Weary Blues Langston Hughes Verve LP Charles Mingus

29 track collection of classic material by Langston Hughes, a key innovator, novelist, playwright and poet whose best-known work sparked the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s. Featuring the super rare ''Weary Blues album where Hughes' incisive poetry was set to music by Leonard Feather's All-Star Sextet and Charles Mingus and the Horace Parlan Quintet from two late 1950's sessions. An early conceptual piece, ''The Weary Blues'' highlighted New York life in Harlem at the end of the '50s painting a vivid story in words and also some fine jazz playing.The set also features Hughes' spoken word versions of some of the tracks along with other socially-charged pieces including the influential ''I Have Known Rivers, '' which has been interpreted by jazz and soul exponents on many occasions since, as well as Hughes' recollections of bars and boulevards and the emotive study of ''dark'' America on the poignant ''I Too.'' Finally, the collection closes with two Hughes interpretations by Bob Dorough With The Bob Dorough Quintet from the similarly rare vinyl album ''Jazz Canto Volume 1.''.Remastered with sleeve notes by MOJO magazine's Dave Henderson.

29 track collection of classic material by Langston Hughes, a key innovator, novelist, playwright and poet whose best-known work sparked the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s. Featuring the super rare ''Weary Blues album where Hughes' incisive poetry was set to music by Leonard Feather's All-Star Sextet and Charles Mingus and the Horace Parlan Quintet from two late 1950's sessions. An early conceptual piece, ''The Weary Blues'' highlighted New York life in Harlem at the end of the '50s painting a vivid story in words and also some fine jazz playing.The set also features Hughes' spoken word versions of some of the tracks along with other socially-charged pieces including the influential ''I Have Known Rivers, '' which has been interpreted by jazz and soul exponents on many occasions since, as well as Hughes' recollections of bars and boulevards and the emotive study of ''dark'' America on the poignant ''I Too.'' Finally, the collection closes with two Hughes interpretations by Bob Dorough With The Bob Dorough Quintet from the similarly rare vinyl album ''Jazz Canto Volume 1.''.Remastered with sleeve notes by MOJO magazine's Dave Henderson.

Sunnyside

The Mingus Band: Charles Mingus (acoustic bass); Ricky Ford (tenor saxophone); Jack Walrath (trumpet); Bob Neloms (piano); Dannie Richmond (drums).Additional personnel: George Coleman (alto & tenor saxophones); Sonny Fortune (alto saxophone); Jimmy Rowles (piano); Larry Coryell, Philip Catherine, John Scofield (guitar); George Mraz, Ron Carter (acoustic bass); Dannie Richmond (drums).Recorded on March 9 & 11, 1977 at Atlantic Studios, New York, and March 29, 1977 at The Record Plant, New York. Includes liner notes by Ilhan Mimaroglu.Even in the latter stages of his career the notoriously restless Mingus never stopped searching for new ways to interpret and present his compositions. As befits one with such a mercurial muse, his artistic destinations were often surprising, but seldom as surprising as on THREE OR FOUR SHADES OF BLUES. Here he reconfigures (and redefines in the process) some of the best-known tunes from his daunting canon, tackling them in a more contemporary style. In 1977, this meant the enlist

With the publication of his first book of poems, The Weary Blues, in 1926, Langston Hughes electrified readers and launched a renaissance in black writing in America.  The poems Hughes wrote celebrated the experience of invisible men and women: of slaves who "rushed the boots of Washington"; of musicians on Lenox Avenue; of the poor and the lovesick; of losers in "the raffle of night."  They conveyed that experience in a voice that blended the spoken with the sung, that turned poetic lines into the phrases of jazz and blues, and that ripped through the curtain separating high from popular culture.  They spanned the range from the lyric to the polemic, ringing out "wonder and pain and terror-- and the marrow of the bone of life."The poems in this collection were chosen by Hughes himself shortly before his death in 1967 and represent work from his entire career, including "The Negro Speaks of Rivers, " "The Weary Blues, " "Still Here, " "Song for a Dark Girl, " "Montage of a Dream Deferred, " and "Refugee in America."  It gives us a poet of extraordinary range, directness, and stylistic virtuosity.

With the publication of his first book of poems, The Weary Blues, in 1926, Langston Hughes electrified readers and launched a renaissance in black writing in America.  The poems Hughes wrote celebrated the experience of invisible men and women: of slaves who "rushed the boots of Washington"; of musicians on Lenox Avenue; of the poor and the lovesick; of losers in "the raffle of night."  They conveyed that experience in a voice that blended the spoken with the sung, that turned poetic lines into the phrases of jazz and blues, and that ripped through the curtain separating high from popular culture.  They spanned the range from the lyric to the polemic, ringing out "wonder and pain and terror-- and the marrow of the bone of life."The poems in this collection were chosen by Hughes himself shortly before his death in 1967 and represent work from his entire career, including "The Negro Speaks of Rivers, " "The Weary Blues, " "Still Here, " "Song for a Dark Girl, " "Montage of a Dream Deferred, " and "Refugee in America."  It gives us a poet of extraordinary range, directness, and stylistic virtuosity.

0. DISC 1: MINGUS THREE/CHARLES MINGUS QUARTET & MAX ROACH:1. Yesterdays2. Back Home Blues3. I Can't Get Started4. Hamp's New Blues5. Summertime6. Dizzy Moods7. Laura8. A Foggy Day9. Drums10. Haitian Fight Song11. Lady Bird12. I'll Remember April13. Love Chant0. DISC 2: THE CLOWN/EAST COASTING:1. Haitian Fight Song2. Blue Cee3. Reincarnation Of A Lovebird4. Clown, The5. Memories Of You [Take 7] - (take)6. East Coasting [Take 4] - (take)7. West Coast Ghost [Take 6] - (take)8. Celia [Take 5] - (take)9. Conversation [Take 16] - (take)10. Fifty-First Street Blues [Take 4] - (take)0. DISC 3: MINGUS AT THE BOHEMIA/PITHECANTHROPUS ERECTUS:1. Jump Monk2. Serenade In Blue3. Percussion Discussion4. Work Song5. Septemberly: September In The Rain/Tenderly6. All The Things You C-Sharp Minor7. Pithecanthropus Erectus8. A Foggy Day9. Profile Of Jackie10. Love Chant0. DISC 4: JAZZICAL MOODS, VOL. 1/MINGUS IN WONDERLAND:1. What Is This Thing Called Love2. Stormy Weather3. Minor Intrusion4. Abstraction

Volume 1 includes the complete texts of four books of verse by Hughes, including his first book, The Weary Blues (1926), and his second, Fine Clothes to the Jew (1927), as well as other poems published by him during and after the Harlem Renaissance. The Weary Blues announced the arrival of a rare voice in American poetry. A literary descendant of Walt Whitman ("I, too, sing America, " Hughes wrote), he chanted the joys and sorrows of black America in unprecedented language. A gifted lyricist, he offered rhythms and cadences that epitomized the particularities of African American creativity, especially jazz and the blues. His second volume, steeped in the blues and controversial because of its frankness, confirmed Hughes as a poet of uncompromising integrity. Then in the 1930s came Dear Lovely Death (1931) and the radical A New Song (1938). Poems such as "Good Morning Revolution" and "Let America Be America Again" made his pen one of the most forceful in America during the Great Depression.

A definitive selection of work by the critically acclaimed African-American poet and author features "The Negro Speaks of Rivers, " "The Weary Blues, " "America, " "Let America Be American Again, " "Dream Variations, " "Young Sailor, " "Freedom Train, " and "UnAmerican Investigators, " as well as three stories from The Ways of White Folks. Original. 25, 000 first printing.

February 1, 2002 marks the 100th birthday of Langston Hughes. To commemorate the centennial of his birth, Arnold Rampersad has contributed new Afterwords to both volumes of his highly-praised biography of this most extraordinary and prolific American writer. The second volume in this masterful biography finds Hughes rooting himself in Harlem, receiving stimulation from his rich cultural surroundings. Here he rethought his view of art and radicalism, and cultivated relationships with younger, more militant writers such as Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, and Amiri Bakara. Rampersad's Afterword to volume two looks further into his influence and how it expanded beyond the literary as a result of his love of jazz and blues, his opera and musical theater collaborations, and his participation in radio and television. In addition, Rempersad explores the controversial matter of Hughes's sexuality and the possibility that, despite a lack of clear evidence, Hughes was homosexual. Exhaustively researched in archival collections throughout the country, especially in the Langston Hughes papers at Yale University's Beinecke Library, and featuring fifty illustrations per volume, this anniversary edition will offer a new generation of readers entrance to the life and mind of one of the twentieth century's greatest artists.