Bill Mays and Red Mitchell constituted one of the great piano-bass duos of the 1980s. Musicians and dedicated listeners still talk about their gigs at Bradley’s in New York’s Greenwich Village. Their album Two of a Mind has been out of print for years, although it shows up from time to time on web sites including this one, at prices ranging from high to heart-stopping. In 1982, Mays and Mitchell made two programs that ran on KCET, the Los Angeles public television station. Four pieces from those programs have just materialized on YouTube. Here are two of them, both written by Thelonious Monk.
How did Mitchell get that sound, clear and precise, yet the size of Grand Central Station? His tone was always big, but after 1966 when he changed his bass tuning from fourths to fifths (as violin, viola and cello are tuned), it became enormous. He explained it to Gene Lees:
If you tune an instrument in fourths, you get a scale that is shorter physically. The top notes are lower, the bottom notes are higher in pitch. If you tune an instrument in fifths, you get a bigger scale. The top notes are higher, the low notes are lower.
There’s more to it than that; the tuning in fifths also effects how the notes sustain, or ring. For detail, read the entire interview with Mitchell in Lees’ indispensable book Cats of Any Color. It is fascinating for the fluidity, profundity and coherence of Mitchell’s ideas about music and life.
Mitchell died in 1992. Mays is thriving.
The nonagenarian pianist presented de Barros with every biographer’s hope, unrestricted access to his subject’s personal papers and nearly unrestricted access to her private thoughts. He made the most of it, turning exhaustive research and hundreds of hours of interviews into a true story with the sweep of a novel. From the early discovery of McPartland’s musical gift through her wartime service, her ecstatic and stormy marriage to Jimmy McPartland, her growth as a pianist, her deep affair with Joe Morello, and the radio show that made her a national figure, she has had a fascinating life. It makes a splendid read.
Mulligan’s Concert Jazz Band had three fewer musicians than most big jazz outfits. Its size permitted precision, flexibility and subtlety, yet the band had the power of sprung steel. In this concert from a half century ago, the CJB is as fresh as yesterday. Arrangements by Mulligan, Bob Brookmeyer, Al Cohn and Johnny Mandel set standards to which big band writers still aspire. Bassist Buddy Clark and drummer Mel Lewis inspired Mulligan, Brookmeyer, Conte Candoli, Gene Quill and Zoot Sims to some of the best soloing of their careers. This beautifully produced issue of the complete concert is a basic repertoire item.
Interesting Doug. I have completely the opposite view from you. I was a very great admirer of Red’s playing UNTIL he changed his tuning. From then on I hated the sound he got and he subsequently ruined so many albums for me on which he appeared.
I did try, I kept listening but the “new” sound just got in the way. In addition, to me he no longer swung in the same way and the sound was lumbering and intrusive.
Give me the Red of the Hamp Hawes Trio, the Bethlehem Trio/Sextet, the Mulligan Quartet, in fact all most anything he did in the fifties.
Don
Thanks for sharing these, Doug. I love both of these guys but had never heard them together.
Reminds me of the DVD Red did with Chet Baker!
Don, did you ever get to hear the 1960 LP “Good Friday Blues” by The Modest Jazz Trio (Jim Hall, guitar; Red Mitchell, piano; Red Kelly, Drums? There is a CD reissue available.
Mitchell acquitted himself very well indeed on piano.
(The entire “Good Friday Blues” session is included in a CD called “Blues on the Rocks:
http://www.amazon.com/Blues-Rocks-Good-Friday/dp/B0009SQ6Z6 the CD also has three tracks of Hall with Chico Hamilton — DR)