17. Orange Was The Color of Her Dress, Then Blue Silk

Charles Mingus: Changes Two (Atlantic, 1975);
composed by Charles Mingus

Mingus liked the same kind of perfection that Kurt Weill did, which is only to say that if their melody lines were chained molecules, they would have had the same side effects. There are numerous live recordings of this composition that predate the studio version he did with his last great – and maybe greatest ever – small group. If you know the tune, you tend to recognize it the same way you recognize “Sophisticated Lady,” which is also the way someone might have seduced you by the way they lit a cigarette when that was an information-bearing gesture. An ascending line is countered by a reciprocal descending line until they entangle each other, leading to an Eb6-Emaj7-Eb6 triplet that turns the light on, and then sets up yet another new and similar syllogism, and another, into a structure of endless vaults and atria. Mingus never cared much for free playing, per se, but he unquestionably knew how to get rich and elaborate structures out of players who knew how to do it. Don Pullen and George Adams transform the deep folds and rifts of Mingus’s logic engine into a casbah: a bazaar inside an exterior that could not possibly contain it.

Note: 25 secular essays about 25 songs, each one exactly 200 words long, appearing one per day during Advent (approximately).