Two Classic Charles Mingus Concerts Get Official Release

Charles Mingus: Charles Mingus @ Bremen 1964 & 1975Two rare concerts by Charles Mingus are getting their first official release with Charles Mingus @ Bremen 1964 & 1975. Recorded in the German port city of Bremen, the performances showcase two stellar lineups of the bassist and composer’s band.

The sextet in 1964 included Clifford Jordan on tenor sax, Johnny Coles on trumpet, Jaki Byard at the piano, drummer Dannie Richmond, and the great woodwind player Eric Dolphy. The tour was Dolphy’s last with Mingus, as he would pass away later that year.

“The music from that concert was expectation shattering to many listeners, many of whom had not been prepared for the leader’s brash mixture of classic jazz vocabulary with the most avant-garde styles of free jazz, or what was then being labeled ‘The New Thing,’ of which Dolphy was a figurehead of sorts,” the liner notes explain. “The audience was certainly not prepared for the music to begin 45 minutes late, which made them anxious, and then to experience Mingus’s antagonistic attitude toward them once the band arrived, only adding to the tension in the room.”

The bassist’s return a decade later found him surrounded by tenor saxophonist George Adams, trumpeter Jack Walrath, and pianist Don Pullen, with Richmond still at his side. Together, they played pieces that would become the albums Changes One and Changes Two.

Charles Mingus @ Bremen 1964 & 1975 is available now as a four-CD set, and as a digital download (iTunes and Bandcamp).

Charles Mingus @ Bremen 1964 & 1975 Track List:

  1. Hope So Eric
  2. Fables of Faubus
  3. Piano Solo
  4. Sophisticated Lady
  5. Parkeriana
  6. Meditations on Integration
  7. Sue’s Changes
  8. For Harry Carney
  9. Free Cell Block F, ‘Tis Nazi USA
  10. Black Bat and Poles
  11. Fables of Faubus
  12. Duke Ellington’s Sound of Love
  13. Cherokee
  14. Remember Rockefeller at Attica
  15. Devil Blues

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