Mingus, Charles Mingus?


I bought my first LP by Charles Mingus in 1960. I had never heard of Mingus and I was looking for something different. I liked the art work on the LP, Mingus Ah Um/ Charles Mingus, so I bought it. I was rewarded beyond my wildest dreams.
For me, Jazz had become "repetitive"; Mingus was anything but. The very first cut evoked pictures and visions. "Better Git it in Your Soul" created a Baptist prayer meeting where everybody got the "Holy Ghost". The 2nd cut, "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat", created a vision of a man walking down a deserted city sidewalk in the middle of a black night; just him and the neon signs.
I continued to buy "Mingus Music" until his death, and I was never disapointed. If you try "Mingus Ah Um/ Charles Mingus, you might get "Mingus in your soul".
orpheus10
It is realy amazing how things go full circle. I have to make a long story long in order to explain this.
Before CD's came out, I bought records "now" and played them later. If you saw a choice LP at the record store and walked around to decide, it would be gone when you got back; consequently, I bought em when I saw em and played em when ever.
After I got my first CD player, I considered LP extinct. (Fast forward to now) I just got my analog to where it is better than my digital rig. Today, I was looking through my records in the basement and found a brand new Mingus LP with "Pithecanthropus Erectus" on one side and "Haitian Fight Song" on the flip side. Is that full circle, or what?
Mingus, With Eric Dolphy, and Oscar Pettiford,Lucky Thompson, These guys,were True innovators of Jazz. Sadly, they found more fame in every country around the world, where coming home the U.S., often they had to enter via the "back door". Japan, and Europe treated these guys like the "Beatles!" One reason Eric Dolphy planned to live in Paris, before his sudden death; and other expatriate musicians lived in Europe, where they could walk in like everyone else.

I Love Music!