Mingus - Alternate Takes - Audio CD

ALTERNATE TAKES contains alternate takes from the albums MINGUS AH UM and MINGUS DYNASTY.

Reissue producer: Michael Cuscuna.

Digitally remastered using 20-bit technology by Mark Wilder and Rob Schwarz (Sony Music Studios, New York, New York).

As with any collection of alternate takes, these six cuts offer the most to listeners familiar with the original versions. Mingus recorded MINGUS AH UM and MINGUS DYNASTY at a particularly satisfying and fertile point in his career (1959), and this CD includes three alternates from each of those albums. Mingus's music was supremely timely despite drawing on the full range of jazz's then forty-year-old history. His raucous ensemble improvisations had some of the mayhem of the turn-of-the-decade "new thing," but these pieces owed just as much to a healthy appreciation of the 1920's New Orleans front lines. This dichotomy was made explicit in "My Jelly Roll Soul." And while Mingus was firmly associated with the bebop school, a tune like "Better Git It In Your Soul" went further than even Horace Silver in summoning up the deep groove of a sanctified church meeting. Then again, the smart, swift "New Now Know How" makes a nod towards BIRTH OF THE COOL's point of view.