Incarnations

Album review

A collection of recordings culled from Charles Mingus' 1960 sessions on the Candid label, 2024's Incarnations is a swinging yet still heady album that finds the bassist bridging the mainstream jazz of the '40s and '50s with the avant-garde post-bop and third-stream explorations he would pursue just a few years later. By the time he entered the studio for Candid with producer/label owner Nat Hentoff, Mingus had already started to embrace, or at least respond to, free jazz players like Ornette Coleman. Though still rooted in blues, bop, and hard swing, Mingus had put together several line-ups of both younger and veteran players whose conflagration of styles worked to both expand and deconstruct the sound of standards-based modern jazz. Putting a swing-era star like trumpeter Roy Eldridge alongside a burgeoning iconoclast like saxophonist Eric Dolphy (as he does here on several tracks) may seem odd at first, but the clash of styles proves electric, underscoring how the lineage and language of jazz are passed down through the generations. It also grabs the listener's ear and makes you pay deeper attention.
Featured here are many of the same musicians that appeared on 1960's Mingus! and 1961's Newport Rebels, including Booker Ervin, Charles McPherson, Ted Curson, Lonnie Hillyer, Jimmy Knepper, Britt Woodman, Tommy Flanagan, Paul Bley, Dannie Richmond, and Jo Jones. Essentially, Incarnations is an alternate version of Reincarnation of a Love Bird, which was also recorded on Candid in 1960 but not released until 1988. Here, we get a very similar track listing, with alternate takes on the frenetic Charlie Parker bop contrafact "Bugs" and the swinging "R&R" featuring some tasty, muted trumpet work by Eldridge. There are also equally engaging versions of "Body and Soul," also featuring Eldridge, and the noir-ish "Reincarnation of a Love Bird," both of which compete favorably with the versions released in 1988. Most intriguing, however, is the inclusion of the previously unreleased "All the Things You Are (All)." Notably, we hear Mingus introduce the song and explain that it is a reworking of the standard "All the Things You Are" based on chord changes he picked up when playing the song with Art Tatum in the '40s. Mingus' arrangement, a polyphonic chamber ballad with modern classical intimations, bears little resemblance to the source material and prefigures the ambitious, third stream ensemble sound he would soon explore on landmark albums like Black Saint and the Sinner Lady. Although Incarnations is more of an alternate takes collection than a lost album, the inclusion of "All the Things You Are (All)" makes it essential listening for Mingus fans, showcasing just how boundary-pushing he was.

© Matt Collar /TiVo