ositions re-quire of a player a depth of knowledge from Jelly Roll through Duke through swing, bop and the future.
 
This night the sextet was down to five, with trumpeter Johnny Coles rushed to a hospital for emergency ulcer surgery when he collapsed onstage a couple of nights previous. (Mingus had the horn onstage though, and whimsically introduces “Johnny Coles’ trumpet”). The brass parts of the arrangements had to be covered in one way or another, usually by pianist Jaki Byard, so the musicians’ skills are on full display.
 
Eric Dolphy—on alto sax, flute and bass clarinet—had decided he would leave the band at the end of the tour, to examine Europe’s culture and opportunities. (He was to die in Berlin ten weeks later). Byard is as comfortable mining Fats Waller and Art Tatum as he is playing free, and the least famous man here Clifford Jordan offers solid tenor in a bop-informed-Lester Young style. As usual with Mingus, drummer Danny Richmond is in the engine house. And the bassist/leader himself is in full force, powering the band with slapping stretched strings and delicate arco musings.
 
There’s over 2 hours of music here, with a couple of previously unavailable tracks, Mingus intro-ductions and lots of the ambiance of the evening. It’s a capture of the sort of creative atmosphere that we’ll never see again.

Ted O'Reilly