January 20 - Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting

It's time for a change of pace. I can't tell you what possessed me to pick up the Charles Mingus box set Passions of a Man at the Bergen Public Library that cold and rainy fall day in what I think would have been 1997, although it might have been 1998. I do know it was rainy and I was wet, and something drew me to this collection of 6 CDs - his complete recordings for Columbia Records. I am not sure how much I really had heard of him either, but I do know that playing those CDs really was a revolutionary musical experience.

I had been exposed to jazz gradually through the 90s. The backdoor entrance - or gateway drug, if you will - was Clint Eastwood. I watched the movie Bird, featuring the great Forrest Whitaker as Charlie Parker - and I was transfixed by the music. I purchased a cassette with some of his most loved tunes, and I pretty much wore it out in between listening to Manowar and Metallica and the likes. Then, a few years later, I happened to walk in on a concert featuring the music of Miles Davis at Vår Frues Kirke (Church of Our Lady) in Trondheim, which only furthered my love for this very liberating music.

Anyway, when I put the Mingus CDs in my CD player and started listening to it, there were a two things that stood out to me. The first was Mingus' bass. The driving bass lines, the inspiring solos, it was all there on an upright bass. The second was what appeared to me to be the casual playfulness of the band. Having read a little bit about him, this casual sound is in great contrast to him being highly demanding and temperamental, but it is a testament to the music he wrote. The album Blues & Roots, which was part of the Passions of a Man box set, provides several examples of this playfulness, especially the track Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting.