# Charles Mingus: Montreux ’75. He was on tour to promote Changes One and Changes Two: Video, Photos

- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2018/03/04/charles-mingus-montreux-75-he-was-on-tour-to-promote-changes-one-and-changes-two-video-photos/
- Published: 2018-03-04T11:22:08+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU

**On July 20, 1975, Charles Mingus was in Montreux, Switzerland, to perform at the
Montreux Jazz Festival. He was on tour to promote _Changes One_ and _Changes Two,_
a pair of albums recorded for Atlantic months earlier in December 1974. **

They are among the bassist’s finest albums of the decade and were his first studio
recordings in the States in the 1970s up until that point. For better or worse, 
a bulk of Mingus’s 1970s albums were concert recordings.

[⌊Screen Shot 2018-02-26 at 8.43.55 PM⌉⌊Screen Shot 2018-02-26 at 8.43.55 PM⌉[
 Now, Eagle
Rock Entertainment has released _Charles Mingus: Live at Montreux 1975_, a two CD
set that is a follow-up to the DVD it released of the concert back in 2004. The 
music sounds as if the band had been recorded in the studio. The fidelity is fantastic
and the applause has been kept to a hushed minimum. On stage, bassist Charles Mingus
was joined by George Adams (ts, fl, vcl), Jack Walrath (tp), Don Pullen (p) and 
Dannie Richmond (d), with special guests Gerry Mulligan (bs) and Benny Bailey (tp).

[⌊Charles-Mingus-Changes-One⌉⌊Charles-Mingus-Changes-One⌉[
 The new album’s first
three tracks are from _Changes One_. The first is _Devil Blues,_ a raw, fire-spitting
blues with a snarling vocal by Adams. The second track is announced by Mingus as
_Free Cell Block F, ‘Tis Nazi U.S.A_. It’s not. It’s actually _Remembering Rockefeller
at Attica_. I’m not sure whether Mingus confused the two, he purposefully said “
_Cell Block F”_ because it was a more controversial or because the two songs have
similar chord changes. Either way, it’s a wonderful rendition that runs 10:32 instead
of the album’s 5:58.

[⌊200509_043a-800x542⌉⌊200509_043a-800x542⌉[
 But the album’s high point is _Sue’s
Changes._ The song, written for Sue Mingus, Charles Mingus’s wife, runs a resplendent
33:27, with a wind-swept piano solo by Pullen, a trumpet solo by Walrath, a bass
solo by Mingus and a drum solo by Dannie Richmond. [Photo above of Sue and Charles
Mingus courtesy of Sue Mingus]

_[⌊Screen Shot 2018-02-26 at 8.48.51 PM⌉⌊Screen Shot 2018-02-26 at 8.48.51 PM⌉[
 Goodbye Pork
Pie Hat
 has a slow, mournful pace. Joining in, Bailey and Mulligan are a perfect
pairing, and the song in Mulligan’s hands sounds as if it belongs on the soundtrack
to I Want to Live. Take the “A” Train is fairly pedestrian by contrast to the other
songs performed, but it is spirited just the same. Once again, the feel of Bailey’s
blistering trumpet against the smooth grunts of Mulligan’s baritone topped by Pullen’s
piano makes it worth hearing.

![Charles-mingus-1](http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f0883401b7c95380d6970b-
500wi)

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