Terri Lyne Carrington - Money In My Pocket
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
Drummer Terri Lyne Carrington discovered one of Duke Ellington’s most remarkable albums, Money Jungle, in a record shop discount bin.
Not the most auspicious start for her major new project, but as she tells Peter Quinn, some 50 years on from its release, the music’s sentiment and soul matters more than ever today
It’s Mingus you hear first. A searingly intense two-note bass riff marked by the vertiginous leap of an 11th. And how much more powerful it is that, rather than settle for the conventional interval of a fourth (A-D), Mingus shifts the D up an entire octave. After two bars of Mingus riffing, Max Roach then crashes in, the busy cymbals perfectly matching the urgency of the bass. After a further two bars, Ellington himself announces his arrival with a pounded discord, and all the elements of the title track to Money Jungle are now in play. Then the surprise: 20 seconds into the track, Mingus suddenly repeats the top D of his riff, sounding like a DJ scratching. It’s surely one of the most viscerally exciting openings of any jazz album, past or present. Recorded in a single day on 17 September 1962 in New York City, from Vijay Iyer to Phronesis, the influence of Money Jungle has been all-pervasive.
This is an extract from Jazzwise Issue #172 – to read the full article click here to subscribe and receive a FREE CD...