Charles Mingus - Pre-Bird (1977 Japanese Mercury Stereo Vinyl LP)

Vinyl: NM
Sleeve: EX
Obi: None

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Charles Mingus - Pre-Bird | Vinyl LP - 1977 Japanese Mercury Stereo Reissue (SFX-10545, My Jazz Life EmArcy Series, Nippon Phonogram Co. Ltd.)

Charles Mingus recorded Pre-Bird in May 1960, between two of the most celebrated albums in his catalogue — the work he had done for Columbia the previous autumn and the quartet recordings at Antibes that followed. The title announces the album's terms: these are compositions Mingus wrote before he first encountered Charlie Parker, before bebop reorganised everything. Leonard Feather produced; the sessions took place at Plaza Sound Studios in New York over two days, May 24 and 25, with a rotating ensemble of approximately twenty-two musicians.

Six Mingus originals across the eight tracks. "Prayer for Passive Resistance," "Eclipse" and "Weird Nightmare" from May 25 are the smaller-ensemble pieces; Lorraine Cusson, one of the few singers who could carry Mingus's vocal writing, appears on the latter two. "Mingus Fingus No. 2" and "Bemoanable Lady" from May 24 use the larger orchestra to harder-driving effect. "Half-Mast Inhibition," the album's closing track and its most ambitious, was composed by Mingus in 1939 at age seventeen. It was not recorded until this session, twenty-one years later, and it is conducted throughout by Gunther Schuller — the American composer and French horn player who coined the term "Third Stream." The piece runs eight minutes across eighteen sections that combine swing rhythms, oboe and cello duets, woodwind and trumpet exchanges, and contrapuntal writing that moves just off the edge of tonality without fully leaving it.

"Take the 'A' Train," Billy Strayhorn's composition, and Duke Ellington and Bob Russell's "Do Nothin' Till You Hear From Me" complete the programme, both interpolating secondary Ellington pieces as written into the arrangements. This 1977 Japanese pressing is part of Mercury's My Jazz Life EmArcy Series, manufactured by Nippon Phonogram Co. Ltd.