39. Charles Mingus - The Black Saint and The Sinner Man (1963)

Tracklist: Solo Dancer // Duet Solo Dancers // Group Dancers // Trio and Group Dancers

Review:

Ladies and gentlemen, this is just damned imposing. See also: impressive, impassion, and impossible. It's not an album, it's a monument. That this whole thing was actually composed – that somewhere, out there, there are charts for this thing – is simply baffling beyond believe; much easier to believe that it poured-out of some chink in the fabric of reality. In fact, I bet this is what Cthulhu listens to when he’s relaxing at home. But of course, it was written down, and arranged, and rehearsed, and yes it was even played – by Charles Mingus, no less, supergreat jazz-dude and the man I’d most like to buy a drink for (if I had a time machine).

The Clown was the first jazz album I ever heard. I downloaded it along with John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme, after someone starting asking people to choose between the two albums in a thread about “Haitian Fight Song”. Well, I sided with The Clown, and since then I’ve never looked back. Something about Mingus’ music just sort of clicked with me – like Jaki Liebezeit’s drumming, the Fiery Furnaces’ ADD-fuelled story-telling collages, or VU-inspired lunatic guitar-terrorism, it just seems like the perfect soundtrack to the human mind. This seems appropriate, given the album’s origins. Charles Mingus was a famously unstable man, and he not only spent time in a New York mental hospital prior to writing this album, but had his psychiatrist contribute to the liner notes. The album itself is actually a ballet, written as a sort of insight into the nature of Mingus’ manic-depressive mind. The result is a schizophrenic tempest of Latin guitars, swing-rhythms, careening trumpets, lyrical piano passages, pummelling drums, pulsing bass, and turn-on-a-dime tonal shifts; an album that’s simply awe-inspiring in its complexity, emotional effectiveness and raw, unhinged beauty.

The most impressive thing about this album is probably that it isn’t actually an album, in the traditional sense. Rather than being a collection of songs, “The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady” is actually a single coherent composition, complete with recurring phrases and a sort-of narrative build. At the same time, Mingus seems to have conceived of the thing as a recording project, and unlike most jazz albums of the time The Black Saint... actually makes extensive use of sophisticated studio techniques such as overdubbing, editing, and the mixing-in of new elements. Mingus was one of the finest writers to ever work in jazz, and the combination of his prodigious compositional ability, the virtuosity of the assembled players (who were given freedom to refine their parts even further in rehearsals), and the meticulous approach afforded by the recording studio all combine to produce what is simultaneously one of the most elaborate and the tightest albums ever produced. Hell, forget albums – I’d go so far as to argue that this is one of the finest things anyone ever composed, period. Which is appropriate given that Mingus (who was not always the humblest of men) self-consciously constructed the thing as his defining masterwork. How often does that actually succeed? Not nearly often enough.

It’s a masterpiece, really. It sways from beauty, to terror, and round about along every possible feeling in between. Put it loud on a stereo, lie down to listen, and I bet you won’t move for the next three quarters of an hour. Mingus knew how to apply good writing to the evocation of a mood, and in this album he conjured-up every mood you’d ever care to feel, and he guides you through them like Virgil through Hades to the glorious madness of the conclusion. This is what the world would sound like if you captured it in a bottle, with all the hope and horror that such entails. Perfect.

A+

Download: Charles Mingus - Trio Dancers mp3

(although really you should listen to this in its entirety.