THERE ARE SHOUTS AND HOWLS ON TRACKS ROOTED IN EARTHY BLUES AND GOSPEL.

This album copy card is dated June 2, 1959, exactly three weeks after thefinal recording session. At this point, which compositions would be includ-ed, their final titles and the LP sequence were already resolved, indicatingthat this project was on the fast track.

Teo Macero’s original notes for the album sequence. Note the early songtitles and the fact that Horace Parlan at that point is credited as co-com-

poser on what became “Better Git It In Your Soul.” Macero’s proposedalbum title “Sing Along With Mingus” is no doubt a sarcastic comment on

Mitch Miller’s “Sing Along With Mitch” series of LPs, which were block-buster best sellers for Columbia at the time and the antithesis of hip.

Then it was a clas-sical workshop where musicians couldexchange ideas and perform their new com-positions. Mingus moved to New York in1951, and, deciding to try the idea in the morespontaneous medium of jazz, by 1953 hadorganized a series of jazz workshop concertsat the Putnam Central Club in Brooklyn.Some of the musicians who participated inthe early days were Max Roach, TheloniousMonk, Horace Silver, Art Blakey, and the audi-ence, who also had a hand in the working outof new compositions and arrangements.

MINGUS AH UM

Producer Teo Macero’s budget approval request, submitted one month beforethe first session. It is interesting to note that he writes “all Jelly Roll Mortoncompositions.” It is conceivable that this was Mingus’s idea at the time.

FOLLOWING ARE THE ORIGINAL LP LINER NOTES BY DIANE DORR-DORYNEK:

Because of the success of this workshop, aComposer’s Workshop was formed, in collab-oration with Bill Coss of Metronome, thatincluded Teddy Charles, John LaPorta, andTeo Macero (who, as an A&R man forColumbia, arranged the date for this album).Mingus believes now that it got too far awayfrom jazz—spontaneity—since almost all ofthe music was written. He remembers onerehearsal at which Teddy had left severalbars open for blowing and everyone jumpedon him with “Man, are you lazy? Write it out!”

From this series of concerts Mingus discov-ered two important things. “First, a jazz com-position as I hear it in my mind’s ear—although set down in so many notes on scorepaper and precisely notated—cannot beplayed by a group of either jazz or classicalmusicians. A classical musician might read allthe notes correctly but play them without thecorrect jazz feeling or interpretation, and ajazz musician, although he might read all thenotes and play them with jazz feeling,inevitably introduces his own individualexpression rather than the dynamics thecomposer intended. Secondly, jazz, by itsvery definition, cannot be held down to writtenparts to be played with a feeling that goesonly with blowing free.

“My present working methods use very littlewritten material. I ‘write’ compositions onmental score paper, then I lay out the compo-sition part by part to the musicians. I playthem the ‘framework’ on piano so that theyare all familiar with my interpretation and feel-ing and with the scale and chord progres-sions to be used. Each man’s particular styleis taken into consideration. They are givendifferent rows of notes to use against eachchord but they choose their own notes andplay them in their own styles, from scales aswell as chords, except where a particularmood is indicated. In this way I can keep myown compositional flavor in the pieces andyet allow the musicians more individual free-dom in the creation of their group lines andsolos.”

Of the musicians on this album, John Handy,Booker Ervin, Horace Parlan, and DannieRichmond are currently working with Mingus.

Willie Dennis, Jimmy Knepper, and ShafiHadi have worked with him in the past, andwere called especially for this date.

John Handy was born in Dallas on February3, 1933. While in Dallas he began studyingthe clarinet, then moved to Oakland,California, where he played alto sax atMcClymonds High School. He gigged inrhythm and blues in Oakland for two yearsand later, when he moved to San Francisco,at Bob City. All of the musicians passingthrough were sure to show there, andalthough he wasn’t working in jazz, he hearda passing pageant of the greatest names injazz. He didn’t hear Bird until 1952 when Birdwas playing at the Say When. He feels thatBird was probably his greatest influence, butthe list of musicians that were important tohim musically is long: Louis Jordan, LesterYoung, Flip Phillips, Gillespie, Dexter Gordon,Wardell Gray, Stan Getz, early Konitz, SonnyRollins, John Coltrane. In 1952 he studied atSan Francisco City College, playing clarinet,bass clarinet, baritone sax, alto and tenor.After a stint in Korea, he returned to SanFrancisco and switched his main instrumentfrom alto to tenor. He studied for a secondaryteaching degree at State College, and plansto complete it and eventually teach improvi-sation at the college level.

Handy came to New York in July 1958. Hemet Mingus in December at a jam session atthe Five Spot. He’d been pacing about anx-iously, hoping to blow, but the musicians onthe stand thought he looked too square.Mingus asked them to give him a chance toplay, and they did. A day later Mingus askedhim to join his group.

Booker Ervin was born on October 31, 1930,in Denison, Texas. When he was nine hewanted to learn the saxophone, but his moth-er bought him a trombone. He played it forfive years and then gave it up. He had want-ed to be a jazz musician after hearing CountBasie and other bands of the ’30s on theradio, but it wasn’t until 1950, when in the AirForce, that he finally took up tenor sax andplayed with a jazz group in Okinawa. Heattended the Berklee Music School in Bostonin 1954 and then went on the road for a year

with Ernie Fields, playing rhythm and blues.For the next few years he traveled. Hestopped off in Denver for a year and thereplayed his first jazz gigs—at the PianoLounge, and as house combo at Sonny’sLounge. In the meantime he had studied clar-inet and flute. He’d listened to Lester Youngand Dexter Gordon earlier, now he listened toSonny Stitt, and later, to Rollins and Coltrane.

He quit music to work in the post office butthat became unbearable after three months.“There was no place to go but New York.” Hecame east with a drummer who lived inPittsburgh and stayed there for six months(where he met Horace Parlan). He landed inNew York in May of 1958. Shafi Hadi, thenworking with Mingus, told him, “There’s a newcat in town cuts everybody, me and Sonnyand all those cats. I’m a sax player so I knowwhat he’s doing on that instrument.” Horacebrought Booker to the Half Note where theywere then working and he finished the gigwith them, but didn’t join the group untilNovember.

Horace Parlan was born in Pittsburgh onJanuary 19, 1931. He gigged aroundPittsburgh awhile with Tom Turrentine andothers, and has played with Sonny Stitt andDizzy Gillespie. One night Mingus was invitedto a jam session in Pittsburgh, and Horace,who was also jamming there, was playing somuch and so consistently that Mingus tried tooutdo him with his bass. It wasn’t until laterthat he noticed Horace’s right hand was par-alyzed. He had polio when he was five andcan use only two fingers of his right hand.Bassist Wyatt “Bull” Ruther and his teacher,Mary Alston, encouraged him to overcomethis, and he has developed a predominantlyleft hand style—single note solos, left handchords, or chords with right and left inter-locked. He names as his favorite pianistsHorace Silver, Bud Powell, John Lewis, andAhmad Jamal.

After this session in Pittsburgh Mingus lostcontact with Horace until a year later when acar drove up to the Alvin Hotel and Horacegot out to check in. Mingus, who was pass-ing by, found he had come here looking forwork, and hired him. Horace’s father was a

preacher and he, like Mingus, has a strongchurch music background. On “Better Git It InYour Soul,” Mingus took a moaning repetitivechurchlike line from one of Horace’s solosand added it to the piece.

Dannie Richmond was born in New York 30years ago, and raised in Greensboro, NorthCarolina. He returned to New York to studytenor sax at the Music Center Conservatoryand then went on the road with rhythm-and-blues units like the Clovers, Joe Anderson,and Paul Williams. He left rhythm and blues in1956 because he felt it was exhibitionismrather than music, and at that time switchedto drums. That summer the jazz workshopwas at The Pad in Greenwich Village (latercalled Lower Basin Street). At one intermis-sion, after they had played a fast number onwhich their present drummer couldn’t keepup, Lou Donaldson told Mingus, “I’ve got myhometown buddy here. I bet he’ll make thosefast tempos.” He introduced Mingus toDannie, and Mingus, noting his carefulgrooming and nice clothes, was skeptical.Dannie sat in for several numbers. On the firstnumber, an uptempoed “Cherokee,” he hadvery little trouble. Mingus says he could tellDannie was a good musician and just neededmore work. Dannie joined the workshop laterthat winter when the regular drummer left.Mingus believes the drummer is the mostimportant member of the group and says he’drather have no drummer at all if Dannieweren’t available. “He’s a musician, not just atimekeeper, one of the most versatile and cre-ative drummers I’ve ever heard.”

A shorter word about the non-regulars. ShafiHadi was born in Pennsylvania on September21, 1929, and raised in Detroit. He served hisapprenticeship in rhythm-and-blues bandssuch as Ivory Joe Hunter, Ruth Brown, PaulWilliams, and the Griffin Brothers. He leftrhythm and blues late in 1956 and joinedMingus in 1957, with whom he worked regu-larly until the fall of 1958. He was among thenine musicians (along with Knepper,Richmond, and Parlan) who recorded thescore, composed by Mingus, for the experi-mental film Shadows. The theme song fromShadows, retitled “Self-Portrait In ThreeColors,” is recorded in this album.

Willie Dennis was born in SouthPhiladelphia 33 years ago. He picked up thetrombone when he was about 15, learningby ear. He has played in a long list of famousbands; with Percy and Jimmy Heath, ElliottLawrence, Howard McGee, ClaudeThornhill, Sam Donahue, Woody Herman(with whom he went to South America andbecame interested in flamenco and concertguitar), and Benny Goodman (touringEurope). He has also worked with the small-er groups of Charlie Ventura, ColemanHawkins, Lennie Tristano, and Kai Winding.At one of the early jazz workshop concerts inBrooklyn, Mingus brought together Dennis,J. J. Johnson, Kai Winding, and BennieGreen. This concert was billed as the Battleof the Trombones, and marked the begin-ning of the Jay and Kai team. In 1956 hewent to the West Coast with Mingus. He iscurrently working with Buddy Rich.

Jimmy Knepper, winner of the 1958 DownBeat International Critic’s New Start Award,was born in Los Angeles on November 22,1927. His early musical experience wasmainly with big bands, Charlie Spivak,Woody Herman, Charlie Barnet, ClaudeThornhill, and Ralph Marterie; and he playedfor awhile with Charlie Parker. He joined thejazz workshop early in 1957 and was one ofthe musicians playing at the BrandeisFestival that summer, where Mingus’“Revelations” was performed along with thecompositions of five other jazz and classicalmusicians. In the spring of 1958 Knepperorganized his own group, later joined TonyScott, and more recently toured with StanKenton. He is very accomplished technical-ly. Britt Woodman and Duke Ellington’s othertrombonists listened to him enthusiasticallylast summer at the Great South BayFestival, where he played with the jazzworkshop. Britt summed up their feelings,saying: “Man, he’s all over that trombone!”

Mingus’ biography has been noted quite fullyelsewhere, but for the benefit of new mem-bers of his audience I’ll recapitulate it inbrief. He was born in an army camp atNogales, Arizona, April 22, 1922, and soonthereafter his family moved to Los Angeles.He grew up in Watts, three miles from L.A.

The first music he heard was church music.His stepmother took him to the HolinessChurch where there were trombone, tam-bourines, bass, and a bass drum, and themusic was filled with blues, moaning, andriffs set by the preacher. One day, listeningto his father’s crystal set (at the risk of beingseverely punished if found tampering withit), he heard Duke Ellington’s “East St. LouisToodle-Oo.” “It was the first time I knewsomething else was happening besideschurch music.”

He tried the trombone when he was six, latertook up the cello, and switched to bass inhigh school. He studied the bass with RedCallender and then, for five years, with H.Rheinschagen, formerly of the New YorkPhilharmonic. His early gigs were with LouisArmstrong and Kid Ory, but under pressureof kidding by his friends, he left the oldtimersand gigged with Lionel Hampton, DukeEllington, Red Norvo, Charlie Parker, BudPowell, and Art Tatum, finally becoming aleader of his own group in 1952.

I’ve mentioned in passing his foray into filmscoring, and I’d like to add a word about jazzand poets. Mingus played with poets inFrisco ten years or so ago. He feels it hasn’thad the proper chance in New York, despitethe many efforts to present it, including hisown concerts last March with KennethPatchen. But music and poetry (or acting)does seem to have a definite future—if hisrecent experience with actors on televisionis a reliable forecast.

At this writing, he has just completed workon the first of three plays by Leo Pogostin forthe Robert Herridge Theatre. The first playof this trilogy uses bass alone for the score;the other two will employ other members ofhis group. During the week of rehearsal, andthe three dress rehearsals, musician andactors worked in close reaction to oneanother. For the actual taping of the show,however, the music was cut down so low asto be inaudible to the actors, to avoid feed-back into their mikes. Two of the actors saidthey missed it—the bass had seemed to beanother actor and had become an integralpart of the play.

The acting methods used were peculiarlyakin to jazz. The script formed the skeletonaround which the actors might change or adlib lines according to their response to thesituation at that moment, so that each per-formance was slightly different. MartinBalsam, the lead, said “Sticking too closelyto lines is stifling. This method gives an air ofthe unexpected and keeps us alive to the sit-uation and the other actors.” A jazz musicianworks in this way, using a given musicalskeleton and creating out of it, building amusical whole related to that particularmoment by listening to and interacting withhis fellow musicians. Jazz musicians work-ing with actors could conceivably provideaudiences with some of the most movingand alive theater they have ever experi-enced.

One poet, Jonathan Williams (if we mayreturn to poets for a moment), in noting therather bare poetic scene writes, “The onlysolace for a poet in New York is the occa-sional spirit in painting and jazz—the ‘open-ing out of my countree,’ the projective flashthat Charles Olson sees inherent in thegreatest American art: Ives, Ryder, Sullivan,Melville. In the winter of 1959 this spirit radi-ates for me from the paintings of theKooning, which seem like the best land-scapes since Oz, and from the sessions ofthe Charles Mingus Jazz Workshop. I heardthis Quintet more than thirty times in threemonths, increasingly rapt by the presence ofthose tired but necessary words ‘nobility’and ‘love’ in the music.

“It is incredible that Mingus can dredge outof the contemporary slough the potency andhealing grace of his music. Pieces like the‘Fables of Faubus,’ ‘Goodbye Pork Pie Hat’and others are miracles of a kind. They arethere, available, God knows, for anyone ofthose not so bugged by the crazy barrage ofthe Communication of Nothing that they canstill hear. Poetry and music are for thosewith straight connections between ears,eyes, head, heart, and gut.”

—Diane Dorr-Dorynek1959

MINGUS DYNASTY

It seems tome that ten or fifteenyear cyclesin jazz arecamouf lagesfor insecuremusicianswho h idebehind thecurrentstyle.

FOLLOWING ARE THE ORIGINAL LP LINER NOTES BY CHARLES MINGUS, AS TOLD TO DIANE DORR-DORYNEK:

Teo Macero’s November 30, 1959 memo toWalter Dean to try to get approval to pay JimmyKnepper’s “surprise” arranging bill. Practicallyevery album ever made has additional last-minute costs for which the producer must thenbeg business affairs to approve and pay.

Jimmy Knepper’s bill for four arrangements and some copying work on the “Mingus

Dynasty” session. It’s amazing by today’s standards, but $50.00 was the average rate

for big band arrangements at recording sessions at that time.

I remember too well the era when criticsraved about a new creative dissonance injazz and its unheard of harmonies—or dis-paraged what they later renamed “boppers”and their long lines of unrelated notes. Iwent around listening to find these boppersand came up with a handful of musicianswho adopted this idiom to their instrumentsand became famous through their inventionin this style. But I wonder about the wealthof individuality and creativity we might havehad and what they could have added to theevolution of jazz had they not been caughtup in the Charlie Parker trend.

Who were the other boppers that criticsspoke about, as though a myriad of bop dis-ciples were taking over the earth of jazz?Anyone who attempted to play a familiarrhythmic pattern from the beginnings orendings of Bird’s phrases or wore a goateeand bop glasses like Dizzy was called abebopper. I disliked stylish “new looks” thenand still think that such fashions generatesterile rehashings of one man’s achieve-ment. I studied Bird’s creative vein with thesame passion and understanding withwhich I’d studied the scores of my favoriteclassical composers, because I found apurity in his music that until then I had foundonly in classical music. Bird was the causeof my realization that jazz improvisation, aswell as jazz composition, is the equal ofclassical music if the performer is a creativeperson. Bird brought melodic developmentto a new point in jazz, as far as Bartók orSchoenberg or Hindemith had taken it in theclassics. But he also brought to music aprimitive, mystic, supra-mind communica-tion that I’d only heard in the late Beethovenquartets and, even more, in Stravinsky.Looking backward, I realized that this kindof communication has been there in otherjazz creators’ improvisation, for instance inRex Stewart’s trumpet. Bartók and mostother composers knew about life up todeath and wrote music as though it and theyonly existed here. But Bird had an unafraidsoreness of self and of the relation of self tolife, and death, and creation. His musicexists here and beyond—as though he hadbeen playing before he got here.

The followers who supposed Bird’s greatnesslay in his melodic patterns copied them with-out realizing that if Bird played something asdiatonic as a scale on his horn (do, re, me, fa,so, la, ti, do), he could play it millions of differ-ent ways with millions of different meanings.

These sham copies have distorted Bird’sbeauty and greatness. I wonder how he felthearing copies of himself all over America?How would a great, original painter feel if hesaw in every gallery copies of his paintings,copies that were being hailed as good alongwith his own. I think it would be difficult, if notimpossible, to retain his sense of himself, andthat such a situation can destroy a man’scapacity to continue to create.

Recently a young man came to New Yorkwith a plastic horn who critics are saying willcause a new era in jazz. He’s doing atonalthings that I’ve heard other musicians do, buthe talks with his horn in the profound andprimitive way Bird did. Shortly after hearingthis young man, Ornette Coleman, I spoke toGeorge Russell. George said, “I hope the crit-ics won’t do to him what they did to Bird.” Isaid, “I know what you mean. They can brain-wash the public into forgetting that what pre-ceded Coleman is still valid and that Colemanis simply one more addition to the main-stream of great jazz creators. They have thepower and perhaps the irresponsibility toinflate him and his style to such importancethat it wouldn’t take long to erase in mostmusicians’ minds the awareness of anythingother than the need to join the ‘new look.’ Itwould become an economic pressure onmany who will think they have to play thatway to make a living and the new camouflagefor the people who have no faith in their indi-viduality.”

When the musicians who used to hide behindCharlie Parker buy plastic saxophones, trum-pets, trombones and basses, hanging on to afew of the rhythmic phrases Coleman hasbeen able to create—when they realize theyhave a new camouflage of atonality, no timebars, no key signature—when they all simul-taneously begin to jabber in this borrowedstyle in all the night clubs all over America—

then the walls of all the jazz clubs will proba-bly crumble at this pretentious era of so-called good music, jazz.

But it won’t happen again if every musicianwill play himself.

If you agree with me that in addition to bor-rowing another man’s solutions a composercan also repeat himself, then perhaps you’llunderstand what I mean when I say I’d bebored with rooms full of Picasso’s early cubistpaintings and that I’d prefer selections fromhis entire oeuvre. It has taken me many yearsof being misunderstood—(critics wanted topigeonhole and stylize me, saying “Mingususes whistles and effects” when I used themon only one piece out of thirty or forty differ-ent recorded compositions)—to finally findacceptance for my point that a composer writ-ing twenty pieces should write twenty piecesthat are different...as much as you’d wanttwenty paintings to look different from oneanother. When I went to a Gauguin retrospec-tive I saw a great painter: no painting lookedlike the other, each was done by a newgenius, unimpressed by himself and his pre-vious creation.

My last record for Columbia, Mingus Ah Um,on which each piece was different, sold manythousands of records, and I’m sure it’s due tothe fact that people are tired of hearing vibes,piano, bass and drum groups, or any otherconcocted “group sound,” playing at thesame low level of dynamics, with the samecompositional form, the same color andembellishment. Or the same big bands withfour or five trumpets, four or five trombones,five or six saxophones, and a rhythm sectionpounding away, 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4, as thoughthe audience has no sense of rhythm or beatin its mind. And still playing arrangements asthough there were only three instruments inthe band: a trumpet, a trombone and a saxo-phone, with the other three or four trumpets,three or four trombones and four or five sax-ophones there just to make the arrangementsound louder by playing harmonic support tothe leading trumpet, trombone and saxo-phone. What would you call this? A big band?A loud band? A jazz band? A creative band?

I’d write for a big sound (and with fewermusicians) by thinking out the form thateach instrument as an individual is going toplay in relation to all the others in the com-position. This would replace the old hat sys-tem of passing the melody from section tosection, for example from trumpet to reedsection while the trombones run throughtheir routine of French horn chordal sounds.Even this cliché would be listenable if it werenot made to stand alone but were used asbackground for ad lib solos. I think it’s timeto discard these tired arrangements andsave only the big Hollywood productionintroduction and ending which uses a ten ormore note chord. If these ten notes wereused as a starting point for several melodiesand finished as a linear composition—withparallel or simultaneous and juxtaposedmelodic thoughts—we might come up withsome creative big band jazz.

“Far Wells, Mill Valley” is scored for piano,vibes, flute, alto, two tenors, baritone, trum-pet, trombone, bass and drums. Section Aopens (IA) with four lines: flute and vibes ina 12/8 line against alto and trumpet in a16/16 line (that is, three notes againstfour), an inner counter-melody played bytwo tenors, and a slow melodic line onbass, baritone and trombone. The trom-bone leaves the bass line during pedalpoints and his weaving in and out blendsthe whole into a harmonic or organ sound.The opening is recapitulated, A, in a swing-ing 4/4 which repeats, in keeping with thetraditional jazz structure AABA.

Section B opens with a trumpet trill writtento sound more primitive than it soundshere. All solos in this section are ad libbedfrom a voiced thirteen tone row scaleagainst a pedal point rhythmic pattern. Thescale replaces the traditional chord patternfrom which musicians usually improvise. Itmay be broken up in any manner by thesoloist. When Roland Hanna takes the firstsolo with the piano right hand (the left handcontinues the percussive pattern), the writ-ten flute line takes up the melodic mood.When the flute line dissolves from writtenpart to solo, the written alto part continuesthe melodic line. This technique assures

compositional continuity even if a soloistplays something unrelated. The soloistcan’t play a “wrong” note, but he can makea bad choice of notes not related to thecomposer’s melodic conception. JeromeRichardson’s flute solo is played within thecontext and the point at which the writtenpart ends and the solo begins is indeci-pherable. The alto (John Handy) joins theflute in double improvisation and the conti-nuity is then carried by written lines fortrumpet tenors and trombone.

Section C has the combined emotional col-oring of the opening, IA, and A proper. Thebackground behind the bass solo is writtenin high register as a compliment to the basssolo and to be out of its range. The solos inthis section were written to be ad libbedfrom open fifths. That means there is nomajor or minor third or tone center. All thechromatics are at the soloist’s disposalwhich would allow a pivot point type ofatonal solo. The solos by Handy on altoand Richard Williams on trumpet are finesolos, but they are executed in a diatonicCharlie Parker chordal manner that doesn’tutilize the possibilities given by the openfifths. Booker Ervin’s tenor joins the alto indouble improvisation that does achieve thecompositional continuity that I’d wanted inthe preceding individual solos.

The final section recapitulates section B,with improvisations by Williams on trumpetand Dannie Richmond on timpani, and,foregoing the Hollywood production ending,ends with a single note.

The full title of “Gunslinging Bird” is “IfCharlie Parker Were a Gunslinger There’dBe A Whole Lot Of Dead Copycats.” A poetwho heard this one night at the Showplaceimprovised a poem called “If Bird Were aGunclinger There’d Be A Lot LessRobbins.” Incidentally, many of my titles aregiven arbitrarily to the music without beingrelated to it. This composition featuressolos by Knepper on trombone, Handy inalto chorus and Richmond on drums.Ellington’s “Things Ain’t What They UsedTo Be” features Ervin on tenor, Knepper,Hanna on piano, and bass. The melody’s

rhythmic pattern differs from the original inthe second chorus.

“Song With Orange” is the title compositionfrom a CBS television play, A Song WithOrange In It, for which I wrote the score. Itfeatures Knepper in a plunger solo andWilliams on trumpet. “Mood Indigo” isplayed in the beautiful mood in which Dukeoriginally wrote it and with a new innercounter-melody on the tenor. The lead isplayed by the alto and the solos are byKnepper, Hanna and myself. “New NowKnow How” opens with the introduction fol-lowed directly by the bridge (to break theAABA routine) and ends with A. Solos areplayed by Nico Bunink on the piano, JohnHandy on alto and Knepper.

“Diane” is a melodic, atonal composition.The melodies for flute, trumpet, alto, tenor,piano and bass are all equally important. Isuggest listening to it as a whole ratherthan trying to follow one particular line.After the ensemble glissando there is apiano solo by Roland Hanna on the secondtheme. In the out chorus the vibes rein-force the piano line, and a trombone line isadded. “Put Me In That Dungeon” is theopening music from my score for the CBStelevision ballet, Frankie and Johnny, star-ring Melissa Hayden. It features Handy onalto. “Slop” was written for a barroom scenefor Frankie and Johnny. If you notice a sim-ilarity to a 3/4 composition on my lastColumbia album, it is not coincidental. Thechoreographer had rehearsed his dancersto “Better Git It In Your Soul,” and asked forsomething like it when I composed thescore. “Slop” has the same church influ-ence, but with a looser, sloppierapproach—they’ve left church meeting andgone to the picnic grounds where they singthe same meeting songs but the Rev or theDeacon has just sneaked a few nips to afew of the leading voices. In the beginningyou hear Ervin on tenor and Hanna soloson piano. Both “Slop” and “Put Me In ThatDungeon” feature cellos.

—Charles Mingus1959

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PHOTOGRAPHY: Don Hunstein; Pages 3, 4, 12: Teo Macero Collection:Music Division, The New York Public Libraryfor the Performing Arts, Astor, Lenoxand Tilden Foundations