Description
Charles Mingus – Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus – Vinyl Record
Released in March 1963 on Impulse! Records, Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus stands as one of Charles Mingus’s most ambitious and declarative statements, both consolidating and reinventing compositions he had recorded previously. The title itself—Mingus’s surname repeated five times—underscores the album’s role as a kind of musical self-portrait, in which familiar themes are refracted through fresh arrangements and the brilliance of a large ensemble. Recorded over three sessions (January 17, 18, and 21, 1963) at Columbia’s 30th Street Studio in New York, Mingus assembled a ten-piece band featuring longtime collaborators such as Ted Curson (trumpet), Booker Ervin (tenor saxophone), and Dannie Richmond (drums), alongside newer voices like Eric Dolphy (alto saxophone and bass clarinet) and Johnny Coles (trumpet), all under Mingus’s exacting leadership.
The album revisits earlier Mingus works—“II B.S.” (from Mingus Ah Um), “Better Get Hit in Yo’ Soul” (from Mingus at the Bohemia), and “Mood Indigo” (his arrangement of Duke Ellington’s classic)—but here they are transformed by expanded horns, shifting tempos, and sophisticated counterpoint. The opening track, “Fables of Faubus,” is an especially searing political statement: Mingus juxtaposes a sardonic vocal refrain mocking Arkansas governor Orval Faubus’s segregationist policies with ferocious instrumental passages that alternate between tight ensemble figures and wild, almost free-form solos. Elsewhere, the pastoral beauty of “Tijuana Gift Shop” reveals Mingus’s capacity for gentle lyricism, with Ervin’s muscular tenor weaving around Dolphy’s plaintive bass clarinet lines, all floating above Mingus’s own taut, blues-inflected bass underpinnings.
One of the album’s hallmarks is its orchestration: Mingus eschews the conventional small-group jazz combo in favor of three trumpets, two trombones, three reeds, piano, bass, and drums, allowing him to explore a wider palette of timbres and dynamics. Horns often engage in call-and-response, sometimes evoking gospel shout choruses, at other times deploying densely layered harmonies reminiscent of big-band swing—yet Mingus never loses the rawness and spontaneity at the core of his music. Pianist Jaki Byard, who contributed both classical-tinged flourishes and roaring stride passages, adds further unpredictability, while Dannie Richmond’s drumming provides both iron-clad grooves and explosive accents that drive the music forward.
Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus was celebrated for its daring reinvention of Mingus’s own catalog and for showcasing his evolution as a composer and arranger. It captured Mingus at a creative peak, balancing political urgency, emotional depth, and formal innovation. Over the decades, the album has influenced generations of jazz musicians who see in its ambitious scope a model for combining individual virtuosity with collective expression. In revisiting familiar material through a new sonic lens, Mingus offered both a retrospective and a bold declaration: this was his music, in all its complexity and passion—five times over.
Brand new, never played and still in the factory plastic sealed
Track Listing
II B.S.
I X Love
Celia
Mood Indigo
Better Get Hit In Yo’ Soul
Theme For Lester Young
Hora Decubitus
