THERE ARE SHOUTS AND HOWLS ON TRACKS ROOTED IN EARTHY BLUES AND GOSPEL.

This album copy card is dated June 2, 1959, exactly three weeks after the
final recording session. At this point, which compositions would be includ-
ed, their final titles and the LP sequence were already resolved, indicating
that this project was on the fast track.

Teo Maceros original notes for the album sequence. Note the early song
titles and the fact that Horace Parlan at that point is credited as co-com-
poser on what became Better Git It In Your Soul. Maceros proposed
album title Sing Along With Mingus is no doubt a sarcastic comment on
Mitch Millers Sing Along With Mitch series of LPs, which were block-
buster best sellers for Columbia at the time and the antithesis of hip.
 FOLLOWING ARE THE ORIGINAL LP LINER NOTES BY DIANE DORR-DORYNEK:

MINGUS AH UM

Then it was a clas-

sical workshop where musicians could
exchange ideas and perform their new com-
positions. Mingus moved to New York in
1951, and, deciding to try the idea in the more
spontaneous medium of jazz, by 1953 had
organized a series of jazz workshop concerts
at the Putnam Central Club in Brooklyn.
Some of the musicians who participated in
the early days were Max Roach, Thelonious
Producer Teo Maceros budget approval request, submitted one month before Monk, Horace Silver, Art Blakey, and the audi-
the first session. It is interesting to note that he writes all Jelly Roll Morton ence, who also had a hand in the working out
compositions. It is conceivable that this was Minguss idea at the time. of new compositions and arrangements.
Because of the success of this workshop, a
Composers Workshop was formed, in collab-
oration with Bill Coss of Metronome, that
included Teddy Charles, John LaPorta, and
Teo Macero (who, as an A&R man for
Columbia, arranged the date for this album).
Mingus believes now that it got too far away
from jazzspontaneitysince almost all of
the music was written. He remembers one
rehearsal at which Teddy had left several
bars open for blowing and everyone jumped
on him with Man, are you lazy? Write it out!
From this series of concerts Mingus discov-
ered two important things. First, a jazz com-
position as I hear it in my minds ear
although set down in so many notes on score
paper and precisely notatedcannot be
played by a group of either jazz or classical
musicians. A classical musician might read all
the notes correctly but play them without the
correct jazz feeling or interpretation, and a
jazz musician, although he might read all the
notes and play them with jazz feeling,
inevitably introduces his own individual
expression rather than the dynamics the
composer intended. Secondly, jazz, by its
very definition, cannot be held down to written
parts to be played with a feeling that goes
only with blowing free.
My present working methods use very little
written material. I write compositions on
mental score paper, then I lay out the compo-
sition part by part to the musicians. I play
them the framework on piano so that they
are all familiar with my interpretation and feel-
ing and with the scale and chord progres-
sions to be used. Each mans particular style
is taken into consideration. They are given
different rows of notes to use against each
chord but they choose their own notes and
play them in their own styles, from scales as
well as chords, except where a particular
mood is indicated. In this way I can keep my
own compositional flavor in the pieces and
yet allow the musicians more individual free-
dom in the creation of their group lines and
solos.
Of the musicians on this album, John Handy,
Booker Ervin, Horace Parlan, and Dannie
Richmond are currently working with Mingus.
Willie Dennis, Jimmy Knepper, and Shafi
Hadi have worked with him in the past, and
were called especially for this date.
John Handy was born in Dallas on February
3, 1933. While in Dallas he began studying
the clarinet, then moved to Oakland,
California, where he played alto sax at
McClymonds High School. He gigged in
rhythm and blues in Oakland for two years
and later, when he moved to San Francisco,
at Bob City. All of the musicians passing
through were sure to show there, and
although he wasnt working in jazz, he heard
a passing pageant of the greatest names in
jazz. He didnt hear Bird until 1952 when Bird
was playing at the Say When. He feels that
Bird was probably his greatest influence, but
the list of musicians that were important to
him musically is long: Louis Jordan, Lester
Young, Flip Phillips, Gillespie, Dexter Gordon,
Wardell Gray, Stan Getz, early Konitz, Sonny
Rollins, John Coltrane. In 1952 he studied at
San Francisco City College, playing clarinet,
bass clarinet, baritone sax, alto and tenor.
After a stint in Korea, he returned to San
Francisco and switched his main instrument
from alto to tenor. He studied for a secondary
teaching degree at State College, and plans
to complete it and eventually teach improvi-
sation at the college level.
Handy came to New York in July 1958. He
met Mingus in December at a jam session at
the Five Spot. Hed been pacing about anx-
iously, hoping to blow, but the musicians on
the stand thought he looked too square.
Mingus asked them to give him a chance to
play, and they did. A day later Mingus asked
him to join his group.
Booker Ervin was born on October 31, 1930,
in Denison, Texas. When he was nine he
wanted to learn the saxophone, but his moth-
er bought him a trombone. He played it for
five years and then gave it up. He had want-
ed to be a jazz musician after hearing Count
Basie and other bands of the 30s on the
radio, but it wasnt until 1950, when in the Air
Force, that he finally took up tenor sax and
played with a jazz group in Okinawa. He
attended the Berklee Music School in Boston
in 1954 and then went on the road for a year
with Ernie Fields, playing rhythm and blues.
For the next few years he traveled. He
stopped off in Denver for a year and there
played his first jazz gigsat the Piano
Lounge, and as house combo at Sonnys
Lounge. In the meantime he had studied clar-
inet and flute. Hed listened to Lester Young
and Dexter Gordon earlier, now he listened to
Sonny Stitt, and later, to Rollins and Coltrane.
He quit music to work in the post office but
that became unbearable after three months.
There was no place to go but New York. He
came east with a drummer who lived in
Pittsburgh and stayed there for six months
(where he met Horace Parlan). He landed in
New York in May of 1958. Shafi Hadi, then
working with Mingus, told him, Theres a new
cat in town cuts everybody, me and Sonny
and all those cats. Im a sax player so I know
what hes doing on that instrument. Horace
brought Booker to the Half Note where they
were then working and he finished the gig
with them, but didnt join the group until
November.
Horace Parlan was born in Pittsburgh on
January 19, 1931. He gigged around
Pittsburgh awhile with Tom Turrentine and
others, and has played with Sonny Stitt and
Dizzy Gillespie. One night Mingus was invited
to a jam session in Pittsburgh, and Horace,
who was also jamming there, was playing so
much and so consistently that Mingus tried to
outdo him with his bass. It wasnt until later
that he noticed Horaces right hand was par-
alyzed. He had polio when he was five and
can use only two fingers of his right hand.
Bassist Wyatt Bull Ruther and his teacher,
Mary Alston, encouraged him to overcome
this, and he has developed a predominantly
left hand stylesingle note solos, left hand
chords, or chords with right and left inter-
locked. He names as his favorite pianists
Horace Silver, Bud Powell, John Lewis, and
Ahmad Jamal.
After this session in Pittsburgh Mingus lost
contact with Horace until a year later when a
car drove up to the Alvin Hotel and Horace
got out to check in. Mingus, who was pass-
ing by, found he had come here looking for
work, and hired him. Horaces father was a
preacher and he, like Mingus, has a strong
church music background. On Better Git It In
Your Soul, Mingus took a moaning repetitive
churchlike line from one of Horaces solos
and added it to the piece.

Dannie Richmond was born in New York 30

years ago, and raised in Greensboro, North
Carolina. He returned to New York to study
tenor sax at the Music Center Conservatory
and then went on the road with rhythm-and-
blues units like the Clovers, Joe Anderson,
and Paul Williams. He left rhythm and blues in
1956 because he felt it was exhibitionism
rather than music, and at that time switched
to drums. That summer the jazz workshop
was at The Pad in Greenwich Village (later
called Lower Basin Street). At one intermis-
sion, after they had played a fast number on
which their present drummer couldnt keep
up, Lou Donaldson told Mingus, Ive got my
hometown buddy here. I bet hell make those
fast tempos. He introduced Mingus to
Dannie, and Mingus, noting his careful
grooming and nice clothes, was skeptical.
Dannie sat in for several numbers. On the first
number, an uptempoed Cherokee, he had
very little trouble. Mingus says he could tell
Dannie was a good musician and just needed
more work. Dannie joined the workshop later
that winter when the regular drummer left.
Mingus believes the drummer is the most
important member of the group and says hed
rather have no drummer at all if Dannie
werent available. Hes a musician, not just a
timekeeper, one of the most versatile and cre-
ative drummers Ive ever heard.

A shorter word about the non-regulars. Shafi

Hadi was born in Pennsylvania on September
21, 1929, and raised in Detroit. He served his
apprenticeship in rhythm-and-blues bands
such as Ivory Joe Hunter, Ruth Brown, Paul
Williams, and the Griffin Brothers. He left
rhythm and blues late in 1956 and joined
Mingus in 1957, with whom he worked regu-
larly until the fall of 1958. He was among the
nine musicians (along with Knepper,
Richmond, and Parlan) who recorded the
score, composed by Mingus, for the experi-
mental film Shadows. The theme song from
Shadows, retitled Self-Portrait In Three
Colors, is recorded in this album.
Willie Dennis was born in South
Philadelphia 33 years ago. He picked up the
trombone when he was about 15, learning
by ear. He has played in a long list of famous
bands; with Percy and Jimmy Heath, Elliott
Lawrence, Howard McGee, Claude
Thornhill, Sam Donahue, Woody Herman
(with whom he went to South America and
became interested in flamenco and concert
guitar), and Benny Goodman (touring
Europe). He has also worked with the small-
er groups of Charlie Ventura, Coleman
Hawkins, Lennie Tristano, and Kai Winding.
At one of the early jazz workshop concerts in
Brooklyn, Mingus brought together Dennis,
J. J. Johnson, Kai Winding, and Bennie
Green. This concert was billed as the Battle
of the Trombones, and marked the begin-
ning of the Jay and Kai team. In 1956 he
went to the West Coast with Mingus. He is
currently working with Buddy Rich.
Jimmy Knepper, winner of the 1958 Down
Beat International Critics New Start Award,
was born in Los Angeles on November 22,
1927. His early musical experience was
mainly with big bands, Charlie Spivak,
Woody Herman, Charlie Barnet, Claude
Thornhill, and Ralph Marterie; and he played
for awhile with Charlie Parker. He joined the
jazz workshop early in 1957 and was one of
the musicians playing at the Brandeis
Festival that summer, where Mingus
Revelations was performed along with the
compositions of five other jazz and classical
musicians. In the spring of 1958 Knepper
organized his own group, later joined Tony
Scott, and more recently toured with Stan
Kenton. He is very accomplished technical-
ly. Britt Woodman and Duke Ellingtons other
trombonists listened to him enthusiastically
last summer at the Great South Bay
Festival, where he played with the jazz
workshop. Britt summed up their feelings,
saying: Man, hes all over that trombone! the three dress rehearsals, musician and
Mingus biography has been noted quite fully
elsewhere, but for the benefit of new mem-
bers of his audience Ill recapitulate it in
brief. He was born in an army camp at
Nogales, Arizona, April 22, 1922, and soon
thereafter his family moved to Los Angeles.
He grew up in Watts, three miles from L.A.
The first music he heard was church music.
His stepmother took him to the Holiness
Church where there were trombone, tam-
bourines, bass, and a bass drum, and the
music was filled with blues, moaning, and
riffs set by the preacher. One day, listening
to his fathers crystal set (at the risk of being
severely punished if found tampering with
it), he heard Duke Ellingtons East St. Louis
Toodle-Oo. It was the first time I knew
something else was happening besides
church music.
He tried the trombone when he was six, later
took up the cello, and switched to bass in
high school. He studied the bass with Red
Callender and then, for five years, with H.
Rheinschagen, formerly of the New York
Philharmonic. His early gigs were with Louis
Armstrong and Kid Ory, but under pressure
of kidding by his friends, he left the oldtimers
and gigged with Lionel Hampton, Duke
Ellington, Red Norvo, Charlie Parker, Bud
Powell, and Art Tatum, finally becoming a
leader of his own group in 1952.
Ive mentioned in passing his foray into film
scoring, and Id like to add a word about jazz
and poets. Mingus played with poets in
Frisco ten years or so ago. He feels it hasnt
had the proper chance in New York, despite
the many efforts to present it, including his
own concerts last March with Kenneth
Patchen. But music and poetry (or acting)
does seem to have a definite futureif his
recent experience with actors on television
is a reliable forecast.
At this writing, he has just completed work
on the first of three plays by Leo Pogostin for
the Robert Herridge Theatre. The first play
of this trilogy uses bass alone for the score;
the other two will employ other members of
his group. During the week of rehearsal, and
those not so bugged by the crazy barrage of
actors worked in close reaction to one
another. For the actual taping of the show,
however, the music was cut down so low as
to be inaudible to the actors, to avoid feed-
back into their mikes. Two of the actors said
they missed itthe bass had seemed to be
another actor and had become an integral
part of the play.
The acting methods used were peculiarly
akin to jazz. The script formed the skeleton
around which the actors might change or ad
lib lines according to their response to the
situation at that moment, so that each per-
formance was slightly different. Martin
Balsam, the lead, said Sticking too closely
to lines is stifling. This method gives an air of
the unexpected and keeps us alive to the sit-
uation and the other actors. A jazz musician
works in this way, using a given musical
skeleton and creating out of it, building a
musical whole related to that particular
moment by listening to and interacting with
his fellow musicians. Jazz musicians work-
ing with actors could conceivably provide
audiences with some of the most moving
and alive theater they have ever experi-
enced.
One poet, Jonathan Williams (if we may
return to poets for a moment), in noting the
rather bare poetic scene writes, The only
solace for a poet in New York is the occa-
sional spirit in painting and jazzthe open-
ing out of my countree, the projective flash
that Charles Olson sees inherent in the
greatest American art: Ives, Ryder, Sullivan,
Melville. In the winter of 1959 this spirit radi-
ates for me from the paintings of the
Kooning, which seem like the best land-
scapes since Oz, and from the sessions of
the Charles Mingus Jazz Workshop. I heard
this Quintet more than thirty times in three
months, increasingly rapt by the presence of
those tired but necessary words nobility
and love in the music.
It is incredible that Mingus can dredge out
of the contemporary slough the potency and
healing grace of his music. Pieces like the
Fables of Faubus, Goodbye Pork Pie Hat
and others are miracles of a kind. They are
there, available, God knows, for anyone of
the Communication of Nothing that they can
still hear. Poetry and music are for those
with straight connections between ears,
eyes, head, heart, and gut.
Diane Dorr-Dorynek
1959
FOLLOWING ARE THE ORIGINAL LP LINER NOTES BY CHARLES MINGUS, AS TOLD TO DIANE DORR-DORYNEK:

MINGUS DYNASTY

It seems to
me that ten
or fifteen
year cycles
in jazz are
camouflages
f o r insecure
musicians
who hide
b e h i n d the
current
style.
Teo Maceros November 30, 1959 memo to
Walter Dean to try to get approval to pay Jimmy
Kneppers surprise arranging bill. Practically
every album ever made has additional last-
minute costs for which the producer must then
beg business affairs to approve and pay.

Jimmy Kneppers bill for four arrangements

and some copying work on the Mingus
Dynasty session. Its amazing by todays
standards, but $50.00 was the average rate
for big band arrangements at recording
sessions at that time.
I remember too well the era when critics
raved about a new creative dissonance in
jazz and its unheard of harmoniesor dis-
paraged what they later renamed boppers
and their long lines of unrelated notes. I
went around listening to find these boppers
and came up with a handful of musicians
who adopted this idiom to their instruments
and became famous through their invention
in this style. But I wonder about the wealth
of individuality and creativity we might have
had and what they could have added to the
evolution of jazz had they not been caught
up in the Charlie Parker trend.
Who were the other boppers that critics
spoke about, as though a myriad of bop dis-
ciples were taking over the earth of jazz?
Anyone who attempted to play a familiar
rhythmic pattern from the beginnings or
endings of Birds phrases or wore a goatee
and bop glasses like Dizzy was called a
bebopper. I disliked stylish new looks then
and still think that such fashions generate
sterile rehashings of one mans achieve-
ment. I studied Birds creative vein with the
same passion and understanding with
which Id studied the scores of my favorite
classical composers, because I found a
purity in his music that until then I had found
only in classical music. Bird was the cause
of my realization that jazz improvisation, as
well as jazz composition, is the equal of
classical music if the performer is a creative
person. Bird brought melodic development
to a new point in jazz, as far as Bartk or
Schoenberg or Hindemith had taken it in the
classics. But he also brought to music a
primitive, mystic, supra-mind communica-
tion that Id only heard in the late Beethoven
quartets and, even more, in Stravinsky.
Looking backward, I realized that this kind
of communication has been there in other
jazz creators improvisation, for instance in
Rex Stewarts trumpet. Bartk and most
other composers knew about life up to
death and wrote music as though it and they
only existed here. But Bird had an unafraid
soreness of self and of the relation of self to
life, and death, and creation. His music
exists here and beyondas though he had
been playing before he got here.
The followers who supposed Birds greatness
lay in his melodic patterns copied them with-
out realizing that if Bird played something as
diatonic as a scale on his horn (do, re, me, fa,
so, la, ti, do), he could play it millions of differ-
ent ways with millions of different meanings.
These sham copies have distorted Birds
beauty and greatness. I wonder how he felt
hearing copies of himself all over America?
How would a great, original painter feel if he
saw in every gallery copies of his paintings,
copies that were being hailed as good along
with his own. I think it would be difficult, if not
impossible, to retain his sense of himself, and
that such a situation can destroy a mans
capacity to continue to create.
Recently a young man came to New York
with a plastic horn who critics are saying will
cause a new era in jazz. Hes doing atonal
things that Ive heard other musicians do, but
he talks with his horn in the profound and
primitive way Bird did. Shortly after hearing
this young man, Ornette Coleman, I spoke to
George Russell. George said, I hope the crit-
ics wont do to him what they did to Bird. I
said, I know what you mean. They can brain-
wash the public into forgetting that what pre-
ceded Coleman is still valid and that Coleman
is simply one more addition to the main-
stream of great jazz creators. They have the
power and perhaps the irresponsibility to
inflate him and his style to such importance
that it wouldnt take long to erase in most
musicians minds the awareness of anything
other than the need to join the new look. It
would become an economic pressure on
many who will think they have to play that
way to make a living and the new camouflage
for the people who have no faith in their indi-
viduality.
When the musicians who used to hide behind
Charlie Parker buy plastic saxophones, trum-
pets, trombones and basses, hanging on to a
few of the rhythmic phrases Coleman has
been able to createwhen they realize they
have a new camouflage of atonality, no time
bars, no key signaturewhen they all simul-
taneously begin to jabber in this borrowed
style in all the night clubs all over America
then the walls of all the jazz clubs will proba-
bly crumble at this pretentious era of so-
called good music, jazz.
But it wont happen again if every musician
will play himself.
If you agree with me that in addition to bor-
rowing another mans solutions a composer
can also repeat himself, then perhaps youll
understand what I mean when I say Id be
bored with rooms full of Picassos early cubist
paintings and that Id prefer selections from
his entire oeuvre. It has taken me many years
of being misunderstood(critics wanted to
pigeonhole and stylize me, saying Mingus
uses whistles and effects when I used them
on only one piece out of thirty or forty differ-
ent recorded compositions)to finally find
acceptance for my point that a composer writ-
ing twenty pieces should write twenty pieces
that are different...as much as youd want
twenty paintings to look different from one
another. When I went to a Gauguin retrospec-
tive I saw a great painter: no painting looked
like the other, each was done by a new
genius, unimpressed by himself and his pre-
vious creation.
My last record for Columbia, Mingus Ah Um,
on which each piece was different, sold many
thousands of records, and Im sure its due to
the fact that people are tired of hearing vibes,
piano, bass and drum groups, or any other
concocted group sound, playing at the
same low level of dynamics, with the same
compositional form, the same color and
embellishment. Or the same big bands with
four or five trumpets, four or five trombones,
five or six saxophones, and a rhythm section
pounding away, 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4, as though
the audience has no sense of rhythm or beat
in its mind. And still playing arrangements as
though there were only three instruments in
the band: a trumpet, a trombone and a saxo-
phone, with the other three or four trumpets,
three or four trombones and four or five sax-
ophones there just to make the arrangement
sound louder by playing harmonic support to
the leading trumpet, trombone and saxo-
phone. What would you call this? A big band?
A loud band? A jazz band? A creative band?
Id write for a big sound (and with fewer
musicians) by thinking out the form that
each instrument as an individual is going to
play in relation to all the others in the com-
position. This would replace the old hat sys-
tem of passing the melody from section to
section, for example from trumpet to reed
section while the trombones run through
their routine of French horn chordal sounds.
Even this clich would be listenable if it were
not made to stand alone but were used as
background for ad lib solos. I think its time
to discard these tired arrangements and
save only the big Hollywood production
introduction and ending which uses a ten or
more note chord. If these ten notes were
used as a starting point for several melodies
and finished as a linear compositionwith
parallel or simultaneous and juxtaposed
melodic thoughtswe might come up with
some creative big band jazz.
Far Wells, Mill Valley is scored for piano,
vibes, flute, alto, two tenors, baritone, trum-
pet, trombone, bass and drums. Section A
opens (IA) with four lines: flute and vibes in
a 12/8 line against alto and trumpet in a
16/16 line (that is, three notes against
four), an inner counter-melody played by
two tenors, and a slow melodic line on
bass, baritone and trombone. The trom-
bone leaves the bass line during pedal
points and his weaving in and out blends
the whole into a harmonic or organ sound.
The opening is recapitulated, A, in a swing-
ing 4/4 which repeats, in keeping with the
traditional jazz structure AABA.
Section B opens with a trumpet trill written
to sound more primitive than it sounds
here. All solos in this section are ad libbed
from a voiced thirteen tone row scale
against a pedal point rhythmic pattern. The
scale replaces the traditional chord pattern
from which musicians usually improvise. It
may be broken up in any manner by the
soloist. When Roland Hanna takes the first
solo with the piano right hand (the left hand
continues the percussive pattern), the writ-
ten flute line takes up the melodic mood.
When the flute line dissolves from written
part to solo, the written alto part continues
the melodic line. This technique assures
compositional continuity even if a soloist
plays something unrelated. The soloist
cant play a wrong note, but he can make
a bad choice of notes not related to the
composers melodic conception. Jerome
Richardsons flute solo is played within the
context and the point at which the written
part ends and the solo begins is indeci-
pherable. The alto (John Handy) joins the
flute in double improvisation and the conti-
nuity is then carried by written lines for
trumpet tenors and trombone.
Section C has the combined emotional col-
oring of the opening, IA, and A proper. The
background behind the bass solo is written
in high register as a compliment to the bass
solo and to be out of its range. The solos in
this section were written to be ad libbed
from open fifths. That means there is no
major or minor third or tone center. All the
chromatics are at the soloists disposal
which would allow a pivot point type of
atonal solo. The solos by Handy on alto
and Richard Williams on trumpet are fine
solos, but they are executed in a diatonic
Charlie Parker chordal manner that doesnt
utilize the possibilities given by the open
fifths. Booker Ervins tenor joins the alto in
double improvisation that does achieve the
compositional continuity that Id wanted in
the preceding individual solos.
The final section recapitulates section B,
with improvisations by Williams on trumpet
and Dannie Richmond on timpani, and,
foregoing the Hollywood production ending,
ends with a single note.
The full title of Gunslinging Bird is If
Charlie Parker Were a Gunslinger Thered
Be A Whole Lot Of Dead Copycats. A poet
who heard this one night at the Showplace
improvised a poem called If Bird Were a
Gunclinger Thered Be A Lot Less
Robbins. Incidentally, many of my titles are
given arbitrarily to the music without being
related to it. This composition features
solos by Knepper on trombone, Handy in
alto chorus and Richmond on drums.
Ellingtons Things Aint What They Used
To Be features Ervin on tenor, Knepper,
Hanna on piano, and bass. The melodys
rhythmic pattern differs from the original in
the second chorus.
Song With Orange is the title composition
from a CBS television play, A Song With
Orange In It, for which I wrote the score. It
features Knepper in a plunger solo and
Williams on trumpet. Mood Indigo is
played in the beautiful mood in which Duke
originally wrote it and with a new inner
counter-melody on the tenor. The lead is
played by the alto and the solos are by
Knepper, Hanna and myself. New Now
Know How opens with the introduction fol-
lowed directly by the bridge (to break the
AABA routine) and ends with A. Solos are
played by Nico Bunink on the piano, John
Handy on alto and Knepper.
Diane is a melodic, atonal composition.
The melodies for flute, trumpet, alto, tenor,
piano and bass are all equally important. I
suggest listening to it as a whole rather
than trying to follow one particular line.
After the ensemble glissando there is a
piano solo by Roland Hanna on the second
theme. In the out chorus the vibes rein-
force the piano line, and a trombone line is
added. Put Me In That Dungeon is the
opening music from my score for the CBS
television ballet, Frankie and Johnny, star-
ring Melissa Hayden. It features Handy on
alto. Slop was written for a barroom scene
for Frankie and Johnny. If you notice a sim-
ilarity to a 3/4 composition on my last
Columbia album, it is not coincidental. The
choreographer had rehearsed his dancers
to Better Git It In Your Soul, and asked for
something like it when I composed the
score. Slop has the same church influ-
ence, but with a looser, sloppier
approachtheyve left church meeting and
gone to the picnic grounds where they sing
the same meeting songs but the Rev or the
Deacon has just sneaked a few nips to a
few of the leading voices. In the beginning
you hear Ervin on tenor and Hanna solos
on piano. Both Slop and Put Me In That
Dungeon feature cellos.
Charles Mingus
1959
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PHOTOGRAPHY: Don Hunstein;

Pages 3, 4, 12: Teo Macero Collection:
Music Division, The New York Public Library
for the Performing Arts, Astor, Lenox
and Tilden Foundations