Tijuana Moods

★★★★★ Down Beat original review: TIJUANA MOODS

“This may be the best record Mingus ever has made, as he is quoted describing it on the back liner. As for me, I wouldn’t know — I haven’t heard all of Mingus’ records. I do know, however, that seldom have I been moved to shout the music as I was in portions of his album. The main thing is that this is one of the best albums released this year.”

Don DeMicheal

Tijuana Moods comes after two great Charles Mingus hits like Pithecanthropus Erectus and The Clown, although it wasn’t released until a few years after being recorded. So, it must be taken into account that when Mingus himself proclaimed on the back cover that Tijuana Moods was ’the best record I ever made’, he had already recorded important albums like Ah Um and Mingus Dynasty. In any case, the level of performance and composition on Tijuana are clearly exceptional. ‘Dizzy Moods’ is a re-working of the Dizzy Gillespie classic ‘Woody ’n’ You’, although it would be impossible to notice prior to reading Mingus’ own liner notes. This album features two exceptional musicians who despite their talents would remain virtually anonymous: trumpeter Clarence Shaw and pianist Bill Triglia, in addition to the better known Jimmy Knepper, Shafi Hadi, and Danny Richmond. The most complex composition is ‘Ysabel’s Table Dance’, which opens with castanets and Mingus playing an extraordinary bass line pizzicato and rapidly alternating this technique with flamenco-style strumming of his finger-nails across the strings, before switching to playing arco in the cello range. The voice heard is that of flamenco dancer Ysabel Morel, who also plays the castanets. ‘Ysabel’s Table Dance’ is notable for several compositional devices. Mingus contrasts the Spanish mode of music with the jazz feel of the late 1950s, and as is often the case with Mingus’ compositions, there are multiple tempo and rhythmic shifts. The only true standard tune here is ‘Flamingo’, which in Mingus’ hands becomes integrated with the general album’s mood as if all of the tunes were parts of a suite.

ORIGINAL LINER NOTES: TIJUANA MOODS (LSP-2533)

“THIS IS THE BEST RECORD I EVER MADE” (Charles Mingus)

I believe this record includes performances by some of the greatest musicians I have ever worked with. There is one I would especially like to point out who by now would probably have become as famous as any of our current so-called jazz players if this record had been released six years ago when recorded. Not only does Clarence Shaw have a beautiful sound and beautiful ideas, but he is creative and original and plays like no other trumpet man — with the exception that he bears a close relationship soul-wise to Freddie Webster.

No one, to my knowledge, knows Clarence’s whereabouts, except that he is rumored to be teaching hypnotism. I have seen him only once since this recording session and recently tried to find him for my band. No luck.

One of the things I like about him is that he doesn’t overcrowd his ideas like most improvisers. He’s like a great conversationalist, he stops and rests (or, as I call it in conversation, thinks) preparing for his next idea or giving the rhythm section an opportunity to complement his statement. For instance, in a solo on ‘Dizzy Moods’, if you listen closely you can actually hear Clarence stop, take his horn from his mouth, release the vapor from his water key, and intentionally blow air through the horn to clean it and free his tone.

At first I thought he was being snobbish, trying to be funny, or putting the musicians on when he casually did this kind of thing. But after hearing him on this record session, I found that the effect of this sort of playing was wonderfully timed. Like a good conversationalist he knew when to shut up. He didn’t ’talk’ too much or play too much. He breathed good and waited for his ideas. (I only wish I’d met him sooner to make him a regular member of my band.)

I would like to point out Clarence’s solo in ‘Flamingo’. Though he only has eight bars, these eight bars — because of their warmth, depth and musical stature — stay with me more than the melody and original mood of the piece or any other solo on the record — as though they were written and composed by one of the jazz masters.

All the music in this album was written during a very blue period in my life. I was minus a wife, and in flight to forget her with an expected dream in Tijuana. But not even Tijuana could satisfy — the bullfight, jai alai, anything that you could imagine in a wild, wide-open town. After finding myself with too much tequila, all the lime in the world and burning my nostrils, I decided to benefit musically from this experience and set out to compose and recreate what I felt and saw around me. It included a strip tease in one of the many local night clubs which are the principal Tijuana industry — ‘cash in hand from yankee man’.

After arriving at six in the evening, I found myself wandering through the streets followed by local bands of five to ten musicians with bass, sax, guitar, and typical Spanish instruments. Playing for tips, they followed the tourists around, looking at the person or persons, guessing or trying to guess the type of music that would appeal to them. For Danny Richmond and myself that night, it was everything from barrelhouse to a stiff attempt at the blues. All this you will find in ‘Los Mariachis’ (translates ‘street musicians’), the piece that typifies the blues beat.

I walked from tacos to tacos, from tequila, salt and lime to all the hot chili peppers there were to stomach, throwing away all the money I had earned and more, trying to forget the blues that I had brought with me and minus a wife. It actually ends in a contest between Danny and myself to see who could outdo who in Tijuana’s tequila-wine-women-song-and-dance. Danny lost: he was very hungry; I was starved.

Expectations of Tijuana and all the things we heard before arriving and were going to experience for the first time were best expressed in the Dizzy Gillespie composition, ‘Woody ’n’ You’, which I sketched out for our version called ‘Dizzy Moods’ on the way there in the car. I have always found it easier to write from chord structure in buses and cars rather than from melody. I used Diz’ tune and I think the melody speaks for itself. As far as solos, Clarence and Jimmy Knepper take care of that.

‘Ysabel’s Table Dance’ sums up all we could buy in Tijuana. It includes the far-out strip tease — spots in the music played by the piano represent the scantily clad woman spinning from table to table, reaching her hand out for tips, bills, and what-have-you. This composition, I believe, contains the fire, the pulse, and all that I felt as I heard the tune in my head with the movement of her body. It’s the last piece; then I return to my true self and it’s all over but the music.

The playing of ‘Flamingo’, in somewhat the same manner that Ellington treated it in mood and chord structure, brings me back to the wild city in thought though I may be miles away.

‘Tijuana Gift Shop’ brings to mind the tapestry which I bid for and bought off the walls of an old ‘gift shop’.

Ending my comments, I should not overlook Bill Triglia as a fresh piano stylist. And the genius of Danny Richmond who had only been with me a matter of weeks. This was probably the first time he changed from tenor sax to drums — playing on born intuition after a few conversations — with the two of us beating hands and feet, playing broken times and rhythms on the table… me showing and trying to explain to him what the world’s greatest jazzmen do.

Charles Mingus

‘Duke Ellington, Art Tatum, Charlie Parker, and church, that’s where my music comes from’, Charles Mingus has said. He may add, ‘It also comes from the way the waiter spoke to me at dinner or something like that’, but Mingus aims at something far less transient. He is a man out to make his jazz into a concert music.

Charles Mingus’ jazz illustrates a truism: the way to extend a medium is to work faithfully with what is there and to extend it along lines implicit in its nature. Genuinely within jazz there have been precedents: Scott Joplin’s late ragtime works, some of James P. Johnson’s, Willie ’the Lion’ Smith’s, and Duke Ellington’s, probably deservedly the best-known efforts to produce a concert jazz.

Mingus uses improvisation, a strong rhythmic power, works with blues tonalities, vocal tone, spontaneity. His forms are not skillful moulds into which notes and devices are to be poured, but spring naturally and inevitably from emotional-musical necessity, and sound like it. He will include, unassimilated, the shouts, cries and sounds which are the source of music. And he speaks openly and directly, never reassures us with things we might find easier to listen to.

I invite you to listen for two evidences of how soundly Mingus works. The first is the full texture he achieves with a small group with no feeling of contrivance. There has been nothing like this, I think, since the golden days of the New Orleans style. Even with one horn in solo, there is a density to the performance, a feeling of total movement that is never distracting, always integrated. The second is the naturalness with which shifts of dominant rhythm and of tempo usually happen without the feeling of a stilted effort at ’effect’. Almost everything comes because it enables the music and the musicians to say something they have to say.

Martin Williams

– Martin Williams

Track Listing

A

1. Dizzy Moods (5:53) Charles Mingus (composer); Dizzy Gillespie (composer)
2. Ysabel’s Table Dance (10:28) Charles Mingus (composer)
3. Slippers (3:30) Charles Mingus (composer)

B

1. Tijuana Gift Shop (3:49) Charles Mingus (composer)
2. Los Mariachis (The Street Musicians) (10:22) Charles Mingus (composer)
3. Flamingo (5:36) Edmund Anderson (composer); Ted Grouya (composer)

Album Information

• Artist: Charles Mingus
• Catalog Number: LSP-2533; 8 436542 017015
• Catalog Numbers: LSP-2533; 8 436542 017015
• Label: WaxTime
• Liner Notes: Martin Williams
• Source: LSP-2533
• Edition: Collector’s Edition, Newly Remastered, Deluxe Inner Sleeves, One Pressing Limited Edition
• Vinyl Weight: 180 Gram Pure Virgin Vinyl
• Series: Jazz Classics
• Speed: 33 1/3 R.P.M.
• Channel: Stereo
• Recording Dates: New York, July 18 (A1-A2 & B2) & August 6 (tracks B1 & B3), 1957; Bonus Track (A3): Same personnel as above, New York, October 1957
• Original Producer: Bob Rolontz
• Copyright Year: 2014
• Bonus Track Note: Slippers (A3) is a bonus track; same personnel as above, New York, October 1957
• Mastering: Direct Metal Mastering (DMM)
• Country of Manufacture: Made in the EU