Sitting-in At Minton's
Minton’s Playhouse became so popular in those days that the house band began to develop ways of weeding out the musicians who couldn’t play that wanted to sit in. According to bassist Milt Hinton, Gillespie prompted the band to play standards, such as Gershwin’s “I Got Rhythm”, in difficult keys in order to discourage beginners from sitting in. Bassist Charles Mingus remembers being required to audition to get up on stage:
To play at Minton’s you couldn’t just walk in and grab a bass. They made you go in a back room or a kitchen and call a few tunes. They did it to me too. They said, “Can you play ‘Perdido’? Can you play ‘Body and Soul’?”
Practices such as these challenged up-and-coming jazz musicians to get their acts together in order to participate in the jam sessions, which kept the music at a high level.
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