Charles Mingus: The Black Saint & the Sinner Lady (Vital Vinyl series) [IMPULSE]

Why you'll love it

This Vital Vinyl series edition brings the original stereo album back in a limited run. The Penguin Guide to Jazz gave it its highest honour, the Crown, and AllMusic calls it one of the greatest achievements in orchestration in jazz history.

This edition

• Vital Vinyl series
• Limited edition
• Original stereo mix

About the album

Mingus wrote this one partly as a ballet, which explains why it moves the way it does: swaying, stamping, pausing for breath, then charging off again. He recorded it with an eleven-piece band on January 20, 1963, for Bob Thiele at Impulse!, as one continuous composition divided into four tracks and six movements.

Pianist and arranger Bob Hammer co-orchestrated it, and the band had worked the music out night after night during a six-week stand at the Village Vanguard. Mingus called the style ethnic folk-dance music; critics hear jazz, classical, African music and Spanish flavours, all at once. "Solo Dancer" sets the stage with a slow, bluesy sway, and the Spanish flavours of the later movements catch you completely off guard. Mingus plays bass and piano and leads the whole thing like a man conducting a storm.

It sits alongside Mingus Ah Um as one of his two great masterworks, and it's in 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. The liner notes were co-written by his psychotherapist, Edmund Pollock, which is the sort of second opinion most albums don't think to get.

Also at Kops: more Charles Mingus on vinyl · browse Classic Jazz

Tracklist

Listen

On Impulse!, a reissue of the 1963 album.