1959: The Year that Changed Jazz


1959: The Year that Changed Jazz

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In 1959, four major jazz albums were made that changed music forever.

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Miles Davis, Kind Of Blue.

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Dave Brubeck's Time Out.

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Charles Mingus, Mingus Ah Um.

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And Ornette Coleman's The Shape Of Jazz To Come.

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1959 was a very important jazz year for me in my own development,

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and the evolution of jazz up until now and beyond.

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It was the year that saw the biggest selling jazz album, and single, of all time.

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Time Out was going where I envisioned jazz should go.

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I said, "Boy, this is fine. This is gonna work."

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Jazz was pushed to new heights of innovation, beauty, and groove.

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You know, the things would swing. He'd lift you right out of your seat.

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It was the end of the Eisenhower era, 2.5 children,

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and the white picket fence, in 1959 jazz is reaching white America in a big way.

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# Why are they so sick and ridiculous?

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# Two four six eight! They brainwash and teach you hate... #

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Jazz musicians didn't really, like, join the civil rights movement. The civil rights movement joined them.

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And with Ornette Coleman's The Shape Of Jazz To Come, 1959 saw the birth of a whole new free jazz movement.

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When you talk about somebody speaking through their instrument,

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like actually hear it as a human, that's Ornette.

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He changed everything.

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1959 was a phenomenon. It was on another level, that's all you can say.

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'The machine's on. Miles, where you gonna work now?

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'Right here.

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'OK, cos if you move back, we don't get you.

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'When I play I'm gonna raise my horn a little bit.

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'OK, just you four guys on this, right, Miles?

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'Ready?'

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Miles Davis, Kind Of Blue, is the biggest selling jazz album ever made.

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Shifting over five million copies.

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It regularly tops best jazz album polls,

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as well as featuring high in lists of the greatest albums of any category.

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Kind of Blue continues to convert more people to jazz than any other recording.

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All this 50 years after it was released.

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-'Yeah.

-Let's hear a little bit of it.

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'Right, OK.'

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MUSIC PLAYS

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When they walked into the studio, they did not see this as their ultimate statement.

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They did not see this as the birth of a classic.

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It was a session that was scheduled for that day.

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'At the cannonball, you play again and we'll come in and end it.'

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They go over by the piano and he's giving them instructions

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about the tunes they're gonna play, you know.

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So there wasn't a whole lot of music, I didn't have any music.

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You know, just a piece of manuscript paper with some chords scribbled on it.

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Miles tells me, uh, "Make this sound like it's floating."

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'Here we go. No title.'

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MUSIC PLAYS

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'Start again, please. Sorry, we gotta watch it because there's noises all the way through, this is so quiet.'

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First time I did it, engineer said, "The drums are makin' like a surface noise,"

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Miles hollered back it him, says, "That's part of it!"

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-'That goes with it.

-What?

-All that goes with it.

-All right.'

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Amazingly, Miles and his band spent a total of just seven hours recording Kind Of Blue.

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All but one of the tracks are first takes.

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Any time they completed a tune, that's what they were gonna stick with.

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You know, it really is propelled by the idea that first thought is best thought.

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Try it again, Irvine.

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We would be hard pressed to find any album opener that could compare to the opening of So What.

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This misty, unclear idea of where is the music going, where are we?

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The intro from So What was totally improvised.

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Had no time reference, no beat yet.

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It's the piano and the bass sort of having this little conversation,

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and out of this musical cloud comes the riff.

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The grand riff, the one that says, "So what?"

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Baum ba do ba do baum...

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And then just when the energy is sort of getting to the point where it needs to be kicked up a notch,

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Jimmy Cobb comes in with this incredible cymbal crash.

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When we got to the place where the solos were supposed to start,

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I hit the cymbal, and I thought I had over-played it for the room,

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-I thought I had hit it too hard.

-But bang. It hits.

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You know, you can't plan on stuff like that happening.

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Miles' solo kicks off. So simple.

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Almost like a whispered confession.

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You know, by someone very intimate to you.

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When Miles did Kind Of Blue, it opened up a whole new direction in jazz.

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More introspective, a new way of thinking about the creation of jazz

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and the creation of jazz compositions.

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Part of Kind Of Blue's enormous influence on music is the legacy of the band members.

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Many of them went on to become leaders in their own right, like saxophone virtuoso,

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John Coltrane.

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But Kind Of Blue is defined by Miles' incredibly hip trumpet sound.

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He had this sound that was kind of like, um...

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haunting kind of voice.

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It was really individual. Very unique, very special.

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The way he plays sometimes, it makes you feel life so deeply,

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that you could almost cry, you know?

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And it didn't really sound like a trumpet any more.

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Miles' trumpet technique on Kind Of Blue was something he'd painstakingly developed

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since he first hit the scene in the late 1940s.

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Back then, the music had been changing.

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In the 1940s, if you were a player, if you were an instrumentalist

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who was really starting to make the move, be-bop was the music.

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Be-bop was a fast and frenetic style of jazz.

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It reflected jazz musicians' desire to be accepted as virtuoso artists, masters of their instruments.

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Be-bop's greatest exponent was Charlie Parker.

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Miles Davis is a very precocious, musical youngster.

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What he really wants to learn is be-bop, and where he's gonna learn it is on 52nd Street,

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up at Minton's, up in Harlem, playing with the be-bop leader of that time, Charlie Parker.

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Aged only 18, Miles became a member of Charlie Parker's band.

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As Miles traded solos with his hero, he was learning about be-bop from the source.

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Miles is not gonna be a side band for long.

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Miles, like many other musicians of that day were trying to deal with the language of be-bop.

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"Where do we take be-bop?"

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Miles said, "The music has become cluttered."

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Part of his genius as a musician was that he edited what he heard Charlie Parker play.

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So if Charlie, for instance, used ten notes

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to make a certain kind of statement,

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Miles Davis might figure out how to use three.

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Miles used what they call the harmonic bomb, you hit this note that nobody expects you to hit,

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and it has a great weight of power than just running up through the notes another kind of a way.

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There's a connection, a connective between these four artists.

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Charles Mingus, Dave Brubeck, Miles Davis and Ornette Coleman,

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in that they're all dealing with be-bop. The continuation of be-bop.

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Where do we take this language, what do we do with it?

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Another direction jazz took in 1959 was the rhythmic experimentation of pianist Dave Brubeck's Time Out.

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A highly unusual record, each track is in a different tempo and time signature.

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The single Take Five is in 5/4 time, and built around a drum solo.

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Yet it rose up the pop charts, becoming the best selling jazz 45 ever released.

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Brubeck had spent years building the line-up of his quartet that would go on to record Time Out.

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I put together gradually this dream group,

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cos some bass players and some drummers

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didn't wanna play in different time signatures,

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didn't wanna follow where it went.

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But Take Five drummer Joe Morello was originally unhappy

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coming into a band dominated by Brubeck and saxophonist Paul Desmond.

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On the marquis, on any kind of sign, it was,

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"The Dave Brubeck Quartet featuring Paul Desmond",

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and the other guys were nothing, you could have been zilch.

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I said, "Joe, I'll feature you," so the first night he joined, I gave him a drum solo.

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I did the drum solo and the place went wild and people just stood up and clapped and all this nonsense.

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Paul Desmond, it's the end of the song, he just walks off the stand and runs in the dressing room.

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And Paul said, "Either he goes, or I go,"

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and I said, "Paul, he's not going."

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Which was a shock you know. Because he was the star in the group, not Dave, it was Paul.

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Well, he felt that way, anyway!

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He never talked to be for about five months.

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OK, now we gotta work on the ending.

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Did I play too many things for you?

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I sat in the crossfire between these two wonderful players,

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keeping everything going.

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Giving in or not giving in.

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That quartet just started making real headway.

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By the time they signed to Columbia Records in the mid-'50s,

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the Dave Brubeck quartet were one of America's top jazz bands.

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His music was easily accessible to the average person,

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it was not too complicated.

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And the group was quite appealing because here you had

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four all-American young boys to watch as well as to listen to.

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Dave was quite easy to sell to middle-America because he LOOKED like middle-America,

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he talked like middle-America. He was a nice guy that you were glad your daughter was going out with.

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As Brubeck's success widened, parts of the jazz community accused him of being not only a sell-out,

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but effectively a racist who diluted black music for mass consumption.

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Jazz came out of black America. Later of course, white America catches up, it always does.

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But there definitely was a resentment amongst black musicians regarding Dave Brubeck.

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In the '50s, the people who got successful from cool jazz were primarily white musicians.

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He had broken in to another audience that nobody really had.

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That's when people started gettin' mad at him.

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The thing about Dave, it's kind of strange for a guy who is light-years away from a racist, right,

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who is light-years away from a commercial guy...

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who doesn't make recordings with any intention of pandering to the public, but the public likes HIM!

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Brubeck himself was more concerned with fine-tuning the rhythm section of his quartet,

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and tackling his ideas about where jazz should be headed.

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And then Eugene Wright joined us

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and finally I had this dream group.

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But the addition of bassist Eugene Wright didn't pass unnoticed

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when they toured universities in the southern states of America.

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We were playing in a university and they said, "You can't go on stage with an African-American."

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I said, "Well, we're not going on stage."

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And then the students were stamping on the floor up above the dressing room,

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and the louder and wilder it got,

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the more concerned the president of the college was getting.

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So he told me,

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"You can go on, but you have to put your bass player way in the back

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"where he won't be too noticeable."

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When we walked on stage, the audience just went wild, they were so happy.

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The second tune, I told Eugene,

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"Your microphone's broke, come out here and play your solo

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"and use my speaker's mic, in front of the band."

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Gene didn't know how I was plotting all this.

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He came out and we tore that place up.

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Oh, it was so wonderful.

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Yeah, oh...

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The classic line-up of the Dave Brubeck Quartet that would go on to record Time Out, was now in place.

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Bass player and composer, Charles Mingus,

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saw the question of how to take jazz forward in a different way.

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Mingus had risen throught the ranks, playing in the bands of jazz legends

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like Louie Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Charlie Parker.

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But for the notoriously opinionated and hot-tempered Mingus,

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jazz wasn't a calendar history of styles,

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so much as an ever-present "now".

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Charles Mingus had a very strong sense that there was no past,

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there was no present, there was no future.

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All of the time was alive at the same moment.

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He was a great, great thinker about music.

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He didn't buy anything about that, you know,

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a style lasted from 1920 to 1930, Mingus didn't buy that.

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His thing was that, if it was good then, it's good now.

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He wanted the freedom to play in, to write in,

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to encourage his musicians to know how to improvise in every style.

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In 1959, Mingus recorded and released Mingus Ah Um.

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It was one of four albums he made that year, not unusual in this prolific artist's long career.

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But Mingus Ah Um was a tightly focused master work.

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The title of the album sounds like a stutter,

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while he's getting himself together to make his grand statement.

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Ah Um? You know, what's that about?!

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What's really, really devastating about Ah Um, is the consistency.

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Tune by tune by tune.

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I mean, it's Mingus at his best.

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Mingus was diggin' deep into that roots thing

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with that incredible opening track, Better Git It In Your Soul.

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It's like a gospel choir. It's like a pentacostal performance on a Wednesday night prayer meeting.

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But the incredible magic of it is not just the influences,

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it's how Mingus works it all together and makes it into its own new thing.

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Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, remember no applause and keep it down.

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Don't rattle the ice in your glasses and don't ring the cash register.

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You got it covered? All right.

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He had these enormous hands, and that made it possible

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for him to do certain things technically

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that other bass players just couldn't do.

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In fact, he was one of the greatest bassists in jazz,

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well, he was one of the greatest players of the bass, period.

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I can hear him now!

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He was powerful, powerful.

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You shut up when he played.

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APPLAUSE

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Charlie Mingus was a big man, with a big talent and a big temper.

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And if people bugged him in the audience for some reason,

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someone did, he got very angry, took his bass, and he smashed it through the light up there,

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and broke it. The light's still there, the Mingus Light, that's what it's become.

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He ripped the front door off once,

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and some little gal, this big, dragged it home, as I recall!

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They say a lot of musicians never played better in their life

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than when they play with Mingus because he was SO demanding.

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And he used everything, he used anger,

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he used insults, he used flattery.

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Whatever he could use. He would fire musicians and hire them back, you know, 20 minutes later.

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Nothing was out of bounds.

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He wanted you to understand his,

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play his music and be yourself in it.

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So often, on a nightclub stand he would stop and say to somebody,

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"You're not playing yourself, you're playing notes."

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I knew that Mingus was playing in this little club on West 4th Street,

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and I went into the club, there was an argument on the bandstand, they weren't even playing,

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and I heard Mingus yelling at somebody, and it turned out to be the piano player.

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Mingus put his arm inside the piano,

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and he grabbed the strings and pulled them out.

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With one fist.

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I said, "Man, it's time for me to get out of here."

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I never seen anything like that in my life.

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Well, I'm gonna shoot it.

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GUNSHOT

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A gun.

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People are always telling me stories I don't wanna hear,

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about moments of Charles's volatility or things that took place,

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and take place they did. And Charles created scenes,

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he was called jazz's angry man,

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and he had plenty to be angry about.

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He had a lot to confront in those days

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for a man of his sensitivity and his sensibility and his talent,

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and unrecognised in many places,

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merely because he had the wrong skin colour.

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He wasn't dark enough and he wasn't light enough.

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He called himself a mongrel, or a mutt.

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Like many jazz artists, Mingus was an extraordinary player and improvisor,

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but with Mingus Ah Um, he began to assume his position as one of jazz's greatest composers.

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I love Self Portrait In Three Colours.

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A little through composed piece without any solos,

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just a little jam, beatiful, this multi-faceted, um, composition.

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Charles once said that he was,

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through his music, trying to express who he was.

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And he said the reason it was difficult was because he was changing all the time.

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But through his music you hear every...

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You hear the fear, you hear the spirituality, the tenderness, the passion,

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everything that he was comes out in his music.

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In 1959, Ornette Coleman made his spectacular musical statement

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in one quantum leap with the audaciously titled The Shape Of Jazz To Come.

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But before he formed his quartet,

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Coleman, based in Los Angeles,

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had trouble finding anyone who was interested in his wildly unorthodox music.

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Went over to this club by MacArthur Park on Wiltshire

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and Gerry Mulligan was playing there.

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They started their first set, and after they begin to play,

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a guy came in and asked if he could sit in.

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He got up on the band stand, and proceeded to take out his horn,

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and the horn was white, it was plastic.

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I'd never seen a plastic horn before.

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When this gut started to play,

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it was like the heavens opened up for me.

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Because I saw, and I heard, something that I'd been feeling.

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To me, they were playing as if the music was written,

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like, when they was improvising, it sounded to me like, oh,

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they've already learned that. You know?

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So I said, I wanna play like that,

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I wanna play directly from something that inspired me.

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And they said, "What are you doing?" And I said, "I'm improvising."

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They said, "You ain't playing shit.

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"You can't play like that,"

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I said, "Play like what?" "The way you playing."

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And all of a sudden, Gerry Mulligan asked him to stop.

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So, he stopped, and got off the band stand and went to the back door.

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So I rushed through the crowd, trying to reach him,

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and by the time I got to the back door, he'd disappeared down the alley. He was gone.

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Blown away by Ornette's playing, Charlie Haden soon tracked him down.

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I said, "I heard you play the other night, man. You sounded so brilliant."

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He said, "Thank you, not many people tell me that."

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I said, "Man, I just wish that we could play music together sometime."

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And he said, "Well, what about now?"

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And so we went to his apartment.

0:30:480:30:52

That's how I met him. And we played, and played and played.

0:30:520:30:55

We maybe stayed in there three or four days, I don't know.

0:30:550:30:58

So, that's when the quartet started.

0:30:580:31:01

They're a bunch of young players, players who are just starting to break out,

0:31:040:31:08

and whose minds and approaches are still flexible enough that Ornette can work with them.

0:31:080:31:14

I never worried about chords, melodies or keys. Only sound.

0:31:300:31:36

And the thing about it, there's only 12 notes that satisfy in the whole world.

0:31:360:31:43

12 notes that satisfy in the whole world.

0:31:430:31:46

And I said, "Oh, man." And then I realised that this note don't have a style.

0:31:460:31:52

Either you make something out of it, or you don't.

0:31:520:31:55

Ornette Coleman's The Shape Of Jazz To Come

0:32:000:32:03

didn't initially make the bold impression it has done in the years since 1959.

0:32:030:32:09

At first I didn't know what to make of it. I didn't know which pocket to put it in.

0:32:140:32:18

Because I hadn't heard anything quite like that.

0:32:180:32:21

It was a new, far-out approach.

0:32:290:32:34

The Shape Of Jazz To Come is definitely an audacious title, you know?

0:32:370:32:42

It's putting yourself out there and saying, you know, this is where jazz is going.

0:32:420:32:46

Lonely Woman has been a favourite song of mine,

0:32:550:32:57

and Willner, ever since I heard it when it first came out.

0:32:570:33:01

It was one of the greatest compositions ever.

0:33:040:33:07

I mean, combined with the way his quartet and Ornette played it,

0:33:070:33:14

everything music could be.

0:33:140:33:16

And not a day goes by when I'm not humming that.

0:33:160:33:19

HE HUMS "LONELY WOMAN"

0:33:260:33:28

It's not your standard jazz thing where this guy solos and this one solos and this one solos,

0:33:350:33:40

this is a real composition,

0:33:400:33:43

that brings all of them together, and they're all such staggeringly great players.

0:33:430:33:50

Born from oppression, jazz is, at its heart, political,

0:34:070:34:13

and throughout his career,

0:34:130:34:15

Charles Mingus often integrated his political beliefs with his music.

0:34:150:34:19

Charles used his band stand as a soap box at all times.

0:34:190:34:23

He spoke out about his beliefs, about racism,

0:34:230:34:27

about the iniquities in society and the record industry.

0:34:270:34:31

Whatever was on his mind, he expressed.

0:34:310:34:34

The most timely, and influencial track on Mingus Ah Um,

0:34:340:34:39

Fables Of Faubus, was no exception.

0:34:390:34:42

The track spoke of events that took place after the outlawing of segregation,

0:34:420:34:47

two years earlier, in 1957.

0:34:470:34:51

'President Eisenhower, signing the Civil Rights Bill.

0:34:510:34:55

'It was Monday morning, ten past eight. Kids going to school all over the country as the President signs.

0:34:550:35:00

'And in Little Rock at ten past eight,

0:35:000:35:03

'Arkansas National Guardsmen, under orders of Governor Faubus, challenging the law of the land,

0:35:030:35:08

'preventing nine negro youngsters from attending the Central High School in Little Rock.'

0:35:080:35:13

There was an attempt to intergrate a high school

0:35:130:35:17

in Little Rock, Arkansas,

0:35:170:35:18

according to the law, according to the Supreme Court Of The United States.

0:35:180:35:23

Governor Orval Faubus, the Governor of Arkansas,

0:35:230:35:27

would not allow integration.

0:35:270:35:29

CROWD CHANT: Two, four, six, eight! We don't want to integrate!

0:35:290:35:33

Two, four, six, eight! We don't want to integrate!

0:35:330:35:37

Mingus was outraged by what he saw happening to people.

0:36:190:36:25

And the irony of The Fables Of Faubus, is that it's kind of a comic tune.

0:36:250:36:31

It has a theatrical quality, you know,

0:36:380:36:40

you're expecting this character that's going to be...

0:36:400:36:43

um, well, not very fit for public display.

0:36:430:36:48

And that's certainly the way he felt about this white supremacist governor of Arkansas.

0:36:480:36:55

'Then came the Eisenhower-Faubus meeting.

0:37:020:37:04

'Finally, Faubus withdrew the guardsmen

0:37:040:37:06

'and the negroes entered the hitherto forbidden white school.

0:37:060:37:09

'A riot started.

0:37:090:37:11

'Confronted with what he called anarchy,

0:37:110:37:14

'the President ordered United States soldiers into Little Rock.

0:37:140:37:17

'The regular army troops, para troops, escorted the negro children to and from school,

0:37:170:37:23

'gave them full protection from the threatening crowds.'

0:37:230:37:26

Charles wrote some smokin' lyrics about this,

0:37:260:37:30

and Columbia Records would not let Charles include these political words on the album.

0:37:300:37:37

"Tell me someone who's ridiculous," and then his drummer would respond, "Governor Faubus,"

0:37:370:37:42

and Charles would say, "Why is he so sick and ridiculous?"

0:37:420:37:45

And Danny would say, "Two, four, six, eight, brainwash and teach you hate."

0:37:450:37:49

# Oh, Lord! No more Klu Klux Klan!

0:37:490:37:51

# Name someone who's ridiculous, Danny

0:37:510:37:55

# Governor Faubus!

0:37:550:37:59

# Oh why are they so sick And ridiculous?

0:37:590:38:03

# Two, four, six, eight, They brainwash and teach you hate. #

0:38:030:38:09

Fables Of Faubus, even without the lyric, just the fact that he's using the name Faubus,

0:38:090:38:14

is gonna have a very strong message

0:38:140:38:16

to many of the people who were listening to that album in 1959.

0:38:160:38:21

Fables Of Faubus opened up a lot of the pent-up feelings

0:38:210:38:26

we all had as African-American musicians

0:38:260:38:30

against racism in America.

0:38:300:38:33

Kind of, set the stage for each of our own individual expression of that opposition to racism.

0:38:330:38:40

BARACK OBAMA'S VOICE: Three words - yes, we can.

0:38:450:38:49

Barack Obama may not know it,

0:38:520:38:54

but jazz was one of the reaons he was elected president.

0:38:540:39:00

and Charles Mingus, and all of these musicians,

0:39:000:39:04

they helped to create the atmosphere that led to people

0:39:040:39:10

respecting a person beyond the distinctions of colour.

0:39:100:39:13

In the years leading up to Kind Of Blue,

0:39:180:39:20

Miles Davis had begun to make an impact with his own defiant demands for respect,

0:39:200:39:25

both as a black man, and as an artist.

0:39:250:39:28

I remember seeing him in Los Angeles, at the club.

0:39:280:39:33

People who turned up were gamblers,

0:39:330:39:37

pimps, drug dealers,

0:39:370:39:39

hustling-type guys.

0:39:390:39:41

Bragging about who got the most hos and who got the prettiest hos,

0:39:410:39:45

and your hos should be picked up by the dog catcher,

0:39:450:39:48

and just all that kind of stuff.

0:39:480:39:50

Now, when Miles Davis came on the bandstand, though, they shut up.

0:39:550:39:59

They didn't make any noise after he came out there.

0:39:590:40:02

See, I'd never seen that before,

0:40:020:40:04

because these are not the kind of people you can just shut up.

0:40:040:40:08

They knew if they got loud and irritated him,

0:40:080:40:12

he would turn round and leave and that would be it. He wouldn't come back.

0:40:120:40:16

Nobody was gonna entreat him. "Oh, Miles, but you won't get paid!"

0:40:160:40:20

"I'm not broke."

0:40:210:40:24

He always made his point that when I come in here,

0:40:240:40:28

I have some kind of artistic goals I'm trying to accomplish

0:40:280:40:32

and they do not include you talking while we're playing.

0:40:320:40:37

Miles struck me as somebody who would sell a lot of records

0:40:420:40:47

because his cool, almost disdainful, demeanour on stage

0:40:470:40:52

worked absolutely in his favour to become a talked-about artist.

0:40:520:40:56

Columbia had a very powerful publicity department.

0:40:590:41:04

They realised what we have to do is we have to create this image

0:41:040:41:08

of the distant, remote jazz musician who's not available to everybody.

0:41:080:41:14

We're gonna sell them that!

0:41:140:41:16

And of course being remote and unavailable just made everyone dig Miles all the more.

0:41:200:41:27

Miles was not just a musical pioneer,

0:41:270:41:31

he was a pioneer as far as American culture in general.

0:41:310:41:34

He was an important black figure who made it within this American system.

0:41:340:41:41

He's reaching white America in a big way.

0:41:410:41:44

Freddie Hubbard said, when he was in the Village Vanguard,

0:41:510:41:55

he noticed this repeatedly, that when Miles David would play a ballad

0:41:550:42:00

and put the Harmon mute in the bell of the horn and play in the lower register,

0:42:000:42:06

he said every woman's legs in the club opened.

0:42:060:42:09

And he said first time he thought he was hallucinating, that it was not really happening.

0:42:110:42:16

He said that he'd look and they all... They didn't even know they were doing it.

0:42:160:42:20

He said they would all just open up.

0:42:200:42:22

He was a dude, man! A dude! But beautiful.

0:42:320:42:36

So sexy, if you really want to know the truth!

0:42:370:42:41

He's got a very elegant, low-key sound.

0:42:410:42:45

Women liked him a lot, look at all the wives he had!

0:42:450:42:50

While 1959 saw America beginning to find its groove...

0:42:510:42:56

..beneath the shiny surface lay deep fears brought about by the Cold War with Russia.

0:42:580:43:03

As part of a programme of cultural detente,

0:43:050:43:09

the American government asked Dave Brubeck to take jazz and its American values to the East.

0:43:090:43:16

Our government wanted to impress people

0:43:160:43:20

that were right on the border of Russia about our culture.

0:43:200:43:25

President Eisenhower wanted us to go along the perimeter of Russia

0:43:250:43:31

and we opened in Poland and then went to Turkey, Afghanistan,

0:43:310:43:38

Pakistan, India, Iran, Iraq.

0:43:380:43:42

We were gonna represent our country and we talked about how difficult it is

0:43:490:43:54

to go and be the voice of freedom when you don't really have freedom yet,

0:43:540:44:01

because of the old unwritten laws of segregation.

0:44:010:44:06

A great thing jazz has done for our country

0:44:110:44:15

and here we're being sent out to do it for the world.

0:44:150:44:20

The tour was to begin in Poland,

0:44:220:44:25

but this meant travelling through East Germany.

0:44:250:44:28

East Berlin was not recognised by the United States.

0:44:280:44:33

so they assigned a woman

0:44:330:44:37

that for some reason could go through the Brandenburg Gate.

0:44:370:44:41

The whole scene was like a spy movie.

0:44:420:44:46

She told me to get in the trunk of her car.

0:44:480:44:51

I said I won't get in the trunk of her car,

0:44:510:44:55

I'll get in the back seat and if I get questioned, I'm gonna tell them the truth.

0:44:550:45:00

But she got through.

0:45:000:45:03

She brought us to a police station...

0:45:080:45:11

..and this man walked into the room and said, "You are Mr Coolu,"

0:45:130:45:21

and I said, "No, I'm Mr Brubeck."

0:45:210:45:24

And he said, "No, you're Coolu."

0:45:240:45:26

Then he pulled out a Polish paper with a picture of me

0:45:290:45:35

and the caption said Mr Coolu and I realised I was Mr Cool

0:45:350:45:43

and that was my name.

0:45:430:45:45

Many of the ideas that we developed for Time Out

0:45:500:45:55

came from touring in these countries.

0:45:550:45:58

Like Blue Rondo A La Turk,

0:45:580:46:01

-that's a Turkish folk beat.

-HE TAPS AND SINGS THE RHYTHM

0:46:010:46:07

HE PLAYS THE PIANO

0:46:070:46:09

And then it goes into a blues.

0:46:160:46:18

Brubeck returned to the US with a complete vision

0:46:340:46:38

of the time signature experiments for Time Out.

0:46:380:46:42

For his album of cool rhythmic innovation,

0:46:590:47:02

Brubeck decided that drummer Joe Morello was to be given a showcase.

0:47:020:47:07

I heard Joe playing this beat backstage...

0:47:090:47:14

HE TAPS THE BEAT

0:47:140:47:16

..and I said, well, I have something in 5/4.

0:47:180:47:23

One, two, three, four, five...

0:47:230:47:25

5/4, that's right up my alley, man, you know?

0:47:410:47:45

It's just spontaneous. I was looking for more colours, you know, different textures of sound.

0:47:480:47:54

APPLAUSE

0:48:120:48:14

I said, "Boy, this is fine. This is gonna work."

0:48:190:48:24

Time Out was going where I envisioned Jazz should go.

0:48:240:48:30

Jazz history had been written in 4/4 time

0:48:360:48:40

and you get Dave Brubeck doing a whole album with the idea of using different time signatures.

0:48:400:48:46

Columbia told me, "All these crazy time signatures, that'll never sell."

0:48:500:48:56

But the disc jockeys started playing us. We had a big hit.

0:49:010:49:06

The idea that jazz could actually make it on to pop radio in America in the late '50s -

0:49:070:49:14

that was totally unheard of.

0:49:140:49:17

What really works well with Time Out is that it provides

0:49:230:49:27

an easy introduction for mainstream America to deal with new musical ideas.

0:49:270:49:32

Towards the end of 1959, the Ornette Coleman Quartet came to New York for the very first time,

0:49:470:49:53

with the prophetically titled The Shape of Jazz To Come.

0:49:530:49:57

They were all but unknown,

0:49:570:49:59

but those who were hip to the scene were there to check out the band's New York debut at the Five Spot.

0:49:590:50:06

We couldn't wait. We went down to the Five Spot

0:50:080:50:11

and had a rehearsal one afternoon and then we opened up.

0:50:110:50:15

There were lines around the block, the place was packed with people, so it was quite a deal.

0:50:150:50:20

Opening night, they had everybody, everybody was there.

0:50:230:50:28

So he was, he was kind of on auditory trial so to speak.

0:50:280:50:33

We couldn't wait to get to work and play because the music was so great and new and fresh.

0:50:330:50:38

And that's when The Shape of Jazz to Come is dropped on the New York jazz scene.

0:50:380:50:44

That first night of Ornette's was a "socko!" impact,

0:50:540:51:00

and unforgettable. Unforgettable.

0:51:000:51:02

I don't think I ever heard four musicians who gave me the impression of surrounding me,

0:51:020:51:09

I was in the middle of it. Bang.

0:51:090:51:12

'We all know the atomic bomb is very dangerous. We must get ready for it

0:51:160:51:21

'Duck and cover! Attaboy, Tony, act fast!'

0:51:210:51:25

Coleman spoke the paranoia that existed in the nuclear age.

0:51:390:51:46

The reaction that many people had just to this idea that the entire world could be blown up.

0:51:490:51:56

To play music with this urgency, this desperate urgency to make something that's never been before,

0:52:080:52:16

as if you're on the frontline and you're risking your life for every note you play.

0:52:160:52:21

I was there the opening night and I was really unprepared for the hostility!

0:52:240:52:30

I was sitting next to Roy Eldridge, and Roy was a warm generous guy,

0:52:320:52:37

and he was listening to Ornette and he said "He's just jiving, man, that's not music!"

0:52:370:52:44

People will say it was random, it was chaotic, it was this and that.

0:52:440:52:48

There were people who became angry at the music and let it be known that they hated it.

0:52:480:52:55

'In New York, everything was under suspicion,

0:53:010:53:04

'and I didn't know about being under suspicion,'

0:53:040:53:07

I just thought about picking up my horn

0:53:070:53:10

and activating the idea that's going through my nervous system.

0:53:100:53:14

This guy had extreme nerve. The things that Ornette would play, even today,

0:53:160:53:23

you actually can not believe that he played some of them. Just the sheer audacity of it.

0:53:230:53:30

In New York, Ornette Coleman playing his white plastic sax was considered pretty out there too.

0:53:330:53:40

It looked kind of funny because people said,

0:53:420:53:45

"What happened to the candy that was inside it when you bought it?"

0:53:450:53:49

He got a great sound out of this instrument. You wouldn't think it was plastic. I'd say,

0:53:490:53:55

"Oh my God I hope this horn don't melt, this cat's playin'." It was heavy stuff, you know?

0:53:550:54:00

It's hard to understand a negative reaction to that.

0:54:170:54:21

Something so fabulous. I mean, what would people object to in it? I can't even imagine it.

0:54:220:54:30

He changed everything. He changed everything.

0:54:360:54:39

The whole approach, the way of looking at it, the style of it, the sound.

0:54:390:54:44

He influenced people that don't even know he influenced them. Like, think they hated the music,

0:54:440:54:50

you know. It gets into you, you can't help it. Maybe that's what upset them so much.

0:54:500:54:56

I'm not trying to prove anything to anybody,

0:55:000:55:03

I want to be as human as I can get. Believe me.

0:55:030:55:06

And I know there's nothing I'm trying to hide,

0:55:060:55:09

there's nothing I'm trying to climb above,

0:55:090:55:12

there's nothing I'm trying to destroy.

0:55:120:55:15

No one is going to suffer from what the human race does,

0:55:170:55:21

because it's not going to destroy itself.

0:55:210:55:23

It's gonna improve itself.

0:55:230:55:27

Music is something that, to me,

0:55:280:55:32

is nothing but the sound of your emotions.

0:55:320:55:37

It's your heart, it's your feelings,

0:55:370:55:41

it's your belief, it's your ability, and, most of all, it's your love.

0:55:410:55:46

And what's so beautiful about it is that it's not destructive.

0:55:460:55:51

It's always something that gets better.

0:55:510:55:54

1959 was a really important year in jazz,

0:56:060:56:09

because you had some of the greatest musicians in the world playing

0:56:090:56:15

a response to what had been played, but was also a response to what COULD be played.

0:56:150:56:20

The art was advanced in 1959, another set of choices were provided for everybody.

0:56:200:56:27

Miles Davis, Kind Of Blue,

0:56:310:56:34

has become jazz's best selling album,

0:56:340:56:37

hugely influential from its 1959 release right up until today.

0:56:370:56:43

Kind Of Blue difinitely changed music, it just kind of opened up

0:56:430:56:47

the horizon for jazz expression.

0:56:470:56:50

Miles would go on to influence the course of jazz many more times.

0:56:530:56:58

Dave Brubeck still continues to follow his own groove

0:57:010:57:05

and Time Out remains a high point of jazz innovation.

0:57:050:57:09

With Time Out, it finally happened the way we all dreamt of it.

0:57:090:57:15

It stood the test of time, this one

0:57:160:57:19

Charles Mingus, a political as well as musical force,

0:57:210:57:24

is now recognised as being amongst the 20th century's most important composers.

0:57:240:57:30

Mingus Ah Um remains a prime work by the unpredictable genius.

0:57:300:57:35

He was sharing his emotions about life.

0:57:350:57:41

The message he always said to his side-men was "Play yourself",

0:57:410:57:44

and you could extend that to all of us, "Play yourself, be who you are."

0:57:440:57:49

But the record that has most changed jazz this last half-century

0:57:500:57:54

is Ornette Coleman's The Shape of Jazz to Come.

0:57:540:57:58

It came out of nowhere and fired a starting gun on new forms of music.

0:57:580:58:03

The LP still sounds radical.

0:58:030:58:06

He's divisive even to this day. Being divisive is a defining element almost to Ornette Coleman's music.

0:58:090:58:16

The legacy of The Shape of Jazz to Come will be to create no boundaries,

0:58:170:58:22

to play new music as much as you can, not to be satisfied with the status quo.

0:58:220:58:27

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

0:58:450:58:48

Email [email protected]

0:58:480:58:52

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