[Today: Charles Mingus and the edge of summer...]
The first time I really heard Jazz was the summer after I graduated from college. I was living with my mom and step-dad in Eugene, and working two jobs – roofing for the local school district during the day, and pouring beer for the local minor league baseball team (The Emeralds) at night. That schedule (somehow) allowed for plenty of socializing in the off hours of those jobs, and I became friends with groups of people from both. Some of my friends from the ballpark lived in a student co-operative (ie, hippie hole) just off the edge of the University Of Oregon campus.
I like hippies (I was raised in the Eugene area, after all) and enjoyed hanging around the co-op, playing cribbage with Dave and Eli for hours, sprawling on the roof deck, talking about nothing, watching the hot summer days melt away like ice cubes. Because there was a lot of turnover in the co-op, there were often boxes of possessions that would come up for grabs after someone’s hasty departure. One day just such a box ended up in my hands – a small pile of records, mostly Jazz, and all good. There was Miles’ Kind Of Blue, Dexter Gordon’s Our Man In Paris, Monk’s Genius Of Modern Music, Vol. 1, and many more – in all about 25 to 30 really great albums.
Most weekdays that summer I’d come home from the roofing gig, covered in tar, sweat, and a long day’s work, and have enough time for a shower, a sandwich, and an album side (or possibly two) before I had to run down the hill to pull the tap for the evening’s thirsty baseball fans. My transition time was usually between 3:30 and 5pm, so more often than not, I had the house to myself, and many days that summer I picked side one of Mingus Ah Um and cranked it up to 11. The controlled chaos of that upbeat joyride, with its seat-of-the-pants virtuosity and madman/preacher shouting seemed to sum up my life at that point in one nearly religious album side.
I wasn’t a fan of Jazz before I was given that box of records, but after a long summer spent basking in the likes of Charles Mingus, I was forever hooked.
Listen: Better Git Hit In Your Soul
Tags: Charles Mingus, Eugene OR, Jazz, Mingus Ah Um
2 June 2008 at 6:57 am |
[...] when I finally got around to playing this album, I was floored that all of these songs (most all of which I knew) came from a single group. This [...]
25 March 2009 at 3:09 pm |
Amazing disc!