Charles Mingus - Presents Charles Mingus (1977 Japanese Candid Vinyl LP)

Vinyl: EX
Sleeve: VG+
Obi: None

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Charles Mingus - Presents Charles Mingus | Vinyl LP - 1977 Japanese Candid Records Reissue (SMJ-6178, Victor Musical Industries)

"Original Faubus Fables" is the track that defines what this album is about. Mingus had recorded a version of the piece on Mingus Ah Um the year before, but Columbia wouldn't release the lyrics, which mocked Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus for deploying the National Guard to block nine Black students from entering a white high school in Little Rock. Nat Hentoff, running the short-lived Candid label with a policy of complete artistic freedom, let Mingus record it the way he wanted. Mingus and Richmond sing the satirical text together (naming names, making the politics personal) while Dolphy's alto shadows the vocal line before breaking into a solo that turns the satire into something more abstract and unsettling. The other three pieces are just as concentrated. "Folk Forms No. 1" opens with Mingus's bass alone before Dolphy and Curson enter, the melody building through a New Orleans-flavoured march that unfolds for 12 minutes. "What Love," the longest track at over 15 minutes, weaves together fragments of "You Don't Know What Love Is" and "What Is This Thing Called Love?" into an extended dialogue between Dolphy and Mingus that Hentoff's liner notes describe as reflecting the impending departure of both Dolphy and Curson from the band. "All The Things You Could Be By Now If Sigmund Freud's Wife Was Your Mother" reworks "All The Things You Are" at speed, with a title that is pure Mingus.

The decision to work without a piano is central to the album's sound. Mingus's bass functions as both rhythm section and harmonic foundation, and without chords filling the middle register the space between Dolphy and Curson is wide open. The quartet had been playing this material at The Showplace in New York for weeks, and the studio session catches the kind of telepathic interaction that only comes from a band that knows the material deeply enough to pull it apart and reassemble it in real time. This is the 1977 Japanese stereo reissue on Candid SMJ-6178, part of the Jazztime Now!! series, made by Victor Musical Industries.