1. Honeysuckle Rose
2. Jump Monk
3. Mingus Blues
4. E.S.P.
5. Ecclusiastics
6. Us Is Two
7. E's Flat, Ah's Flat Too
8. Eclipse
9. Little Royal Suite
10. Ool-Ya-Koo
11. Taurus In The Arena of Life - CD
12. Strollin' - CD
13. The I Of Hurricane Sue - CD
14. Portrait - CD
15. Don't Be Afraid, The Clown's Afraid Too - CD

February 4, 1972

 LINER NOTES

MINGUS. The Mingus Concert for me was a great ego trip. Me, William H. Cosby, Jr., being asked by Charles Mingus to MC his performance. Many times, as a man in my early twenties, I had taken my last dollar, gone down to the Showboat on Broad and Lombard in South Philadelphia and paid to see the giants, the pioneers, the innovators, the professors without formal degrees in music-Miles Davis, Max Roach, Art Blakey, John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, MJQ, Chico Hamilton and many others. I can't get all the names in but I love all those cats.

MINGUS. Yes, Mingus. There I stood on the stage, overjoyed because I, as an appreciative listener, was able to give Charles Mingus something - and that is my voice or my presence as Bill Cosby the comedian introducing Charles Mingus.

- Bill Cosby

We were all there that wonderful night - some of us who have been awed for ages by Charles Mingus' giant talents, some of us who have known him across the ups and downs of his history, some of us who have only read the critics' raves.

We were all there that wonderful night - stars and nobodies, peers and doubters, the young, the jaded. Friends and somebodies.

We were all there that wonderful night. February 4, 1973. Charles, Mingus was on stage. In concert. Live. It was his first such appearance in ten years. We were more than 2,000 fans in the sold-out hall forming up a personal welcome-back committee - we, who had come to listen, to be overwhelmed, to cheer.

When Charles Mingus strode into the spotlight and picked up his instrument, the audience greeted him like a returning hero at last come home. It was a moment of emotional history. A musical event.

The concert brought together a score of illustrious musicians. Gene Ammons came back to the New York scene for a much too rare appearance. Ammons, tenor saxophonist. "A man with the ability to send electrical shocks of pleasure through an audience." Gerry Mulligan was there with his "peerless baritone sax artistry"; so were alto greats Lee Konitz, Richie Perri and Charles McPherson; and tenor men Bobby Jones and George Dorsey. And that was only the reed section.

There were classic solos and duets, ensemble passages and all-out blowing. There was excitement. Creativity. Genius.

There were moments. Too many to point up here but some which bear comment.

The concert was opened by Bill Cosby, emcee. e says: "Honeysuckle Rose, which I conducted, was a piece of comedy which I feel can give the people an idea that there can be humor in all forms of music besides Jerry Lewis and the Symphony or Danny Kaye and a Symphony or Jack Benny playing a violin or Victor Borge playing the piano. I think there is another kind of humor in music and it can be brought out through 'Fats' Waller's Honeysuckle Rose."

There was the "Mingus Blues," which the Village Voice described: "Mingus, heavy and Buddha-like, his tie and jacket now gone, led into a slow blues with his bass. Ammons, dressed in a light green dashiki suit and looking like wise Mingus' evil cousin, stepped forward to pick it up. All the lights were out except for spots on these two round figures. It was their turn and they knew it. Ammons' straining, shouting tenor, the sax actually seeming to be part of his body, bounced around the hall. When it came back to him he swung his huge body to the rhythm, beat his fists at the air. They riffed each other. One note. Two. Three. A phrase. They watched each other. Song. Shouted. Threw the notes. Spit them out. The audience, in the throes of the spirits, yelled and screamed and squealed and moaned. It was the blues. The natural, raw, cookin', sexy blues. And it was beautiful. "

There was a bow too, to a great lady. But let's hear how Charles decribes the meaning of it and a bit of its history in his autobiography Beneath The Underdog.

"Then Billie Holiday came to town and Fats Navarro - it was the next to last time I talked to him. They were playing a concert for Norman Granz and I went over to the theater to see them.
" Minkus Finkus! I heared you was here, I knewed you'd come!'
" ' I been here awhile, Fats.'
" 'I know, I heared. Come on backstage and meet the folks. You losed a lot of weight too, huh, Mingus? Look at me - I made a record with Jacquet under the name of Slim Romero, how 'bout that! Billie, here's Ming!'
"'Mingus, honey! You on the show?'
"'Just come to listen, Billie.'
"'Give me some sugar, baby-mmmmm! Want togig? Norman needs another bass man on the show,you know?'
"'That would do me good, Billie.'
"'How're you doing with your girls?'
"'That's all over. It was too much for a man of high degree.'
"'Solid, baby.'
"'Remember that song I wrote for you, Billie - 'Eclipse'? You never did sing it.'
" 'Go home and get your bass and bring the song with you. You're working, 'cause I'm the star of the show and I say so."*
"Eclipse" is part of this concert. Naturally.

So is "Little Royal Suite." It was the only new music written for the evening. A bow to Roy Eldridge. Charles Mingus has special feelings about the Eldridge talent. "I want Roy to do a walk-on solo. His music, his sound, is a part of my life. You know, I always liked those older cats. I always liked to play with them. Nothing ever could keep them down. Look at Roy. Sixty years old and still growing."

And later, in another statement Mingus said: "Roy is an old man and you white people have never put him in the place you put Louis Armstrong. He should be as rich as Louis was, by now. I thought I'd use him in the concert, but he got sick."

Jon Faddis, an 18-year old trumpeteer, substituted for the ailing Eldridge. Jon played the special, extended piece his way. "The youngster proved to be a standout soloist, with range, fire and precise control. He clearly is a musician of great potential." (Variety.) Mingus added: "And Jon Faddis didn't play like Roy Eldridge once. He plays like Dizzy, if you want to know who he plays like. Dizzy and Snooky Young. That's what his style is built on."

There was an added treat that night - a jam session. "Stopping by to say a most welcome musical hello were Dizzy Gillespie, James Moody and Randy Weston. Dizzy was engaging as he and Cosby had fun trading vocal choruses on a bop number. Moody blew everybody's mind with an up-tempo, multi-noted solo on flute, and Randy Weston shone also in a brief but customarily distinctive piano outing." (Cashbox.)

It all added up to a night of musical history. Moments. Memories. Those of us who had come to hear were served so magnificently.

Sy Johnson, the arranger, has his own feelings about Mingus and the concert. "The orchestra and Teo Macero did a marvelous job. Mingus' music requires that the musicians go beyond professional reading of the score into a bending and distortion process, not unlike Picasso's version of Woman. This is what Mingus' style is all about. Mingus is truly an American composer."

Playboy summed the concert up succinctly: "One of the great jazzmen of all time is back, making original, vital music again."

But Charles Mingus, as usual, puts his own music in proper perspective. It had to do with the concert. It had to do most especially with his music.

He told this story to Nat Hentoff:
"Last summer, I played with my band on the Jazzmobile - you know, those free concerts in the streets for kids during the summer. We were in Central Harlem and one of the guys with me said, 'Mingus, you can't play what you usually do. They won't dig it.' But I did. And I did more. I took the music as far out as I could, and they still liked it.
"All those kids," Mingus was smiling, seeing them again, "following the truck, wanting more. Of course they wanted to hear it. It's their music, man. It's their lives. It goes back so for, and has so much farther to go. Hey."

We welcomed the man back that night. I was privileged. I was there.

-Mort Goode