Indigenous Music
Hentoff, Nat
INDIGENOUS MUSIC , Nat Hentoff Recollections of an A&R Man Ajazz buffs perennial fantasy is the magical chance to make his own recordings of his favorite musicians. It's a marginal way of...
...This particular Mingus Jazz Workshop unit—Eric Dolphy on alto, bass clarinet, and flute...
...Then Roy said to Mingus: "I'm glad I made this...
...A lot of the young ones are so busy being busy on their instruments, they forget the basics...
...There were other Mingus dates on Candid, all of them—including that first session with the lights out—finally available again in The Complete Candid Recordings of Charles Mingus, a four-LP set put together by Mosaic Records, 197 Strawberry Hill Avenue, Stamford, CT 06902...
...On drums was (Papa) Jo Jones, who made the brushes dance, and who for a long time had been part of the most effortlessly swinging rhythm section in all of jazz—Count Basie's...
...Then I'd suggest that the players improvise on the blues...
...I was also in charge of arguing with the engineer...
...The musician I most wanted to record was Charles Mingus...
...He was a tough man to work for because, just as he kept driving himself to be more open and unafraid in his music, so he relentlessly pushed his sidemen to plunge beneath the notes...
...They don't get all the way down into the music...
...I wanted to find out what bag you were in...
...trumpeter Ted Curson...
...Any time I brought a singer in, the engineer would insist she be kept inside a box-like container so that the sound of the players wouldn't "leak" across hers...
...After one take, Dannie Richmond, usually an exceptionally cool customer, ran out of the studio, jumped into the air, and yelled, "Damn it, I made it...
...A bassist of overwhelming emotional force and prodigious technique, Mingus was also one of the few commanding figures in jazz who—like Duke Ellington, Jelly Roll Morton, and Thelonious Monk—had created a substantial body of compositions that were distinctively personal...
...It's worse now, but even then recording engineers were far more interested in how many tracks they could juggle on their complex boards than in whether it was all worth doing in terms of the music...
...I should say I have had no connection with Candid since 1961, so I have no monetary interest in the reissued Mingus Candids...
...Once I chose the leader, I didn't get in his way unless I was asked for advice...
...Even his weight fluctuated, depending on his state of mind in any given period...
...I always won because I was paying for the studio...
...You did, baby...
...I insisted she couldn't hear the musicians from inside that damn thing, and they couldn't hear her, so how the hell could they interact...
...If you can't play, you can at least put it all together...
...It's a marginal way of becoming part of the history of the music...
...It's good to know...
...Mingus and I had been close friends for some time, and because he knew I would never dream of telling him what he could or couldn't do on a recording date, he signed with Candid...
...He put so much pressure on me I had to come out...
...The only exception was when a session got bogged down on a tune that wasn't working...
...Only the engineer's board in the control room glimmered...
...I had heard them at the club, the Showplace, many times, but something happened in the studio...
...Similarly, I expect football fans dream of taking Mike Ditka's place for a string of Sundays...
...His renown had been somewhat dimmed during the modern jazz period, and he came on this session with some apprehension about whether he could fit in with the youngsters...
...Mosaic, run by Michael Cuscuna and Charlie Lourie, is a connoisseur's label, assembling definitive editions of many of the Blue Note classics as well as carefully researched comprehensive sets (including alternate takes) from other companies...
...In the studio, Eric Dolphy, grinning, told me, "I don't know what happened but we never got together like this in the club...
...drummer Dannie Richmond, and Mingus—had worked in a Greenwich Village club for nearly a year...
...One of the dates included in this celebration of Mingus's life force, which could be tenderly lyrical as well as fiercely sardonic, was a coming together of generations of jazzmen...
...and invariably, once the blues took charge, the players relaxed, as did I. The musicians were always involved in the tape-editing, and the leader—not the a&r man—had the final cut...
...Charles was a man of widely fluctuating moods...
...We played back one of the takes into the studio and Roy, listening to himself, turned to a young modern hornman from Detroit who was visiting, and said, with a laugh, "We're still trying, aren't we...
...My hero, by the way, and a source of comfort during these disputes, was Ernest Ansermet, who was responsible for some of the most satisfyingly ungim-micked high-fidelity recordings of symphony orchestras, though he used only one overhead mike...
...For one glorious year a quarter of a century ago, I was the a&r (artists and repertory) man for a brand new jazz label, Candid Records...
...I finally got to play it like I've been hearing it...
...My main responsibilities were keeping track of the time of each take and making sure there were always enough sandwiches and beer...
...They were about to break up, this session being their final collaboration...
...You could tell a Mingus piece from the first bar...
...Maybe it's because we were leaving, and the tension was off...
...Mingus looked as if he had just been presented with the Congressional Medal of Honor...
...But from note one, everything and everybody fit together, and by the end of the afternoon, Roy was beaming...
...Also on hand was Roy Eldridge, one of the most influential swing-era trumpeters...
...Tommy Flanagan, who flows easily across all categories, was on piano, and Mingus was, of course, the bassist...
...Having done some freelance dates before, I had a pretty clear idea ofhow to operate...
...Now I know you're in the right bag...
...For the first session, he wanted to simulate the ambience of a night club and so he had me shut off the lights in the studio...
...Of the newer generation, Eric Dolphy, an exhilarating and daring improviser, was on alto and Jimmy Knep-per, a player of swift subtlety and irony, was on trombone...
...As trumpeter Ted Curson once told me, "Mingus brought me out...
Vol. 50 • March 1986 • No. 3
