Charles Mingus’s Pre-Bird, and the voices left on the offcuts

Charles Mingus の Pre-Bird (Mercury MG-20627/SR-60627) は、私が Mercury のジャズ系 LP を意識して集め始めたごく初期に手に入れた 1 枚です。1960年5月、ニューヨークの Plaza Sound で録音されたこのアルバムは、曲によって 10人のコンボから Gunther Schuller が指揮する 22人の大編成まで、編成が大きく変わるのが特徴です。

Charles Mingus’s Pre-Bird (Mercury MG-20627/SR-60627) was one of the first records I picked up when I started collecting Mercury’s jazz LPs with any seriousness. Recorded in May 1960 at Plaza Sound in New York, it changes instrumentation drastically from track to track, from a ten-piece combo to a twenty-two-piece orchestra conducted by Gunther Schuller.

Cash Box, September 9, 1961, p.23, “Cash Box Album Reviews.” A notice from the year the LP appeared. The reviewer grants the title its premise and then sets it aside: “the performances are strictly post-Bird, more precisely—current Mingus.”

A-1 “Take The ‘A’ Train” では左チャンネルから “A Train” のメロディ、右チャンネルから “Exactly Like You” のメロディが同時に流れ、B-1 “Do Nothin’ Till You Hear From Me” でも “I Let a Song Go Out of My Heart” との対位法的なマッシュアップ (contrapuntal pairing) が仕掛けられています。Ellington の楽曲を 2 曲ずつ対にして両面の冒頭に配するという、大胆な構成です。

On A-1, “Take The ‘A’ Train,” the melody of “A Train” comes out of the left channel while “Exactly Like You” comes out of the right, both at once; B-1, “Do Nothin’ Till You Hear From Me,” sets up the same kind of contrapuntal pairing with “I Let a Song Go Out of My Heart.” Putting two paired Ellington pieces at the head of each side is a bold piece of programming.

Lorraine Cusson のヴォーカルをフィーチャーした A-3 “Eclipse” や A-5 “Weird Nightmare” では不穏な美しさが漂います。のちに Mingus のリーダー作で圧倒的な存在感を示すことになる Eric Dolphy は、B-2 “Bemoanable Lady” での印象的なアルトソロを除くとむしろ控えめで、このアルバムではどちらかといえば Booker Ervin のテナーが前面に出ています。そしてアルバムを締めくくる B-3 “Half-Mast Inhibition” では、Mingus が 18歳の頃に書いた野心的な楽曲を Schuller 指揮の 22人編成で再現しており、ジャズと現代音楽の融合を目指したいわゆる「サード・ストリーム」の実践として、調性と無調性の境界を行き来する圧倒的な 8 分間が展開されます。タイトルの “Pre-Bird” は、Mingus が Charlie Parker の音楽に出会う以前に書いた楽曲を中心に構成されていることに由来します。

A-3 “Eclipse” and A-5 “Weird Nightmare,” both featuring Lorraine Cusson’s vocal, have an uneasy beauty about them. Eric Dolphy, who would later dominate Mingus’s own dates, stays largely in the background here, apart from a striking alto solo on B-2 “Bemoanable Lady”; it is Booker Ervin’s tenor that comes forward more often. The album closes with B-3 “Half-Mast Inhibition,” a piece Mingus had written at eighteen, realized by Schuller and the large ensemble: eight minutes that move back and forth across the line between tonality and atonality, and one of the more convincing results of what was then called Third Stream. The title refers to the fact that most of the material predates Mingus’s encounter with Charlie Parker’s music.

私がこのアルバムを最初に手に入れたのは、1973年頃に出た Phonogram のリイシュー盤 (Mercury MG-20627 のモノーラルプレス。直輸入の日本盤は IMPF 11004) でした。その直後に Mercury のオリジナルのステレオ盤 (SR-60627) も入手し、以来ずっと愛聴盤の一つです。

The first copy I owned was a Phonogram reissue from around 1973, a mono pressing of Mercury MG-20627 (the Japanese direct import carried the number IMPF 11004). I found an original Mercury stereo pressing (SR-60627) not long after, and the record has stayed in rotation ever since.

Mercury SR-60627 — Pre-Bird LP (stereo)

A-1. PB 3442-4 Take the "A" Train (interplates "Exactly Like You") 3:34
A-2. PB 3439-5 Prayer for Passive Resistance 3:49
A-3. PB 3440-5 Eclipse 3:45
A-4. PB 3431-5 Mingus Fingus No. 2 3:22
A-5. PB 3438-4 Weird Nightmare 3:35
B-1. PB 3441-4 Do Nothin' Till You Hear From Me (interplates "I Let A Song Out of My Heart") 3:33
B-2. PB 3432-3 Bemoanable Lady 4:32
B-3. PB 3430   Half-Mast Inhibition 8:12

Charles Mingus plays bass on all tracks accompanied by:

Tracks A-1〜A-3, A-5, B-1:
Ted Curson (tp), Jimmy Knepper (tb), Eric Dolphy (as, fl, b-cl),
Yusef Lateef (ts, fl), Booker Ervin (ts), Joe Farrell (ts, fl),
Paul Bley (p), Dannie Richmond (ds).
Track A-2: omit Bley. Track B-1: Sir Roland Hanna (p) replaces Bley.
Track A-3: add Lorraine Cusson (Lorraine Cousins) and band (voc). Track A-5: add Lorraine Cusson (Lorraine Cousins) (voc), omit Richmond.
Recorded May 25, 1960, probably at Plaza Sound, New York City.

Tracks A-4, B-2, B-3:
Marcus Belgrave, Ted Curson, Hobart Dotson, Clark Terry, Richard Williams (tp),
Eddie Bert, Charles Greenlee, Slide Hampton, Jimmy Knepper (tb), Don Butterfield (tuba),
Robert DiDomenica (fl), Harry Schulman (oboe), Eric Dolphy (as, fl, b-cl),
John LaPorta (as, cl), Bill Barron, Joe Farrell (ts), Yusef Lateef (ts, fl),
Danny Bank (bs), Charles McCracken (cello),
Sir Roland Hanna (p), Dannie Richmond (ds), Sticks Evans, George Scott (perc).
Track B-3: add Max Roach (perc) and Gunther Schuller (cond).
Recorded May 24, 1960 at Plaza Sound, New York City.

Original recordings produced by Leonard Feather.

Mercury SR-60627 Label (Side-A)