This is vintage late-era Mingus – music that's by turns joyous, ecstatic, furious, and just occasionally tender, as the quintet ricochets between gospel, blues and free jazz. It's also very well recorded.
Described by Mingus himself as “ethnic folk-dance music,” The Black Saint & The Sinner Lady is a single song cycle rather than a traditional jazz album of separate tracks.
In 1957 Charles Mingus had just returned from a stay in Mexico. Inspired by the bittersweet mariachi sounds he heard there, he recorded Tijuana Moods for RCA.
Pithecanthropus Erectus was Mingus' breakthrough as a leader, the album where he established himself as a composer of boundless imagination and a fresh new voice that, despite his ambitiously modern concepts, was firmly grounded in jazz tradition.
