Charles Mingus – East Coasting (1957)

I have been recently quite bored with pop music. I don't know if it has to do with me getting older, or with the fact that I've been listening to so much music that it all starts to sound kind of the same. In any case, I have been tired of hearing electronic instruments and studio gimmicks that make the music sound completely different from what it would sound like live without many effects. As a result, I have been really drawn into jazz recently. Especially the records from the mid-50s to mid-60s. I usually buy my jazz on vinyl as it somehow makes it sound more authentic. The problem with that is that I can't take the music with me, because I don't have the mp3s. Just a few days ago, I was at a record store here in London and I spotted compilation boxes that have quite a few original jazz albums on CD and they don't cost that much, so I bought a few of them to get some jazz on my phone. This is one of the albums that came with the Charles Mingus box.



The nice thing about those boxes is that you actually get like mini versions of the original albums. The CDs are in cardboard sleeves that look like the original vinyl covers. This is also why I'm listing these albums individually in this blog, rather than as an individual box set.

Charles Mingus has become one of my favourite jazz artists recently. Firstly, I'm a bass player myself and I used to learn to play in a jazz school in Finland. This is why great jazz bassists are intriguing to me. I love listening to their skills and think about how well I could play these songs myself. Secondly, I think Mingus' songs are among the best jazz songs out there. There are bluesy structures and interesting, quite melodic parts in them. There are enough surprising elements in the songs, without being too experimental at the expense of great melodies.

The album starts with the only non-original Mingus song, Memories of You. This jazz standard sounds perfect with Mingus' steady bass lines and Clarence Shaw's trumpets and Jimmy Knepper's trombones are seriously heartbreakingly beautiful. The first original Mingus song on the album is the title-track East Coasting. This fast-paced song has elements of so-called crime jazz style. The horns are going in unison quite a lot, while the rhythm section surprises the listened nicely at every turn. Next up is West Coast Ghost, which has really cool bluesy beginning. The great Bill Evans is behind the piano and you really get to hear his unique style in this song while Mingus keeps the complex structure together perfectly. Celia has some cracking trumpet sounds and excellent dream-like piano sequences. The wavy groove hypnotises you into a calm mood. Conversation sounds more like a jazz standard from older days. There's some fantastic walking bass in this song while the horns zoom in and out, almost like having a conversation, like the title of the name suggests. The album ends with Fifty-First Street Blues, which sounds almost like a song Tom Waits could've sung to more than a decade later.

I always used to think that important music started appearing around the mid-60s, but now I'm actually starting to realise that the turn of the decade from 50s to 60s was probably one of the most important periods musically. This is when album was born as a concept and these jazz artists created something that hasn't been matched ever since. The more I delve into this period, the more and more amazing albums I find. I also love that so many jazz superstars play on each others' albums. Bill Evans playing on this Charles Mingus album is a great example of that. Evans himself has made so many extraordinary albums.

East Coasting sounds very much like a live recording even if it is a studio album. The band members play beautifully together and it doesn't sound rehearsed. It sounds like they're just coming up with this beautiful music as they go along and that is a very beautiful thing. I love the fact that jazz, at its best, is able to get out of written patterns of music and create something unique every time around.

Listen to the album on Spotify.