5. Medeski, Martin and Wood (with DJ Logic), “Start-Stop” (from Combustication):

Filed Under: Music Tagged With: Charles Mingus, DJ Spooky, John Coltrane, john zorn, Material, Matthew Shipp, Medeski Martin & Wood, Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman

Sue Mingus and the Mingus Big Band: Letting Our Children Hear Music

August 6, 2010 By Sean Murphy Leave a Comment

The Mingus Big Band is bigger than most big bands because they play the music of Charles Mingus. Of the many words one could use to describe Mingus, (and one has to use many words to adequately describe Mingus) it is big: he was physically imposing and he had feelings, opinions, and musical genius that no ordinary person could possibly contain, much less hope to convey. Most of all, he made big music. His knowledge of and passion for all types of expression is evident in practically every note he wrote over the course of four astonishingly productive decades. The catalog of his recordings is, in many regards, still being fully absorbed and understood. His output was so vast and encompassing it is impossible to summarize or easily encapsulate the scope of his achievement and influence. Suffice it to say, the shadow he cast continues to creep into any conversation about jazz music in the 20th century.

Thanks to the Mingus Big Band, we have the opportunity to keep much of that music alive and screaming in the hear-and-now, while the band’s contemporary interpretations of Mingus’s compositions allows the songs to breathe, mutate and swing their way into a new millennium. Overseen by Charles’s widow Sue Mingus, the band has been performing in New York City since 1991. Almost 20 years later, the Mingus Big Band has staked its claim as an American cultural institution—an extension of Mingus’s repertoire but very much its own entity. This, of course, is a tribute band that does not sound like a typical tribute band. On one hand, they do not play any “safe” covers, which speaks well of their collective abilities; on the other hand, they are playing Mingus compositions, which are so fully realized they effectively self-police misinterpretation. The only way you can mess up a Mingus tune is by having unprepared or unqualified musicians attempting to play it, and that is assuredly not an issue with this band, which comprises some of the finer players on the scene.

Beginning in 2008, the band commenced its association with Jazz Standard (coincidentally named “Best Jazz Club 2008” by New York Magazine). On New Year’s Eve of that year, the band was filmed during their performance and that concert is now available on the new release Mingus Big Band Live at Jazz Standard. Aside from the historic import (the show was broadcast nationwide on NPR) and the festive occasion, this was a special show for another reason. Anticipating the transition into 2009, all of the songs performed are compositions Mingus recorded 50 years prior. 1959 was a special year for jazz music and a crucial one for Charles Mingus. He released his masterpiece, Mingus Ah Um, as well as Mingus Dynasty and recorded Blues And Roots (which was not released that year).

It is remarkable, despite the band’s track record and longevity, how seamlessly they navigate the pieces from ’59—some of which were written for much smaller bands. For the Mingus Dynasty sessions Mingus assembled one of the larger groups he’d worked with to that point; it was not until the next decade that he had consistent opportunities to employ more musicians—albeit not as often as he would have liked. Indeed, one of the more impressive aspects of Mingus’s realization as a composer and leader is how he was able to thrive with whatever he had at a particular point in time. Listening to selections from 1957’s The Clown affords the opportunity to savor—and marvel at—the sounds he was able to conjure out of five musicians (including himself). A barnburner like “Haitian Fight Song” or a swinging tone poem like “Reincarnation of a Lovebird” are, in addition to being bona fide jazz masterworks, case studies of a dedicated artist translating the magic he hears in his mind. There is, then, a sort of reverse alchemy unfolding when the Mingus Big Band performs: if their namesake made big music with minimal resources, this band is obliged to convey the raucous feeling of the originals while integrating some of the instruments the composer might have incorporated, given the chance.

Mingus Big Band Live at Jazz Standard is an almost flawless slice of some of Mingus’s finest work. Anyone familiar (including the faithful and besotted) with the original material should be dutifully impressed with the way they are rendered; for a newcomer who has not had a chance to dive into the tidal wave of all-things-Mingus, this is an excellent gateway. For obvious reasons, the selections from Mingus Dynasty seem most suited for a big band (again, those sessions featured seven or ten players on each track). “Gunslinging Birds”, “New Now Know How” and the show-closing “Song With Orange” (which features a scorching piano solo by David Kikoski) all swing like nobody’s business and the band manages to sound intense and ebullient (one suspects Mingus would approve). Trumpet virtuoso Randy Brecker, who played with Charles in the ‘70s, is typically delightful, and the addition of drummer Jeff “Tain” Watts kicks things up a notch. The band dives into the rootsy blues by way of The Big Easy on a dirge-like deconstruction of “Cryin’ Blues” (arranged by bassist Boris Kozlov, who is in particularly fine form throughout and should always be front-runner as band MVP considering the boots he is obliged to fill): it is impossible (for this writer anyway) to consider anything an improvement on any Mingus original, but this rendition brims with playful fervor that truly does Mingus proud.

The high points include a trio of songs that even a stellar band must cover with care. “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat” is generally regarded as one of the sublime jazz ballads; this rendition includes the vocals Joni Mitchell wrote for her own Mingus tribute (Mingus, from 1979), sung tastefully by Ku-Umba Frank Lacy. “Bird Calls” would frankly overwhelm almost any working band—there is so much going on and the pace is so breakneck throughout it would be easy to imagine even capable musicians tripping all over each other trying to recreate the heat lightning in a box that Mingus & Co. laid down in ’59. Finally, the immaculate “Self-Portrait In Three Colors”, originally a study in expressive restraint, is sped up ever so slightly and manages to actually swing while capturing the full emotional impact of the original.

Speaking with Sue Mingus is like conversing with jazz: she is enervated and completely in the moment, yet also a living conduit to history, a voice of experience and authority. One approaches an opportunity like this with a combination of excitement and attentiveness. She is legendary not only because of her close association with Charles Mingus, but also for the passionate advocacy with which she guards her husband’s legacy. She achieved underground hero status amongst jazz fans when stories spread about her habit of entering record stores all over the world and waltzing out with unpurchased copies of Mingus bootlegs. If confronted she encouraged the shopkeepers to call the cops; they never did, quite aware they had no legal ground to stand on. The title of Sue’s (award-winning) memoir Tonight At Noon references one of her husband’s compositions, and the image it conjures is a miraculous anomaly (or an anomalous miracle). It also invokes the nocturnal hours intrinsic to a working musician’s existence. Of course it is also more than a little autobiographical: Mingus was a contrarian as well as a contradiction, notoriously demanding of those in his employ (particularly those poor piano players), yet protective and loyal (especially to Eric Dolphy and Dannie Richmond—two of his artistic and spiritual soul mates). He could be intimidating and imposing when he had to be, and occasionally when he did not intend to be. He was arguably the only player in history capable of making an upright bass look modest. Most of all he was sensitive and cerebral, and he is easily one of the most important musicians America has produced.

Asked to talk about the band she directs and its new release she is unequivocal. “Charles would be pleased to see these pieces being played fifty years later,” she says. “Obviously the vitality and freshness is not lost. Of course these are great musicians and they are keeping the spirit [of the music] alive.” Sue is understandably reluctant to pick a favorite amongst the Mingus Big Band’s recordings, but she concurs that this latest effort does justice to the originals while stretching out and expanding songs that are so familiar and beloved. “A lot of the band’s success and the positive reception to the music has to do with the passage of time,” she suggests. “Peoples’ ears are growing up to the music; the big band caught on right away … it was the right time to have this band performing this music.”

There is inexorably a bittersweet element to this band’s existence, which is the unavoidable absence of its namesake. There is also the substantial irony that Mingus—despite having larger bands at his disposal in the late ‘60s and throughout the ‘70s—seldom had the ways or means to work with the fuller ensembles he often desired. “Charles would love to have played with bigger bands,” Sue confirms. “Economically it just didn’t make sense; it just wasn’t feasible. But he definitely would have loved a working 14-piece band!”

If there is an aspect of injustice here, it does seem to be a natural progression for Mingus’s works, being performed on a weekly basis by a dream band he never had the chance to handpick. Sue can’t say enough good things about the Mingus Mondays program at Jazz Standard, though she is quick to convey her appreciation for past venues. “We were at Fez [under Time Café in New York City] for 13 years. Every Thursday night—it was like home for us. Unfortunately they closed the music aspect and revamped the restaurant.” After performing at various locations, in late 2008 the band initiated its ongoing residence at Jazz Standard. “This is the closest we’ve been to the feeling of Fez. We love it here and the audience is always receptive. We enjoy having the opportunity to showcase the three different bands.” Sue is referring here to the other two collectives, Mingus Dynasty—a seven-piece band—that tends to be on the road in between gigs and The Mingus Orchestra—a 10-piece band—which features more exotic instruments such as bassoon, harp and clarinet. On any given Monday you can catch one of these outfits in action. “Mingus wrote over 300 compositions, so there is plenty of material to work with and there is always something for everyone.”

Speaking of those compositions, it is indeed refreshing, if overdue, to see Mingus’s name increasingly mentioned when the alpha dogs of jazz are discussed. These days one usually hears “Miles, Monk and Mingus” along with “Coltrane, Bird and Dizzy.” Having lived with Mingus from 1964 until his death in 1979, Sue has watched the slow but steady trajectory of his reception into the pantheon, all these years later. “It’s definitely happening,” she affirms. “People pay more attention and Mingus is entering the mainstream.” Asked to elaborate, she suggests that to a certain extent this acknowledgment was inevitable. “The music is so personal and because of its openness it attracts musicians. People love to play this music, and its tentacles are reaching out. We see it being used more regularly in film and TV and advertisements.” Sue suspects some of the initial challenges in getting Mingus the recognition he deserved was a matter of preconceptions. “People thought the music was unapproachable. Mingus was larger than life and some folks figured his music was too complex or difficult. Now we see kids playing this music!” There is indeed an annual high school competition (directed by Sue) and a quick visit to YouTube illustrates the diversity in age and ethnicity of people performing Mingus’s music.

Sue recalls the performance of Mingus’s posthumous masterwork Epitaph (the title Mingus sardonically chose, certain it would never get performed in his lifetime) in 1989 as a major turning point. The concert, conducted by Gunther Schuller and performed ten years after Mingus’s death, was successful and a double-CD was later issued. “It was difficult going at first,” Sue admits. “But after a few years it was astonishing how easy it seemed.” Everything clicked and the various tribute bands began taking their shows on the road. Over time Mingus gradually began to be fully appreciated as a composer as much as a masterful bass player, and every day more people are getting hit in their souls.

When the topic turns to two recent releases, (Charles Mingus: Music Written for Monterey, 1965 and Charles Mingus Sextet with Eric Dolphy, Cornell 1964) the question must be asked whether or not any additional footage remains in the vaults. Tantalizingly, the answer is affirmative. “There is hours of piano music, actually,” Sue confirms. “Mingus spent most of his time on the piano; that is where he worked out his ideas and how he composed. He used to say that the music was waiting for him on the keys.” Presciently, and thankfully, Sue got in the habit of tape recording the pieces he would improvise and as a result she has “tons of tapes” to work with. Anyone who has heard the somewhat overlooked Mingus Plays Piano understands that these are not just enlightening works in progress; they are fully-formed monologues that function—in addition to being remarkable music—as irrefutable evidence of Mingus’s compositional genius. Sue relates the story of Alvin Ailey choreographing some of the piano sketches for a 60-piece orchestra, and the musicians could not (and initially did not) believe it was all improvised music.

Mingus used to refer to his “workshop” and he would assemble various musicians to flesh out the songs prior to performance or recording. In similar fashion the Mingus Big Band workshops existing Mingus material, but also collaborates to rearrange familiar works. In terms of what we might expect next from the Mingus Big Band, Sue mentions that bassist Boris Kozlov has been hard at work arranging “Meditations for Moses” (from Mingus Plays Piano). While we wait to see how they tackle that, Sue reiterates that the band will almost certainly revisit and rearrange other outlines from Mingus’s piano recordings. Perhaps most exciting, Sue lets it slip that she is working on another book. We can only imagine how many anecdotes and insights we’ve yet to hear, but considering how productive and passionate Mingus was in his music and his life, there is a lot to look forward to. Charles Mingus accomplished many remarkable things; we know now—more than ever—that one of his best decisions was marrying the woman who lived with him and loved him. She still does.

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/feature/128374-sue-mingus-and-the-mingus-big-band-letting-our-children-hear-music/

Filed Under: Music Tagged With: 1959, Charles Mingus, Jazz, Live at Jazz Standard, Mingus Ah Um, Mingus Big Band, Mingus Dynasty, Sue Mingus

Ten Ways of Looking at Four Decades

May 13, 2010 By Sean Murphy 1 Comment

Listen:

When some of your best friends are people who exist elsewhere—characters in books you’ve read, musicians you’ll never meet, people from the past who died decades (even centuries) before you were born, or people you knew intimately who are no longer around—it might be time to ask some complicated questions.

Who are you?

That is, or should be, the first question, as well as the last question, and it should be asked as often as possible along the way.

You see, all men are islands. After all, no one else is inside you when you’re born, no one is going with you when you die, and between those first and last breaths, the decisions, actions and accountability are your own. All, all yours.

So: you find friends, you seek solace in yourself, you learn to discern redemption through the aimless affairs that comprise the push and pull of everyone’s existence. You realize, in short, that you are going through it alone, so you should never go through it alone.

Thoreau was quite correct about quiet desperation and the long shadow it can cast over us all, but you don’t want to run off to your own unseen island. For one thing, there are no islands anymore, except the ones you pay admission to enter; plus, it’s already been done; and above all, when Thoreau got lonely or hungry he walked home and had his mother cook dinner for him, a fact he forgot to mention in his quite convincing case for individuality. Besides, everyone is already on his or her own island. You can’t run away, and the farther you run, the closer you get to yourself. And you’re all you’ve got.

If you are fortunate enough to figure this out early on, you find friends: the ones who exist in your everyday world, and the ones who have been there all along, the ones you can always turn to, wherever or whoever you happen to be.

II.

I have visions.

As far back as I can remember anything, I remember it being there—and I’m not just talking about run of the mill malarkey like guessing who was on the phone before I answered it, or what the next song on the radio would be before it was played (although these were both common recurrences throughout the mini-visions of my formative years)—I’ve been aware of things that most, if not all, other people I know have no access to: visions.

A vision:

I was certain that I had been destined to die on my eighteenth birthday.

I was not clear on how it was going to go down, but it was definitely to be marked by dramatic and tragic overtones—it would be, in short, supremely adolescent. Not slow death by disease, or some unfortunate ailment of the elderly, but more of a movie star blaze of glory, think James Dean or Jimi Hendrix. I could see them all: friends, family, choice classmates—the ones who gathered around my locker now gathered around my casket—sobbing, singing, eulogizing. I saw it. The vision intensified when I discovered that my eighteenth birthday happened to fall on Senior Prom. At first the made-for-TV melodrama was daunting, a tad over-the-top; but then the vision accrued acumen and I got a handle on the situation: what a brilliant way to go! Either I’ll have just experienced my first—and last—blissful sexual encounter (speaking of visions), or I’ll shuttle off into the post-pubescent afterworld pristine, an unsoiled altar boy.

I have visions. I do not claim that they are always accurate.

After prom (where I failed not only to die but to murder my virginity) I awoke the next morning, more than a little astonished to have survived. Having applied to the appropriate universities, I glided through the formality of standardized tests, still not unconvinced that I would be going anywhere. I exercised less caution than the average teenage idiot, reckoning that my visions obliged me to abet—or at least tempt—fate a little bit, just on principle. Alive on arrival, I found myself at college, where I subsequently saw some things that gave my visions a run for their money. I made it through matriculation and then, the unreal world awaited.

Still alive, I had little choice but to keep on living.

III.

Listen:

To win? To lose?

What for, if the world will forget us anyway?

I didn’t write that. A poet wrote that. I’m no poet. Poets are always looking for things, like heroes. Who wants to be a hero these days? Who can afford it? The world could be—and might very well already be—full of folks who will ring changes and do their part to shake up the constricting and crazed institutions that keep us chained, bound and complacent. There are lots of these people, I’m sure: tons and tons of them. But the thing is, most of us are too busy trying to live. It’s enough to just survive without seeking to pursue such lofty, such poetic propositions.

This is the new poetry: the more things stay the same, the more they change. Here is our art: haikus of horror in the cities, sonnets of sin and corruption, limericks of deregulation, free verse free trade, rhymed lines of laissez-faire, and the emboldened ghost writer, Death, forever at work on our collective life stories.

These days we look for poetry in all the wrong places. Some of us even believe we are gazing more deeply into the murky waters of existence when all we are actually seeing is our own reflections.

Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?

What he said.

IV.

These dreams are trying to tell me something:

I find myself back in high school. Often. At night.

The bell rings, students scurry, locker combinations are unscrambled. Except mine.

What is my fucking locker combination?

All around me doors are opening and then slamming shut, my buddies all about business, pictures of pin-ups inside their lockers replaced by pictures of their kids, my homeroom buddy with the beer gut easily fitting his briefcase into the small space, and here I am, imploding in this typical teenage crisis, attempting to be cool while the anxiety escalates on the inside: high school redux.

I’m going to be late for class—again!

And then, this: Shit! This is the math class I haven’t been to in two months (who could blame me, what with a full time job during school hours—a fact conveniently ignored in the insanity of this ceaseless scenario), more than two months, an eternity in dream years, and I’m not even sure what room it’s in. So here I am, unable to open my locker, again, realizing I’m late for the class I have already failed.

These dreams are trying to tell me something, I know. I’m just not sure what it is.

License registration, no I ain’t got none,
But I got a clear conscience ‘bout the things that I done…

When you find yourself singing Bruce Springsteen lyrics in New Jersey to a state trooper in the hopes of avoiding a ticket, you might as well close your eyes, see what happens:
Maybe you could talk to the cop and explain that it was not disrespect for the rules of the road, but love of—and getting lost in—art that caused you to forget. To forget where you were and who you were, only to find yourself in the unfamiliar role of fugitive.
And maybe he would understand.
Maybe he would engage you in a discussion about music, and how it helps us, how it is always there, and occasionally compels us to do things we would not otherwise do.
And maybe, after everything was said and done, you would stop, and ask him if he was real, if this could ever actually happen.
And maybe he would wink familiarly, as if to say: This is America, ain’t it? Anything is possible.
And maybe you would believe him, even as you heard his footsteps fading away.
And by the time you opened your eyes, maybe you were still rolling down the road, the only reality being the speed and the sky, and the siren song of metal and machinery.

A vision:

Finally, his car needed fuel, he needed fuel; so he had no choice but to stop at the godforsaken rest area. Everyone, it seemed, had stopped at the same rest area: equal parts public toilet, food court and concessions stand. It was at once appalling and extraordinary; it was, in short, America.

Who were they, the people all around him? They were everyone: departing or arriving, leaving for vacation, returning to work, delighted, delirious, above all, anonymous. In New Jersey, or in any small town, or everywhere in America, there are people who find themselves lost; the people with nowhere left to go. A cliché? Sure. But clichés are made, not born. Reality, of course, is a cliché, and we have discovered that clichés—even as they are the enemy of art and authenticity—can be our friends. And so: going to church makes us sense spirituality, so we go; playing carols at Christmas facilitates a feeling of festivity, so we play; falling in love makes us feel loved, so we fall. We need all the help we can find, so we find friends and never look back.
He looked back; he looked around and in front of him, seeing the stereotypes: the ones in his mind that everything but experience had created. Or was the Cliché unfurling itself, the one that perpetuates from a particular place: experience, repetition, pattern, tradition? He saw them, he saw how he wanted to see them, he saw how they saw him, he saw how they saw him seeing them, and so on.
And who was he?
What was he all about? What had he done? Where had he been? Where was he going? Who did he think he was? Everyman? No man? Or worse: the type of person who actually asks questions like this.
Walking away, stomach full and mind clear, he saw her. He could not help noticing the forsaken sister walking in circles, seeking a corner of the room that wasn’t there. How old was she? Eighteen? Eighty? Somewhere right in between? Satisfied with a meek drink in the water fountain, she was the type of person who unthinkingly drank from public water fountains. Does anyone drink from public water fountains anymore? Do they still exist? Does anyone even notice them?
It was hard not to notice her, impossible not to notice that pain.
Pain: Dostoyevsky, disconcerted as he was with crime and punishment, saw all the suffering of the world in a prostitute’s eyes, and sobbed when he witnessed a peasant, hard-pressed with impotent anger, beating his horse to death. He opened his eyes and half expected to see this woman whipping herself while Nietzsche—knowing full well that God was dead— held his head and wept. Who was she, and what was she doing here?
A hooker, a homeless person? A mother, a case of mistaken identity? A human symbol of hope, or Hope herself—a deity deferred, paying the price for us all, all of us sinners and those sins we can scarcely describe.
She’s just like me, a voice inside attempted to say, a voice he very well may have listened to—a voice he had come dangerously close to growing into, under the shadow of the ivory tower—had he opted to make certain decisions along the way.
He walked over, ready to help: offer money, lend a hand, do whatever needed to be done, even and especially the things he had neither the ways nor means to make happen. He walked over and smiled, and she spoke, making him an offer he had no choice but to refuse.
It was enough to make one wonder if (and even wish that) the stories in the bible, and those fairy tales and myths men have made all have a foundation in fact. That the slow, ceaseless suffering some of us occasionally see is in accordance with a plan, a motion picture we have no part in producing. That it was not even personal, all this erstwhile, enigmatic madness, it was strictly business. It was enough to cause the hardest of humans to hope for a beneficent Big Guy (or Lady, but it is asking too much for God to have the decency to be a woman) upstairs, shuffling that proverbial deck. Or cutting and pasting the appropriate pieces of the puzzle, always keeping a wise eye on the endearing idiots underneath, and generally doing and saying the things that the creator of an entire universe says and does.
But how the hell are we supposed to have hope when Hope herself had been reduced to this, turning tricks at a rest stop on the Jersey Turnpike?

VI.

When the train left the station, it had two lights on behind,

Well, the blue light was my baby and the red light was my mind.

I didn’t say that.

A vision. Actually, a fantasy: Every so often I can’t help hoping that there will be a knock on my door and when I open it, who is there but my sexy soul mate, a beautiful woman who heard the blues music every time she walked by, and wondered if, according to her own fantasy, a sensitive, erudite dude had been right there all along, waiting for her, waiting for happily ever after. And after a while, she could no longer ignore the siren song escaping through the small space under the door and came knocking.

Of course, this illusion presupposes three things, in descending order of unlikelihood: one, that there are such things as soul mates; two, that my soul mate happens to live in my building; and three, that anyone actually listens to—much less enjoys—blues music.

All my love’s in vain.

What he said.

VII.

He waits.

He looks out the window and he waits.

He does not look at the magazine, the one on top of the others that littered the table, the one last picked up by the last person who had sat in this room.

He stands, not wanting to sit, not wanting to look down at the magazine. He looks down at the magazine, which stares up at him, defiant, disinterested, doing all that was asked of it. The magazine did not ask to be brought into this room, it did not ask to be read or ignored, to be picked up and put down, to be digested and then discarded.

He stands, knowing that if he thinks about the magazine he wishes he were not looking at, the magazine he will not read, he will not think of the things he does not want to think about.

He does not walk into the corridor to look into the room that the woman is not in.

He waits.

He understands—anyone who has been where he is understands—that you must prepare yourself to wait a long time. So you prepare, and you wait. And then, it is even longer than that, longer than you remember. Much longer. He remembers: standing, then sitting in this room, almost the exact same spot, twice already (third time is the charm, he does not say) and still cannot help being surprised at how long he has had to wait.

He waits.

No one talks to him (they know who he is and why he is here), and no one knows the story he could tell (it is the same story everyone who has stood where he is standing would tell).

He stands silently, shifting and sorting his awareness that eventually they will bring her to the room. When they bring her to the room he will see her. He will see her seeing him, then see her seeing him see her. And then she will ask him and he will have to tell her. He will try not to tell her and she will look at him and remind him that he has to tell her.

He waits.

He wishes that they would hurry up (hurry up and get it over with, he does not say) and then he hopes that they will never come so he can stand, peacefully paralyzed in this forever moment.

Eventually, he looks at the table, and the magazine that waits for him to pick it up. He does not pick it up.

He sits down and does not think about the nothingness that surrounds him, the nothingness around him and the gnawing nothingness inside him. He does not notice the plants or the paintings or the cheerfully colored curtain that does not cover the light outside. He does not allow himself to contemplate the sterile silence screaming all around him, the vacant spaces, and the odd energies of dying life. Most of all, he does not think about it: how impossibly clean people in impossibly white clothes speaking impossible to understand languages using impossibly powerful tools and technology anesthetize everything but still cannot keep it out. They are only human and they cannot disguise it, it happens no matter what they do to prevent it or ignore it.

He finds himself staring, again, at the magazine, the magazine that he had picked up without realizing it. He does not open the magazine he under no normal circumstances would have even the slightest inclination to read. He does not open it and therefore does not, among other things, learn about which foods would improve his sex drive and help him sleep more soundly, he does not find out ways to make his partner reach new levels of ecstasy every time, he does not peruse his horoscope to see what the future has in store for him, he does not discover the secret to losing ten pounds in only three days, and he does not skim the interview that explains how the fragile millionaire singer lost the chance of making millions more dollars after having a nervous breakdown while filming a commercial for a soft drink she would not otherwise endorse.

He waits.

He does not pass the time planning opportunities that could create happiness. He does not deceive himself (this time) about the possibility of forgetting the present by focusing on the past. He does not dwell on the types of things they would enjoy doing again, the things they enjoyed, once, which they never found the time or forgot to do. Again. He does not think about the ways in which you discover that the things you loved, then, become the things that bring about inexplicable sorrow: the movies, the music, the meals, the books, the board games, the photo albums, the family.

And so: he does not allow himself to think about her as she is now or how she was then. Or how he is now or how he was then. How he will be.

He looks down at the magazine, again, and picks it up, again.

He understands that the second he opens the magazine they will arrive, wheeling her down the hall like the enigmatic magicians they were trained to be. If he opens the magazine, the magic act, performed (again) before an awkward audience, will begin. So he waits.

He stands up and looks out the window, at the horizon, beginning to disappear in heavy air beneath the tops of the trees. He looks down, far below, where miniature people inside miniature cars sit in miniature rows, stoically and slowly moving forward in the directions of their miniature houses and the miniature respites that may or may not await them. The sky continues to sag, ensnaring the world in its silent sentinel. The people, and then the cars, and then the earth all slip away, leaving only lights that sigh in their electrical language. He looks down at the waning waves of lights, and these lights do not look like a thousand sets of eyes, they do not make the darkness more discernible, they do not appear as poetry. They are exactly what they are: they are progress, they are pain, they are power. They are the cold crucible of machines that control the lives of the men who made them.

He does not let himself think about these things. He has too many other things not to think about.

He does not turn around.

He will hear them, eventually, when they come.

Eventually they will come, and he will hear them, and then he will turn around.

Then, he would…

He looks down; again, at the magazine he will not read. He knows, again, that if he picks up the magazine they will come.

He sits silently and stares at the magazine. He stands and looks out the window. He does not turn around.

He waits.

VIII.

I still have hangovers, thank God.

Everyone who has known an alcoholic knows that as soon as you stop feeling the pain, it’s because you are no longer feeling the pain; you are no longer feeling much of anything.

So, I welcome the horrors of the digital cock crowing in my ear at an uncalled for hour, am grateful for the flaming phlegm in my throat, the snakes chasing their tails through my sinuses, the smoke stuck behind my eyelids, the shards of glass in my gut, and the special ring of hell circling my head. Because if it weren’t for those handful of my least favorite things, I’d know I had some serious problems.

All of us can think of a friend whose father (or mother for that matter), we came to understand, was in an entirely different league when it came to the science of cirrhosis. The man who falls asleep fully clothed with a snifter balanced over his balls, then up and out the door before sunrise—like the rest of the inverted vampires who do their dirty work during the day in three piece suits. Maybe it was a martini at lunch, or several cigarettes an hour to take the edge of. Whatever it was, whatever it took, they always made it out, and they always came back, for the family and to the refrigerator, filled with the best friends anyone can afford.

Our friends’ fathers came of age in the bad old days that fight it out, for posterity, in the pages of books, uneasy memories and the wishful thinking of TV reruns: the ‘50’s. These are men who have never opened a bottle of wine and have no use for imported beer, men who actually have rye in their liquor cabinets—who still have liquor cabinets for that matter. These are men who were raised by men that never considered church or sick-days optional, and the only thing they disliked more than strangers was their neighbors. Men who didn’t believe in diseases and didn’t drink to escape so much as to remind themselves exactly what they never had a chance to become. Theirs was an alcoholism that did not involve happy hours and karaoke contests; theirs was a sit down with the radio and a whiskey sour, a refill with dinner and one before, during and after the ballgame. Or maybe they’d mow the lawn to liven things up, tinker under the hood of a car that had decades to go before it could become a classic. Or perhaps friends would come over to play cards. Sometimes a second bottle would get broken out. This was a slow burn of similar nights: stiff upper lips, the sun setting on boys playing baseball, mothers sitting on the couch watching TVs families did not yet own, of forced smiles battling bottled tears in the bottom of a coffee mug, of amphetamines and affairs, overhead fans and undernourished kids, of evening papers and a creeping conviction that there is no God, of poets unable to make art out of the mess they’d made of their lives.

It was a hard time where people did not live happily ever after, if they ever lived at all. It was a time, in other words, not unlike our own.

IX.

(And so, (you think), a life is not unlike a novel: too often they are eager to please, predictable, safe. You think: And so, you should feel obliged to occasionally ask yourself complicated questions. Such as: What are you doing to keep things interesting? What can you do to generate momentum, keep the narrative flowing?

Memories refract reality, where we see what we’ve done, or what we wished we’d done, or what we might have done, what we should not have done, what someone else may or may not have done, and what we may or may not have done if we were someone else. Kind of like a movie, a work in progress, a motion picture in your mind.)

Fade in:

Eventually, the patio is filled with people. Not customers, necessarily, but the cast of characters who congregated at this sad café, all the people who had put in time making the place everything it was. One by one, they stroll in and sit down.

The ceaseless discussion of suffering continued in the other corner, where Nietzsche attempted to speak calmly to the ever-irascible Dostoyevsky. You’d very much like to join them, but you have work to do.

After a while, you finally approach the one table you did not know, the two people who had been waiting patiently all along.

It was a mother and her son, and it was difficult to determine if he was a young boy, or an older boy trapped in a child’s body. He could have been eight, or eighteen, maybe older, probably younger—it was impossible to tell. He smiles, not needing to say a thing as the setting sun shines off the silver spokes of his wheelchair. He sits still, body inert but head moving: he looks up, down, sideways—everywhere; it seems, but straight ahead. His head was the stimulus and response, a crucible of his contained, constricted energies.

You think about his life.

Time: the time required to do everything, any one thing, every act obliging some manner of assistance. Time: double, triple, quintuple the time. It defied comprehension when considered on simple terms.

You think about your life.

And you know what you are supposed to do, so you think good thoughts, purposefully positive thoughts. You understand yourself well enough to perceive that you should intentionally avoid the possibility, the probability of letting your thoughts go where they likely wanted to go. Where they would go, if you let them. You know if you continue to watch the little boy, you are going to contemplate all the injustice and suffering his condition entailed. Nevermind the fact that the boy appeared content, possibly even happy, and very likely unaware that he was disabled, or in any way different from all the other people in the world.

You look at the mother and think about her life. You understand, as you watch her place the straw from her son’s drink into his mouth, that it was she who bore the burden. The burden of responsibility, of memory, the affliction of knowledge. You can only imagine her anger, the fear and frustration she felt.

And yet. You are unable to detect any evidence of those feelings on her face, and nowhere in her actions, which were an instruction of patience and grace. Mostly, it was her smile. A constant, unquestionable smile; the type of smile that is perfected through practice. The sort of practice that is neither forced nor fake: it was the smile of perseverance and peace—hers was the face of faith. And you have seen this face before. You recognize it: you had seen it at a sordid rest-stop on the outskirts of the Jersey Turnpike, you had seen it lying in a hospital bed, dying as a new decade began, you saw it every day in your dreams, you see it right now, smiling defiantly in spite of everything it had seen.

You see the smile and wipe tears from your own eyes, because you understand—you finally grasp—that it was love, and it was miraculous. It was love, real human love. The type of love that involves effort and embraces life, real life: ugly, inequitable, often unaccountable. The type of love that redeems instead of retreating, the kind of love that is faith, portrayed in a mother’s face.

It was a smile. A smile. No one could afford to smile anymore. And yet, somewhere, some people still smile. Love and soul, of course. That’s all it ever takes. A smile capable of restoring your faith.

Fade out…

A vision:

Later, he stood alone by the lake, thinking about all he had seen, about what had happened, and what was going to happen.

He thought about his life.

Silently he stood, the same child who had stepped in the shadows of the once towering buildings—before the city’s haze obscured the sky—and looked up at the stars, scattered like bread crumbs in the dark air, wondering if they really led to a kingdom beyond the clouds.

As always, he thought about his family, his friends, the heroes who had created the art that made life more worth living, the places and feelings that comprised all the pain and profundity of existence, all the questions that belonged without answers: all of this was inside him. So as long as he lived, and made himself remember, they never ceased to be.

I Talk With The Spirits.

He heard voices (Spirits? His mother? Himself?), once again reminding him that too much unpaid labor helped bring him to where he was—the sweat of history and the backs strong enough to endure pains he could not comprehend—and that all he was able to achieve helped make amends for the names and faces he never saw. It is their voices—each immigrant who helped build this country with their bare hands, who erected buildings they never set foot in, all the dispossessed souls that worked and died and never learned to write—it was those voices that clamored for utterance, waking him in the middle of the night; it was their cries that fueled his disdain; their screams that insisted on his solidarity, providing purpose to his restless, otherwise aimless indignation. These were the voices he had always heard, the voices he had been afraid to fully understand. Now, he knew he should be afraid if he didn’t hear them. He had looked for peace but was beginning to understand—and appreciate—that his peace was having a purpose, because there was too much work to be accomplished. There could be no silence, never in this lifetime. Silence is death, and defeat. Those voices spoke to him, and through him, and told him he was not alone. He would never be alone.

He looked out on the water, at his face, which reflected up amongst the buildings and air, looking down and seeing the world in itself. Then the mirror imploded as he walked forward, leaving his shirt and shoes on shore. He strode into the dark, warm water, making his way toward the middle of the lake and diving deep, not stopping until his hands touched the bottom, gripping the cold marrow of murky mud.

Moments later he emerged, sucking in the air as though he had never tasted life before, as though he was breathing for the first time.

Filed Under: Myself When I'm Real, Ruminations in Real Time Tagged With: Bruce Springsteen, Charles Mingus, led zeppelin, Living Colour, pink floyd, Robert Johnson

What’s It All About, Then? Part One: Jazz, Featuring Eric Dolphy

May 11, 2010 By Sean Murphy 4 Comments

Question: What’s it all about?

Answer: I don’t know.

But I do know a few things.

I know some of the things that make me tick.

Even though I write (for fun, for real and forever), I would still say that music has always been the central element of my existence. Or the elemental center. Writing is a compulsion, a hobby, a skill, a craft, an obsession, a mystery and at times a burden. Music simply is. For just about anyone, all you need is an ear (or two); that is all that’s required for it to work its magic. But, as many people come to realize, if you approach it with your mind, and your heart and, eventually (inevitably) your soul, it is capable of making you aware of other worlds, it can help you achieve the satisfaction material possessions are intended to inspire, it will help you feel the feelings drugs are designed to approximate. Et cetera.

I know that jazz music has made my life approximately a million times more satisfying and enriching than it would have been had I never been fortunate enough to discover, study and savor it.

During the last 4-5 years, I’ve had (or taken) the opportunity to write in some detail about Charles Mingus, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Freddie Hubbard, Ornette Coleman, John Zorn, and Herbie Hancock. This has been important to me, because I feel that in some small way, if I can help other people better appreciate, or discover any (or all) of these artists, I will be sharing something bigger and better than anything I alone am capable of creating.

Before this blog (and PopMatters, where virtually all of my music writing appears), and during the decade or so that stretched from my mid-’20s to mid-’30s, I used to have more of an evangelical vibe. It’s not necessarily that I’m less invested, now, then I was then; quite the contrary. But, if I wasn’t particuarly interested in converting people then (I wasn’t), I’m even less so today. When it comes to art in general and music in particular, entirely too many people are very American in their tastes: they know what they like and they like what they know. And there’s nothing wrong with that, since what they don’t know won’t hurt them. Also, let’s face it, the only thing possibly more annoying than some yahoo proselytizing their religion on your doorstep is some jackass getting in your grill about how evolved or enviable his or her musical tastes happen to be. Life is way too short, for all involved.

On the other hand, back in the day I was obliged to talk about music using only words. Now there is YouTube. You can’t believe everything you read, but you can always have faith in what you hear; the ears never lie. Not when it comes to music. Not when it comes to jazz music.

How to talk about jazz music? Well, perhaps it’s better to determine how not to talk about jazz music. Hearing is believing. That’s it. And if you hear something that speaks to you, keep listening. Whatever effort you put in will be immeasurably rewarded. Trust me. But first, eradicate cliché. Possibly the most despicable myth (that, fortunately doesn’t seem as widespread, perhaps –sigh– because less people talk or care about jazz music in 2010) is one I found myself ceaselessly rebutting back in the bad old days. You know which one: that lazy, anecdotally innacurate and often racist assumption that all jazz artists are (or at least were) heroin addicts. That’s like saying all pro athletes are steroid abusers. Oh wait…

There are several dozen top-tier jazz musicians whose artistic (and personal) lives could be held up as examples any sane person should want to emulate. And while geniuses like Wayne Shorter, Jackie McLean, McCoy Tyner, Max Roach, Henry Threadgill and Sonny Rollins all spring immediately to mind, the one I believe serves as the ultimate example of everything sublime about jazz music is Eric Dolphy. I’ve discussed –and celebrated– the man at length here, as well as here, here and here.

This is an excerpt from my review of Dolphy’s Outward Bound:

It will be difficult to avoid clichés here. In their defense, clichés originate from an authentic place; they are mostly an attempt, at least initially, to articulate something honest and immutable. And so: Eric Dolphy is among the foremost supernovas in all of jazz (Clifford Brown, Booker Little and Lee Morgan—all trumpeters incidentally—also come quickly to mind): he burned very brightly and very briefly, and then he was gone. Speaking of clichés, not a single one of the artists just mentioned—all of whom left us well before their fortieth birthdays—died from a drug overdose. Dolphy, the grand old man of the bunch, passed away at the age of 36, in Europe. How? After lapsing into a diabetic coma. Why? The doctors on duty presumed the black musician who had collapsed in the street was nodding off on a heroin buzz. To attempt to put the magnitude of this loss in perspective, consider that Charles Mingus, perhaps the most difficult and demanding band leader of them all, declared Dolphy a saint, and regarded his death as one of a handful of setbacks he could never completely get over. Dolphy holds the distinction of quite possibly being the one artist nobody has gone on record to say a single negative thing about. His body of work, the bulk of which was recorded during an almost miraculously productive five-year stretch, is deep, challenging, and utterly enjoyable.

One of the paradoxical reasons Dolphy tends to get overlooked, even slighted, is not because of any lack of proficiency, but rather an abundance of it. It does not quite seem possible—particularly for lazier critics and ringleaders amongst the jazz intelligentsia—that such a relatively young musician could master three instruments. In actuality, Dolphy was an exceedingly accomplished alto sax player, drawing freely (pun intended) from Bird while pointing the way toward Braxton. Perhaps most egregiously disregarded is his flute playing, which not only achieves a consistent and uncommon beauty, but more than holds its own against fellow multi-reedists Yusef Lateef and Rahsaan Roland Kirk. Nevertheless, it is the signature, unmistakable sounds he makes with the bass clarinet that ensure his place in the pantheon: no one of note, excepting Harry Carney, employed this instrument on the front line before Dolphy and, arguably, no one has used it as effectively and indelibly since…Let there be no doubt that Eric Dolphy warrants mention amongst jazz music’s all-time immortals.

So: a sample of some of Dolphy’s finer moments

1. “Hat And Beard” from Out To Lunch.

This song, the first track from his last proper album, can serve as well as virtually any other composition I can think of to best illustrate what jazz is; what it is capable of conveying. In this song, the primary feeling is ecstasy. The ecstasy of discovery; the ecstasy of shared purpose amongst the musicians (and this is an unbelievable group of masters, including Freddie Hubbard, Tony Williams and Bobby Hutcherson) and the ecstasy of expression. This song’s title is a tribute to Thelonious Monk, but the notes are all Dolphy. Here is his slightly surreal, intentionally off-kilter, totally focused and deeply, darkly beautiful vision fully developed and delivered. This is not the easiest music to absorb, at least initially, but once you “get it”, you stay got.

2. “Come Sunday” from Iron Man.

That Dolphy is able to cover the immortal Duke Ellington so convincingly is remarkable; that he is able to do it so indelibly with only one other musician (Richard Davis) is more than a little miraculous. The sheer volume of feeling in this performance is mind boggling, and life changing. Dolphy’s bass clarinet sings, cries and cajoles. It whispers and it pleads, and then it sighs. By the end, it has exhausted itself; it has said everything there is to say.

3. “Eclipse” from Out There.

Another tribute to another great composer: his friend, mentor and bandmate Charles Mingus. Writing recently about Jimi Hendrix, I observed that “The Wind Cries Mary” captures the feeling of melancholy as well as any song ever has. And it does. But to do similar work without words, as Dolphy does here, is a truly staggering achievement. The mournful cadence of Dolphy’s clarinet here gets right inside you, and the feeling expressed is magnified by Ron Carter’s bowed cello, which weaves in and around, at once among the corners and right within the heart of the song. The sounds these two men achieve are so unusual, so unsettling and (the word has to be used again) so surreal, it almost defies explanation. This is music best categorized as other and the album title, Out There, is more than a little appropriate. Dolphy was indeed “out there” in the sense that most of us are blissful or oblivious inside our little boxes, incapable of hearing, much less expressing, the joyful noises that reside in those most inaccessible spaces: within each of us.

4. “Left Alone” from Far Cry.

So, you might ask, are you really telling me I should want to listen to music that is capable of making me cry?

Yes, I would reply.

And, you might add, why would I want to do such a thing?

It’s simple, I’d say. So that you know you are alive.

5. “Miss Ann” from Last Date.

Eric Dolphy, dead at 36. There is nothing anyone can say that could possibly begin to explain or rationalize that travesty of justice; that affront to life. It is the intolerable enigmas like these that make certain people hope against hope that there is a bigger purpose and plan, a way to measure or quantify this madness. But in the final, human analysis, whatever we lost can never overwhelm all that we received. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: It helps that we will always have the gifts the artist left behind. It’s never enough; it’s more than enough.

After the final cut of his final recording, Dolphy offers the following observation: “When you hear music, after it’s over, it’s gone in the air…you can never capture it again.”

What he said.

Filed Under: Music Tagged With: Charles Mingus, Eric Dolphy, Far Cry, Iron Man, Last Date, Out There, Out To Lunch!