One Down, One Up...Again

   
Milo Miles writes about two recent John Coltrane recordings in an article for WBUR.org. One of the two - One Down, One Up, Coltrane Live at The Half Note - had a previous life as a bootleg record. I know because I own a copy. I should resent this new recording with its nice packaging, liner notes and no doubt thoughtful essay from Coltrane's son, Ravi, encouraging me to buy the same music again (never mind that my first purchase was legally challenged). But I feel encouraged that this recording is seeing the light of day in something like its proper form, and is produced by the family of the artist. Hard not to like that.

Perhaps the best known example of this sort of turnabout is the case of Sue Mingus (widow of Charles Mingus), who founded Revenge Records to turn her deceased husband's former bootleg recordings, issued willy-nilly by anybody, to her advantage by taking them above ground and selling them herself. On the label's web site, an essay by Ms. Mingus begins, "The first time I was caught stealing records was in Paris in the autumn of l99l..." (You can find the rest of her essay here).

Full disclosure (and credit) the Celebrity Series has presented Sue Mingus' other labor of love (well, one of them), the Mingus Big Band in 1996 and 2000 (and we may even have bought a record or two).