Recently Heard: Mingus

Joni Mitchell: Mingus

Joni? Jaco!

Okay, so, for me, the writer of all the lyrics and singer of all the melodies and player of all the guitars really takes a backseat to the brilliance of the bass player. Some others have been critical of this recording for much the same reason: Jaco really hogs the spotlight, he overrides everything else, blah blah. Not so much. I still hear Joni's voice, singing melodies some jazz fanatics insist prove she is incapable of being a jazz vocalist and other jazz fanatics insist she got spot-on. I actually do notice the guitar, which is pretty damn interesting on its own, and might make me want to listen to other Joni-stuff, although, to be fair, I'm here mostly for Jaco, on account of him being Jaco, and that's just the way it is.

This album gets a lot of critical flak, some as noted, some for the decision to put Mingus raps between most of the tunes - five raps vs. six tunes proper - but that just really doesn't fly in my world. I was expecting something disjointed, jarring, that interrupted my pleasure of the music. That didn't happen. They flowed nicely, and they were entertaining little glimpses into the life of Charles Mingus, and this is, after all, an album of Mingus music, dedicated to the then-recently-departed Mingus, who - back to Jaco's dominance on these tunes - happens to have been one of the, if not the, pre-eminent jazz bass players of all time.

If you couldn't hear Jaco on these tunes, or, if things had gone differently, whoever played bass in the band, that would be a shame. This is a musical memorial to the man, and the man was a bass player. Now, he was also a composer and a band leader, so a completely solo-bass outing wouldn't be a fitting tribute, but I see nothing wrong and hear so much that is right with the way this was done.

I've mostly been one for instrumental jazz, in fact, I think the closest I might come to a jazz singer on anything I have *thus far* in my collection would have to be classical soprano Ute Lemper's recording of Edith Piaf and Marlene Dietrich's cabaret repertoire, Illusions. I'll leave it up to the jazz fanatics to decide in how many ways that disqualifies me to evaluate Joni as a jazz vocalist, but, hey I like her voice and the melodies. I'm not even going to get into the lyrics themselves - more and more I'm coming to realize the place lyrics have in music, and it's not the same place that words have in poetry or literature. In fact, you can take damn fine examples of the latter, put them to music, and have them seem utter cheese. You can also take any schlump of words - sensical or not, or wordless sounds even - and string them together with a melody line that makes them pure poetry.

This is a great album, and will definitely get a lot of replay.

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