Charles Mingus

Charles Mingus – Tijuana Moods (1962) [Reissue 2015]
SACD Rip | SACD ISO | DSD64 2.0 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 35:41 minutes | Front/Rear Covers | 1,44 GB
or FLAC(converted with foobar2000 to tracks) 24bit/88,2 kHz | Front/Rear Covers | 795 MB

Tijuana Moods is an album by Charles Mingus originally recorded in 1957 but not released until 1962. The name “Charlie Mingus” appears on the cover of the original album. Mingus hated all nicknames derived from Charles (“Don’t call me Charlie; that’s not a man’s name, that’s a name for a horse”). All songs were composed by Mingus except “Flamingo” (Ted Grouya).

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Charles Mingus – The Black Saint And The Sinner Lady (1963) [Analogue Productions 2011]
Genre: Jazz | SACD ISO: DSD64 2.0/5.1 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 00:39:30 | 1,59 GB
Analogue Productions # CIPJ 35 SA | Release Year: 2011

The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady is a studio album by American jazz musician Charles Mingus, released on Impulse! Records in 1963. The album consists of a single continuous composition—partially written as a ballet—divided into four tracks and six movements.

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Charles Mingus – Supreme Jazz (2006)
PS3 Rip | SACD ISO | DST64 2.0 & 5.1 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 50:07 mins | Scans included | 2,95 GB
or FLAC 2.0 Stereo (converted with foobar2000 to tracks) 24bit/88,2 kHz | Scans included | 909 MB
Features 2.0 Stereo and 5.1 multichannel surround sound | Label: Membran Music Ltd.

Irascible, demanding, bullying, and probably a genius, Charles Mingus cut himself a uniquely iconoclastic path through jazz in the middle of the 20th century, creating a legacy that became universally lauded only after he was no longer around to bug people. As a bassist, he knew few peers, blessed with a powerful tone and pulsating sense of rhythm, capable of elevating the instrument into the front line of a band. But had he been just a string player, few would know his name today. Rather, he was the greatest bass-playing leader/composer jazz has ever known, one who always kept his ears and fingers on the pulse, spirit, spontaneity, and ferocious expressive power of jazz.

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Charles Mingus – Pithecanthropus Erectus (1956) [Japanese SHM-SACD 2011]
PS3 Rip | ISO | SACD DSD64 2.0 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 36:31 minutes | Scans included | 1,09 GB
or FLAC(converted with foobar2000 to tracks) 24bit/88,2 kHz | Scans included | 673 MB

Pithecanthropus Erectus was Charles 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. Mingus truly discovered himself after mastering the vocabularies of bop and swing, and with Pithecanthropus Erectus he began seeking new ways to increase the evocative power of the art form and challenge his musicians (who here include altoist Jackie McLean and pianist Mal Waldron) to work outside of convention. The title cut is one of his greatest masterpieces: a four-movement tone poem depicting man’s evolution from pride and accomplishment to hubris and slavery and finally to ultimate destruction. The piece is held together by a haunting, repeated theme and broken up by frenetic, sound-effect-filled interludes that grow darker as man’s spirit sinks lower. It can be a little hard to follow the story line, but the whole thing seethes with a brooding intensity that comes from the soloist’s extraordinary focus on the mood, rather than simply flashing their chops. Mingus’ playful side surfaces on “A Foggy Day (In San Francisco),” which crams numerous sound effects (all from actual instruments) into a highly visual portrait, complete with honking cars, ringing trolleys, sirens, police whistles, change clinking on the sidewalk, and more. This was the first album where Mingus tailored his arrangements to the personalities of his musicians, teaching the pieces by ear instead of writing everything out. Perhaps that’s why Pithecanthropus Erectus resembles paintings in sound — full of sumptuous tone colors learned through Duke Ellington, but also rich in sonic details that only could have come from an adventurous modernist. And Mingus plays with the sort of raw passion that comes with the first flush of mastery. Still one of his greatest.

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Charles Mingus – Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus (1963) [Analogue Productions Remaster 2010]
PS3 Rip | ISO | SACD DSD64 Stereo > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 40:18 minutes | Scans included | 1,25 GB
or FLAC 2.0 Stereo (converted with foobar2000 to tracks) 24bit/88,2 kHz | Scans included | 839 MB

Having completed what he (and many critics) regarded as his masterwork in The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady, Charles Mingus’ next sessions for Impulse found him looking back over a long and fruitful career. Mingus, Mingus, Mingus, Mingus, Mingus is sort of a “greatest hits revisited” record, as the bassist revamps or tinkers with some of his best-known works. The titles are altered as well — “II B.S.” is basically “Haitian Fight Song” (this is the version used in the late-’90s car commercial); “Theme for Lester Young” is “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat”; “Better Get Hit in Your Soul” adds a new ending, but just one letter to the title; “Hora Decubitus” is a growling overhaul of “E’s Flat Ah’s Flat Too”; and “I X Love” modifies “Nouroog,” which was part of “Open Letter to Duke.” There’s also a cover of Duke Ellington’s “Mood Indigo,” leaving just one new composition, “Celia.” Which naturally leads to the question: With the ostensible shortage of ideas, what exactly makes this a significant Mingus effort? The answer is that the 11-piece bands assembled here (slightly different for the two separate recording sessions) are among Mingus’ finest, featuring some of the key personnel (Eric Dolphy, pianist Jaki Byard) that would make up the legendary quintet/sextet with which Mingus toured Europe in 1964. And they simply burn, blasting through versions that equal and often surpass the originals — which is, of course, no small feat. This was Mingus’ last major statement for quite some time, and aside from a solo piano album and a series of live recordings from the 1964 tour, also his last album until 1970. It closes out the most productive and significant chapter of his career, and one of the most fertile, inventive hot streaks of any composer in jazz history.

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Charles Mingus – Mingus Ah Um (1959) [MFSL 2019]
PS3 Rip | SACD ISO | DSD64 2.0 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 45:55 minutes | Scans included | 1,87 GB
or FLAC (converted with foobar2000 to tracks) 24bit/96 kHz | Full Scans included | 1,06 GB
Genre: Jazz | Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab # UDSACD 2208

Mingus Ah Um is a studio album by American jazz musician Charles Mingus, originally released in 1959 by Columbia Records. It was his first album recorded for Columbia. The Penguin Guide to Jazz calls this album “an extended tribute to ancestors” (and awards it one of their rare crowns), and Mingus’s musical forebears figure largely throughout.

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Charles Mingus – Mingus Ah Um (1959) [Reissue 1999]
Charles Mingus – Mingus Ah Um (1959) [Reissue 1999]
PS3 Rip | SACD ISO | DSD64 2.0 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 72:09 minutes | Scans included | 2,93 GB
or FLAC(converted with foobar2000 to tracks) 24bit/88,2 kHz | Full Scans included | 1,43 GB

Mingus Ah Um is a studio album by American jazz musician Charles Mingus, released in 1959 by Columbia Records. It was his first album recorded for Columbia. The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD calls this album “an extended tribute to ancestors” (and awards it one of their rare crowns), and Mingus’s musical forebears figure largely throughout.

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Charles Mingus – Mingus Ah Um (1959/1999)
PS3 Rip | SACD ISO | DSD64 2.0 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | Time – 01:12:33 minutes | Scans included | 2,93 GB
DSF Stereo DSD64/2.82MHz | Time – 01:12:37 minutes | 2,86 GB | Genre: Jazz | © Columbia
Recorded: May 5 (#1,6-10) & May 12, 1959 (#2-5,11,12) at 30th Street Studio, NYC; Engineered for SACD by Mark Wilder

Charles Mingus’ 1959 Columbia sessions were both a summation of his diverse work up to that point and a bold step forward, for it was the year when at last he had the opportunity to sign with a major label and work with an old friend and musical collaborator, Teo Macero at Columbia Records.

There was no stopping this incredible musical mind who’d found his voice as a bassist, composer and bandleader. The bands that Mingus assembled at Columbia’s 30th Street studio in May and November of ‘59 consisted of the greatest exponents of his music to date, featuring sidemen Jimmy Knepper, John Handy, Booker Ervin, Horace Parlan and Dannie Richmond.

These 1959 sessions, which resulted in Mingus Ah Um and Mingus Dynasty, introduced several classics that would become evergreens in the bassist’s repertoire and jazz standards including: “Better Git It In Your Soul,” “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat” and “Fables Of Faubus” plus homages to jazz greats Ellington (“Open Letter To Duke”), with whom Mingus is most frequently compared for the vastness, depth and diversity of his recordings, and Morton (“Jelly Roll”), jazz’s first great composer.

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