Mingus music doesn't sound like anybody else's. Though Charles Mingus may have gone out of his way to acknowledge how much the music of Charlie Parker and Duke Ellington inspired him, even the various tributes he penned ("Reincarnation of a Lovebird" for Parker, "Duke Ellington's Sound of Love," "Jelly Roll" for Jelly Roll Morton, "Goodbye, Porkpie Hat" for Lester Young) boast pure Mingus melodies with no room for obvious imitation. Similarly, few musicians have played "Mingus style" outside the context of Mingus bands. His influence has been enormous since his first Atlantic LPs in 1956, but this influence has been apparent primarily through its example of how to absorb jazz tradition without
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being tied to it, how to ignore current conventions and create your own.
"Pithecanthropus Erectus," the opening track on Passions of a Man/An Anthology of His Atlantic Recordings, provides a catalog of Mingus innovations. The symmetrical chord sequences that dominated earlier jazz are replaced by what Mingus called "extended form": a long, self-generating structure of pedal points, scales and be-bop harmonies that offers expanded melodic and textural possibilities. The tempo ebbs and flows like the pulse of a living organism, and the beat is often stated rather than implied. The sonic spectrum is also unprecedented, especially in a jazz quintet with only two horns: the musicians begin quietly but eventually erupt in furious bursts of ensemble energy that utilize collective improvisation, "noise" effects (squeals, cries, etc., on the saxes) and the vocal interjections of Mingus himself. What emerges is a programmatic image (in this case, the rise and fall of early man) without the sense of calculation one usually gets from program music.
Beyond his brilliance as a composer, Charles Mingus was one of the most commanding bandleaders in jazz history. He drove his players mercilessly to transcend their abilities. And, as Nat Hentoff says: "He did not protect his sidemen." During the late Fifties and early Sixties (the years covered by Nostalgia in Times Square/The Immortal 1959 Sessions and parts of Passions of a Man), Mingus worked at length with many of his most sensitive students and thus produced many of his finest recordings.
Passions of a Man contains several masterpieces. "Haitian Fight Song" (a pinnacle of creative bass playing by Mingus the instrumentalist and enraged protest by Mingus the social critic), the blistering "Tonight at Noon" and two other items are included from a stunning 1957 quintet session that introduced trombonist Jimmy Knepper and drummer Dannie Richmond to the Mingus orbit. The tumultuous "Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting," sparked by Booker Ervin's tongue-talking tenor-sax solo, features some of the most cataclysmic ensemble playing in the annals of jazz. "Wham Bam Thank You Ma'am" is the fiercest of Mingus' many tunes based on the chord changes of "What Is This Thing Called Love?
