1959 A Year Of Great Jazz: Miles Davis, Dave Brubeck, Charles Mingus

1959 Jazz Reissues

• TIME OUT by the DAVE BRUBECK QUARTET (DOUBLE-CD + DVD)

• SKETCHES OF SPAIN by MILES DAVIS (DOUBLE-CD)

• MINGUS AH UM by CHARLES MINGUS (DOUBLE-CD)

All three are available digitally and at retail May 26.


TIME OUT by the Dave Brubeck Quartet: Exotic non-traditional rhythm signatures became one of the trademarks of the quartet, with Brubeck on piano, Paul Desmond on alto saxophone, bassist Eugene Wright, and drummer Joe Morello. A 5/4 vamp turned “Take Five” into an instrumental jazz staple and jukebox hit single b/w “Blue Rondo à La Turk.” The LP hit #2, stayed on the chart for more than three years, and became the first jazz album to sell a million copies. Liner notes for the 2009 edition of TIME OUT (which will contain a DVD documentary) are written by Ted Gioia, whose book West Coast Jazz (1998) contains two chapters devoted to Brubeck.

SKETCHES OF SPAIN by Miles Davis: Each of Miles’ four orchestral album collabo¬ra¬tions with arranger-composer Gil Evans – Miles Ahead (1957), Porgy And Bess (1958), Sketches Of Spain (1959), and Quiet Nights (1962) – was a masterwork in its own right. Sketches was Miles’ first post-Kind Of Blue project, and retains that LP’s modal feel on the 16-minute version of Rodrigo’s “Concierto de Aranjuez,’ the inspira¬tion for Davis and Evans. Liner notes for the 2009 edition of SKETCHES are written by composer academician Gunther Schuller, whose hundreds of accomplishments in jazz include playing french horn for Miles on the 1949-50 Birth Of The Cool sessions. SKETCHES was recorded in 1959 and released in 1960.

MINGUS AH UM by Charles Mingus: 2009 also marks the 30th anniversary of the death of the mercurial bandleader-composer, who had the budget at Columbia to double his two-horn front-line for the big sound of “Better Git It In Your Soul” and “Fables Of Faubus”, and homages to jazz greats Ellington (“Open Letter To Duke”), Morton (“Jelly Roll”), recently deceased Lester Young (“Good¬¬bye Pork Pie Hat”), and Mingus himself (“Self-Portrait in Three Colors”). The film noir quality of this album – considered to be one of the five truly essential Mingus LPs – predates a certain vein of film music later popularized by Henry Mancini. Liner notes for the 2009 edition of MINGUS AH UM are written by three-time Grammy Award-winning producer-annotator Michael Cuscuna.