In regard to the "Mingus" album by Joni Mitchell, for which he sent her six tunes to record, I've read that Charles Mingus had Lou Gehrig's Disease, and the "tunes" he sent to Joni Mitchell for her "Mingus" album were sang rather than notated or played as he wasn't physically able to play the bass at the time.

In the introduction to the liner notes, she names the musicians who helped her "search for the music", and, at the end of the liner notes, names the musicans who played on the recording.

Eddie Gomez & Stanley Clarke are the bass players she credits with helping her "search for the music", but Jaco Pastorious was the bass player she had play on the recording.

I'm curious about the probable process used to go from a bass line Mingus sang into a tape recorder to the final recordings heard on Joni's album.

My impression is that Joni hired Eddie & Stanley to "jam" on the musical motifs Mingus provided and to improvise on the motifs in the spirit and style of Mingus, and that she recorded the sessions as each tune was refined. I further imagine that she'd choose her favorite, most evolved, version of each piece and ask the players to start from that point of evolution with a Mingus sort of feel. My guess is that Jaco learned the songs off "demo cuts" where the bass lines were played by Eddie or Stanley, and that what we hear on the album is his brilliant interpretation of their brilliant interpretations of the tunes Charles sang.

Is this, in your opinion, an accurate reading of the liner notes and an accurate understanding of how the bass parts on this album evolved?



This message has been edited by singlestring on 06-16-2001 at 03:29 PM

That seems highly unlikely to me!!!

A better guess would be she tried working with some different lineups but then fell back on Jaco whom she worked with in the past.

It's not like Jaco wasn't up to the task of making up his own lines

She actually went into the studio first with the group which included Gomez. I think John McGlaughlin and Wayne Shorter also played on those tracks (not sure). As I understand it, they recorded quite a bit of music, but Joni decided to release the Jaco stuff on the Mingus album. You can bet at some point the other tracks will be released on some Joni box set or whatever. I remember reading an interview I think it was with Gomez who said there was some amazing stuff in the can.

Fred