Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus

This one took awhile. I ordered the album from Memphis Music sometime around last year and pretty much left it to rot on my mp3 player until just about recently. Sometimes developments in jazz just don't hit you until you've absorbed the prerequisite - in my case it was Mingus's language of gospel and spirituals. But don't mistake this for a spiritual music - in many ways it sounds to me like a sober but sympathetic take on the ins and outs of faith. The star of the album I'd say is 'Better Get Hit in Yo' Soul', some kind of speedy gospel rampage in 3/4, like a 30s shout chorus sans arrangements, and so much more exuberant for it. Mingus locks up with Walter Perkins like some terrifying lopsided locomotive and lets the saxophonists burn the upper registers.

When I say 'language of gospel and spirituals' I really do mean a whole paradigm that Mingus absorbed into the language of jazz - the call-and-response, first seen in the New Orleans bands but gradually lost to swing and bebop, and the open, improvised, multi-participatory nature of a church spiritual. The rest of the album trundles along, and I'm probably not doing it enough justice by just talking about this one fascinating aspect, because in every other facet Mingus is a composer of astounding sensitivity. 'Theme for Lester Young' or 'Goodbye Pork Pie Hat' is one of his enduring classics, and Eric Dolphy himself lets rip on the cunningly titled 'Hora Decubitus'. It's a bit too late to tell you it's an album worth listening to - that's been established by musicians and writers alike years ago. I'll tell you, however, that it's an album that could open your ears the way it did mine.

adam