Caravan

Duke Ellington (piano), Charles Mingus (doble bass) and Max Roach (drums). From the album Money Jungle (1963).

In his early music, Charles Mingus liked a wide variety of styles. Under the influence of Duke Ellington, the young Mingus had denounced modern jazz, but then became its strongest advocate. Later, cool jazz was his predominant style, and he even approached Tristano’s school. His relationship with free jazz was also ambivalent, with an attitude that went from disdain to the most glowing praises. All this was the result of his studies of classical music in his first stage.

The miracle of Mingus is that he could compose music from this mixture of influences and an exceptional mastery of the tradition. He learned all these styles firsthand playing personally with Armstrong, Ellington and Parker, the three giants of jazz history, and not by studying a book or a recording. In the late 1950s Mingus managed to find his personal style, as demonstrated by the albums Pithecantropus Erectus, Tijuana Moods, East Coasting, The Clown, Blues and Roots and Mingus Ah Um.

After an introduction by Roach and Mingus, Ellington enters exposing the main melody in a piercing way and a percussive attack, but walking appears on the bridge in AABA structure. Afterwards, Ellington begins his solo supported again by walking with incisive and choppy phrases, and an original speech, but repeating fragments of the theme and playing strongly the same notes and chords over and over again. Then he maintains a dialogue with Roach and re-exposes the theme giving it a sinister touch.