Customer Reviews

Town Hall Concert

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This is up ther for me with some of the best albums by Thelonius Monk and Bill Evans and John Coltrane. It might be my all time favorite. Dolphy is sensational. Everyone is sensational. Clifford Jordan! Jackie Byard's pedaled turnaround 5 minutes into so long Eric is so well placed. Blues soloing at it's best. McCoy Tyner type pedaling! Hey! This assemblage of musicians (Dolpy, Mingus etc) is I the best assempblage of talent outside of the Miles, Coltrane, Bill Evans, Cannonball group. It's a concert to the NAACP and the short speech Mingus gives between the cuts gives the CD even more grounding and power. I just stopped by this site because I'm buying for a freidn of mine for X-mas. I have a lot of Mingus albums, and this is hands-down the best I've got.

What a great window into the power of live Mingus. Compositionally, both songs are beautiful little soundtracks that blend seamlessly into the improvisational guts of each. A better album consisting of a seventeener and a twenty-seven minute bohemoth is hard to imagine-- Praying with Eric, or "Meditations for a Pair of Wire Cutters," never drags, never lulls. Truly gripping jazz that only Mingus could accomplish.

The personnel on this album is the same personnel that Mingus would take to Europe shortly after this album was recorded, and I have CD's of most of the shows on that tour. This was amongst the best of the performances that they did, and one of only two that you'll find with Johnny Coles. He adds a lot to the proceedings, and the group as a whole makes for some truly great music. Here, you only get two songs, but great songs they are, and I have NEVER heard a better version of So Long Eric. (how prophetic and ironic of a title was THAT one?) Highly, and I do mean, HIGHLY recommended.

While it's really not possible to name a single "best" recording from a career as long, varied and important as that of Charles Mingus, 1964's TOWN HALL CONCERT certainly has as solid a claim to that title as anything else in the bassist/composer's vast discography. The two extended performances contained on this disc fairly circumscribe the jazz universe, from raunchy blues to lilting neoclassicism, ragtimey eccentricities to the outer reaches of the avant garde and back again with such seamless logic and unfailingly majestic musicianship that the listener cannot avoid entrapment even after dozens of closely monitored spins.
With trumpeter Johnny Coles and reedsmen Eric Dolphy and Clifford Jordan forming the front line, and pianist Jaki Byard joining Mingus and his longtime drummer Danny Richmond in the rhythm section, the leader assembled what must surely have been the strongest of his many combos for this concert and the European tour which followed it - a tour from which Dolphy, alas, would never return. Seldom have I heard a more thoroughly jelled group of musicians, and the spontaneous collective mapping of these lengthy sonic odysseys is precisely the sort of thing which separates the greatest from the merely great. Dolphy's heavenly flute work on "Praying with Eric" (a.k.a. "Meditations on Integration"), Byard's seismic runs up and down the keyboard, Mingus and Richmond's steady beats and sudden bursts, the grace of Coles and the gravel of Jordan in their respective turns on "So Long Eric" - why bother even trying to approximate what happens here in words? Suffice it to say that TOWN HALL CONCERT is forty-five minutes of utterly flawless, relentlessly searching jazz from some of the genre's supreme masters, and a fine way to reward even the most jaded of ears. Those who've already done so are advised to check out the MINGUS IN EUROPE and REVENGE! sets, recorded in Europe a couple of weeks later, for a more comprehensive (though certainly no more effective) earful of this stunning unit's repertoire.

just the other day i kicked out a humble little review of the mingus album "the black saint and the sinner lady," which i stated might very well be his best recording. well, today i listened to this album (town hall concert) and i'm ready to declare it his best. that's the kind of impressionable knucklehead i am! anyway, the problem (and what a great problem) with mingus recordings is that so many are great; thus a change in the wind might tip you from one favorite to another. but "town hall concert" is truly a classic jazz recording. consisting of only 2 tracks, "so long eric" and "praying with eric" (aka "meditations"), the whole thing runs about 45 glorious minutes. "so long eric," is 17 plus minutes of swinging creativeness. an upbeat piece of music that's loose and powerful and full of energy and joy. "praying with eric," is the more complex composition, with various moods and tempos and textures: it clocks in at 27 and a half minutes. the musicians are all incredible throughout, but it's eric dolphy and clifford jordan's sax playing that really stands out here. mingus gets the emotional best out of these two players, and if you've never heard either of them before, you will want to search out their own recordings after hearing this. an album not to be missed.

two long, involving pieces that tend to rip a hole in the musical universe and pull the listener right into the stormy tempest of Mingus' creative and passionate vision of music. his compositional skills are astounding, his playing is upfront and intense, bringing the music to a boiling point and keeping it tight. the other musicians involved in this live 1964 recording are equally enthralling and the brilliant performances are at peak level throughout the length of this cd. an outstanding recording that has touches of blues, swing, gospel, and the avant-garde all lovingly wrapped in a big warm blanket of jazz.

This is a perfect modern jazz date if I ever heard one. Dolphy and Jordan are constantly exciting, "the rhythm section", if the term is appropiate in this case, is not superior to very few phenomena from the jazz history, while the compositions themselves are remarkable, comparable to best Monk's or Ellington's work.

This is indubitably Mingus at his best.