Music Written for Monterey 1965, Not Heard... Played in Its Entirety at UCLA
The appropriately unwieldy full title of this fascinating but rough and far from ready document,Music Written for Monterey, 1965 Not Heard... Played in its Entirety, at UCLA, refers back to Charles Mingus being given only 30 minutes at the Monterey festival to showcase his brassy new octet and new compositions. Not to be denied, the legendary bassist and composer recorded a subsequent performance at UCLA by the same band (including tuba and French horn players, three trumpeters including the remarkable, infrequently heard Sun Ra veteran Hobart Dotson and alto saxophonist Charles McPherson) and put it out as a double album himself--or sort of put it out. Only about 200 copies saw the light of mail-order-only release. In 1984, it received a more respectable but still limited vinyl release. Now, issued as a two-disc set on the imprint of his widow, Sue Mingus, it's back in all its ragged glory for all to hear, complete with false starts and utterances and asides by the leader. The music ranges from epic spiritual meditations to angular bebop treatments, touched by politics and the spirit of free jazz (at times, McPherson's sound reflects "new thing" master Ornette Coleman's). With Mingus struggling to keep everyone on the same page, if not the same stage--at one point, he orders the brass players off to rehearse--the music struggles for momentum. But when it sticks, grounded by his magnetic, reverberent bass, its blend of earthiness, tunefulness, and elliptical power is the stuff of genius.--Lloyd Sachs