Grade: B
Charles Mingus arrived in Buenos Aires at the start of his 1977 Argentinian tour with aching joints, an ominous first sign of the muscle-wasting Lou Gehrig’s disease that would claim his life two years later. Musically, he was at a musical crossroads too. His record label, Atlantic, had insisted on adding electric guitarists John Scofield and Larry Coryell – associated with lucrative jazz-rock fusion – to his latest album Cumbia & Jazz Fusion, while his once stable touring quintet had become more of a revolving door.
Jazz has often been written up as a sequence of landmark recordings and concerts captured at prestigious venues, but the value of Mingus In Argentina is precisely that it’s neither. Mingus played that night without a thought to preserving his legacy on disc. Jazz musicians reveal as much of what makes them tick playing those ‘ordinary’ nights too.
Numbness in Mingus’s limbs meant that his bass playing lacked its customary full-throttle power, but his command over contours and energy-flow were undimmed. ‘Noddin’ Ya Head Blues’ sounds disappointingly generic – until Mingus starts worrying at the music with digressions and rhythmic crosscurrents, using vocal cues and drawing on all his reserves of energy. Classics such as ‘Goodbye Pork Pie Hat’ and ‘Fables of Faubus’ were similarly stress-tested, forced towards fragmentation as a way of reassembling them. The joy of Mingus’ music is witnessing these chances play out; unexpected gear changes against sublime moments when pieces in flux fall into alignment again. Perfect in its imperfection, this is the very essence of jazz.
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