About an hour and 45 minutes north of Manhattan sits the village of Millbrook, N.Y. In the 1960s, a sprawling American Queen Anne mansion just outside the village became something of a counterculture landmark and the inspiration for a jazz classic by Charles Mingus. Built in 1912, the house and the 2,500-acre estate was acquired at the start of the 1960s by the twin sons of the wealthy Mellon-Hitchcock family. [Photo above of Peggy Mellon Hitchcock in 1973, courtesy of the Hitchcock family]
The sons' grandfather was William Larimer Mellon, a co-founder of Gulf Oil. Their mother, Margaret, had married Thomas Hitchcock Jr., a World War I fighter pilot, polo star and stockbroker. He died in World War II during a training exercise in England. His daughter, Peggy—11 at the time—was crushed by the news of her father's death. [Photo above of Peggy's mother, Margaret, courtesy of Getty Images]
By the start of the 1960s, "Pretty Peggy Hitchcock," as she became known, was in her late 20s. Through her wealth, generosity, jet-setting and passion for art and adventure, she found herself in the company of leading jazz musicians and early pioneers in LSD experimentation, when the psychedelic drug was still legal to make and possess.
One weekend in 1960, Peggy met Timothy Leary at the Riverdale apartment of trumpeter Maynard Ferguson in the Bronx. Leary was still employed by Harvard and hadn’t been tossed out of the university yet for failing to keep classroom appointments. Leary, with Harvard colleague Richard Alpert, was looking for someone to fund a trip to Mexico, where he and Richard wanted to further explore their psychedelic experiments. Peggy pulled out her checkbook and tagged along.
After the summer, when they returned to the U.S., Leary and Peggy were already involved in a free-love relationship. At the time, she was dating tenor saxophonist Allen Eager, who was a heroin addict.
After Leary and Alpert were booted out of Harvard in 1963, Peggy offered up the Millbrook manse that her younger twin brothers, Billy and Tommy, had purchased. They rented it to Leary for $1 a year to satisfy a formal contract required for tax purposes. Leary turned the house into a psychedelic campus and test lab. [Photo above of the Hitchcocks' Millbrook, N.Y., mansion, courtesy of Getty Images]
Enter Charles Mingus, who had been invited to Millbrook to drop acid along with other well-known musicians and poets. As quoted in Charles Mingus: More Than a Fake Book (Jazz Workshop/Hal Leonard):
"I wrote [Peggy's Blue Skylight] on the piano at Peggy Hitchcock's house. We were friends. She wanted to take the blue plastic shield from the cockpit of a fighter plane and replace her skylight with it so the sky would always be blue. The [local] government wouldn't let her do it [due to zoning conflicts]." [Image above of Charles Mingus in 1961]
Peggy’s Blue Skylight was first recorded during the November 1961 studio session for Mingus' Oh Yeah album, but its nearly 10-minute duration made it an impossible fit. The song didn't appear on the album until 1999, when Oh Yeah was re-issued on an expanded CD with bonus tracks.
The song was next performed live and recorded at Birdland in May 1962 by Mingus with Richard Williams (tp), Charles McPherson (as), Booker Ervin (ts), Toshiko Akiyoshi (p) and Mingus (b). The song was then used in the British film All Night Long. On tour in London, Mingus and Dave Brubeck were recruited to perform in the film.
Next came the song's performance and recording at Mingus' Town Hall concert in October 1962. From then on, Peggy's Blue Skylight was regularly performed and recorded live during Mingus' tours abroad.
The reason I'm telling you all of this is that Peggy Mellon Hitchcock died of a stroke on April 9 at her brothers' famed estate in Milllbrook. She was 90. You can read all about her life in Penelope Green's marvelous obituary last week in The New York Times here.
JazzWax clips: Here's the first studio recording of Peggy's Blue Skylight, with Jimmy Knepper (tb), Booker Ervin (ts), Rahsaan Roland Kirk (ts,manzello,stritch), Mingus (p), Doug Watkins (b) and Dannie Richmond (d)...
Here's the Birdland performance of the song, featuring Richard Williams (tp), Charles McPherson (as), Booker Ervin (ts), Toshiko Akiyoshi (p) and Mingus (b)...
Here's Mingus in the film All Night Long...
Here's the Town Hall Concert performance of the song, arranged by Melba Liston...
And here's a live performance of the song in Belgium in 1964, featuring Johnny Coles (tp), Eric Dolphy (as), Clifford Jordan (ts), Jaki Byard (p), Mingus (b) and Dannie Richmond (d)...
And here's the full film, All Night Long, featuring the only known footage of Dave Brubeck and Charles Mingus playing together. As jazz writer and author Brian Priestly noted in an email to me, "A tiny bit of the song is included in the soundtrack. You can spotlight its appearance at 56:18, with Mingus and Harry Beckett on screen (briefly!). When it’s reduced to the background, the beginning of an alto solo (Harold McNair) is pretty clearly improvising on Peggy's Blue Skylight. It’s even in the same key as the other examples that you included. This was one of the few original discoveries when researching my Mingus book (45 years ago!!), when the late film archivist David Meeker screened the movie for me and it was confirmed by Harry Beckett. Also, Mingus’s theme (still as background) comes at 57:46"...
Bonus: Here's Peggy Hitchcock in 2010 (move the space bar to 22:50 and turn on the Closed Captions by clicking on the CC icon at the base of the embedded screen)...
