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Let My Children Hear Music

Charles Mingus - Let My Children Hear Music Audio CD

A fair review of the Charles Mingus "Let My Children Hear Music" Audio CD. Please note that the below review is the views of the authors, and authors only. You can get a complete list of all Charles Mingus reviews here, or go back to the Charles Mingus tabs.

Band: Charles Mingus
Title: Let My Children Hear Music
Rating:

Release Date: 2008-02-01
Media: Audio CD

Tracks: 1: Shoes of the Fisherman's Wife Are Some Jive Ass Slippers 2: Adagio ma Non Troppo 3: Don't Be Afraid, the Clown's Afraid Too 4: Taurus in the Arena of Life [#] 5: Hobo Ho 6: Chill of Death 7: I of Hurricane Sue

Bigger band
. 4 1/2

Undoubtedly one of the grandest Jazz compositions conceived and every bit deserving of the popularity transcendent immortals like A Love Supreme and Bitches Brew have been afforded, LMCHM may remain loudly complex for those unwilling to surrender preconceived notions on what the format should sound like, but aside from sparse moments of intellectual or creative overindulgence this is constantly informed, measured, layering bliss of major and minor key battling.

Classic
Of course with Mingus, nothing is ever that simple, and you'll find with repeated listens that one always shades the other. If you wanted, you could divide Mingus music into two catagories: Rootsey gospel blues and complex harmonic roller coaster rides.

Mingus disappeared for awhile after 1965. He had demons-and to understand, I highly reccommend his Beneath The Underdog autobiography-- but perhaps this is what made his music so emotionally impacting. If you listen to his 1963 Black Saint and Sinner Lady, you can't deny he gave you his entire nervous system.

But in 1971, he returned full force with Let My Children Hear Music, one of his best works. This album took his music to a deeper level. This is symphonic jazz, filled with complex, quicksilver chord changes, advanced harmonics, and winding, many-part pieces with chords switching on each beat at times.

Yet all the music has a warm, Ellingtonian texture--if Ellinton had a stronger advocate, I have yet to find him-- and works on the ears and the heart, not the brain. There are bass solos, flute passages, sound effectts, anything you could wish for in this feast of sound. Complex as the music is, it is also increadibly dynamic, and so it is not going to take long to get into this.

You may not know quite what you heard the first time, but you know it is something great. .

Mingus' last masterpiece
Surrounded by 3 other great bassists (Ron Carter, Milt Hinton & Richard Davis), Mingus reached his goal of creating beautiful music amid the "music pollution" as he calls it that was manifesting on our planet. In my mind this stands as the late bassist/composer genius Charles Mingus' last masterwork before he was crippled by Lou Gehrig's disease. "Hobo Ho" still shows Charles as a master bassist and composer and "The Chill of Death" is his great musical meditation on the grim reaper. There may be "The Mingus Dynasty" that existed after his passing but it's not valid without this great musician leading it!!.

The resounding final statement of a true American maverick.
Mingus was a larger-than-life figure and dreamer of Faustian proportions, though his projects frequently fell short of realizing their maker's designs. Even if you disagree with Mingus' assessment of this as his greatest recording, the musical evidence is sufficiently compelling to make you respect the composer's judgment. In some respects, he's remarkably similar to the filmmaking genius, Orson Welles (and not only in terms of artistic vision). After the controversy and commercial failure of "Citizen Kane," Welles was largely sentenced to pursuing his Promethean ambitions with self-financed films on shoe-string budgets that simply could not conceal their frequently ragged, unpolished production values.

Recent recordings like Mingus' UCLA and Cornell concerts often show much of the same disparity between the artist's lofty conceptions and inadequate resources for implementation of them (in terms of money, time, personnel, promotional agents, circulation channels). But with the help of arranger Sy Johnson, Mingus came closer than ever to realizing the "grand design" in "Let My Children Hear Music," which amounts to a literal and fitting "valedictory" by the composer-bassist-leader. Call the music portentous and pretentious: it IS. Romantics, dreamers, visionaries, idealists always ARE. And lest there be any doubt, the liner notes quoting Mingus on the project are practically a jeremiad on the state of art and culture in the late 20th century.

Like Welles, William Blake, Shelley, Pound and perhaps all under-appreciated or ignored geniuses, Mingus was a true "maverick" (quite unlike the Presidential candidate who claims the title because he disagreed with his commander-in-chief 10% of the time), distancing himself from liberal revolutionaries as much as conservative stand-patters. As his program notes make clear, Mingus wanted to liberate listeners by opening their ears not just to the music of the present but to the brilliant compositional structures of the past. He was at once "progressive" and "conservative," intensely committed to conserving the best music by insisting that it be heard amidst the frequent noise of the present.

"Let My Children Hear Music" is Mingus writ large (if that's possible), music that's more absorbing compositionally than some of the earlier recordings of these same works. If there's a deficiency to the music, it's ironically the comparative absence of the normally irrepressible Mingus himself. The program opens with a thrilling "Shoes of the Fisherman's Wife" that practically recalls Strauss's "Death and Transfiguration. " Yet the impact of the piece is partially dependent on the listener's familiarity with previous, less polished and fully "orchestrated" versions of the composition. Soon, the textures of the program tend to overwhelm individual soloists and even Mingus. In terms of a final result doing justice by each of the personalities in the ensemble while representing in full the character of the leader, Mingus inarguably falls short of his hero, Ellington.

All the same, the textures and scale are in themselves a wonder, and the saxophones of the ageless James Moody and the noble (if wronged) soldier Bobby Jones are added "clinchers" to this fascinating, if not essential, recording. Looking at Amazon's current price for this item and factoring in a tax and postage-free transaction, I'd be surprised if you found many better values on Amazon. But don't take it for granted. Some of Ellington's best music is currently unavailable. In the "culture" of the present, as Mingus himself sensed, there are major obstacles to being heard. Why not pick up a boxful of these and hand them out to young people in exchange for a promise to give up some of the time devoted each day to the Xbox, iPhone, and Face Book. (I know--what to do about the problem of the suddenly obsolescent CD player?) As loud, omnipresent, and inescapable as the "medium" has become, Mingus was enough of a maverick to believe there's still a message that needs to be heard. Some of us are old-fashioned enough to agree with him.

Mingus on his way back in Fine Form
Brilliant, angular, evocative. Zappa and the Duke would be proud. Git it in Your Soul. It won't disappoint.

You can see a complete list of all Charles Mingus discography, or go back to the Charles Mingus tabs. There is also a good guide on how to read guitar tabs here.