From Tom Millar Sent Fri, Jul 9th 1999, 04:26
Yeah, but to a person unfamiliar with the "history" of jazz, Mingus might sound quite like several hard boppers. 20 years from now people might just be talking about Kraftwerk or Moroder's disco productions with what we consider modern IDM. Mingus did some free jazz stuff as well as bop. His career spanned several years and he got to play with a lot of genres, from the straight-ahead swing of "Haitian Fight Song" (my favorite of his) to solo improvised piano works and other stuff that's closer to what Monk and others were doing. Monk, Miles and Dizzy also did some straight-ahead swing blues records, if I recall correctly... (my favorite stuff by Miles are his ballads, actually). Exemplifying a period of jazz and being only a member of only one part of the jazz spectrum are not the same thing. Ellington might be the King of Swing, but he did Latin stuff too. Tom