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On the composer issue: Off the top of my head I'd say that you first look at jazz musicians who primarily perform their own compositions. Ellington, Monk, and Mingus predominantly, but not exclusively, performed their own music. Miles Davis wrote some classic tunes, but he mostly liked to interpret other composer's work--Gil Evans, Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Joe Zawinul, not to mention all those standards. Horace Silver, Gillespie, Rany Weston, and many others wrote numerous pieces. But I don't think you could get a consensus beyond 3rd, if even that.
Monk was the master of the concise and Mingus wrote a lot of larger, more exploratory works.
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Regarding the Atlantic years: Oh, yeah!
Great stuff: Oh, yeah, The Clown, etc. I really love the two Changes albums. I'm not as familiar with all of the latter Atlantic recordings from the 70s, but those 60s lps were great; also love the Impulse sides.
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Just occurred to me that Onya is going to nominate Herman Blount for the composer placement somewhere up there in the Ellingtonian Galaxy. And he may have a point.
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I had a cloudy memory of seeing Mingus at Graham Chapel on the Washington University campus in St. Louis, so I googled it and saw that the concert was feb of 77.
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Posted: |
Jan 20, 2020 - 7:40 AM
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By: |
OnyaBirri
(Member)
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The other day i had the thought that if most knowledgeable jazz fans acknowledged that Ellington was the greatest composer in jazz, and perhaps a majority of jazz fans placed Monk and Mingus (in whatever order) as next in line, who would be fourth? Of course, you may not accept my premise, but I'm speaking in a general way.
Welcome to the dark side of the board, villagarden!
It is interesting that of the three you mentioned, who would probably top most peoples' lists, Ellington and Monk tunes generally seem to be much more widely recorded than those of Mingus. Would you agree? Not suggesting that no one covers Mingus, but if you listen to lots of jazz, you're constantly tripping over Monk and Ellington covers.
As far as fourth place, working with your top three, I might be tempted to nominate Horace Silver.
But then, as you said, we also have to consider THEE GREAT HERMAN BLOUNT, known to many of you as Sun Ra, as being among the greatest ever - although I'm afraid that Sonny's remarkable catalog is much more appreciated outside of jazz than within jazz circles. (Jazz educators are notoriously square, iMO.)
And then there is this question: If a composer's tunes are favored by jazz musicians, is he/she a "composer of jazz?" If so, we may have to consider Richard Rodgers and Jerome Kern, despite the fact that Kern allegedly hated jazz.
Finally, we also have to consider Antonio Carlos Jobim. I'm not sure that I would label him as a "composer of jazz" per se, but I'm reluctant to say that he is not one.
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I don't think composers like Kern, Berlin, and so on qualify--they weren't jazz composers, but you can't deny their presence in the repertoire. Horace Silver would be one of those many guys who wrote a lot of well known tunes--"Song For My Father" is classic--and he would get consideration. Your mention of Jobim is very intriguing. Definitely one of my favorite composers, and his numerous pieces have been covered by everybody--I was on a cruise a couple of years ago and heard the house jazz band play "Wave" and "Dindi"--and Jobim made a few albums that were jazz. I think I would stick him way up there.
Mingus's status as composer is a mixture of some covered pieces--"Goodbye Pork Pie Hat", for example, but also just for the volume and consistency and ambitiousness of many of his works.
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1970s jazz isn't my preferred era, but Mingus did some fine work then. 
