top NY players carry Mingus legacy into the future
5
By calmerthanyouare
The Mingus Big Band has long been a proving ground for new young musicians as well as a steady gig for experienced older cats. Thanks to the tireless efforts of Sue Mingus in preserving her late husband's legacy as a composer, this group and others have had a relatively long life. You can see this band with its varying cast of players play at Iridium every Tuesday night in Manhattan. This release is a companion release to a previously unavailable-on-CD live date at UCLA in 1965 by Mingus himself and a band of musicians including Lonnie Hillyer, Hobart Dotson and Jimmy Owens on trumpets, Charles McPherson on alto sax, Julius Watkins on french horn, Howard Johnson on tuba, Dannie Richmond on drums. These two CDs provide sort of a then and now (or vice versa) perspective on Mingus' music - always soulful foot-tappers and fire-and-brimstone speeches (by either Mingus himself, Sue, or Kuumba Frank Lacy - longtime trombonist and singer in the MBB and other Mingus legacy bands).
