Search - Charles Mingus :: Mingus Ah Um

A classic.

Michael Stack | North Chelmsford, MA USA | 08/16/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"In 1959, Charles Mingus was at the height of his powers-- in the midst of a roll from a stream of fine music on Atlantic, he signed to Columbia and delivered his first album in early 1959, "Mingus Ah Um". Perhaps the best album Mingus ever recorded, Mingus augments his working band (saxaphonists John Handy and Booker Ervin, pianist Horace Parlan, and drummer Dannie Richmond) with reedman Shafi Hadi and either trombonist Willie Dennis or Jimmy Knepper, and produced an album of such startling variety and briliant performance that it demands attention.



To this day, when someone curious about Mingus' music asks me for a recommendation, without hesitation, I immediately suggest this album. From the opener, it all works-- Mingus' racing "Better Git It In Your Soul" is a gospel shout masked as a jazz piece-- featuring the leader on rambling vocals, a gospel shout theme, a jaw dropping solo by Booker Ervin (under which the rest of the band claps rhythm) and just stunning and sensitive drumwork from Richmond that puts the exclamation mark on the piece-- this really is about half of what Mingus has to offer as a musician. The other half comes in funereal ballad "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat", second track on the album. A tribute to departed saxophonist Lester Young, Mingus evokes raw mourning in his sax line, and Handy's solo and Mingus' support of it are nothing short of astonishing (check Mingus' echo of Handy's fluttering for evidence of this).



By the time you've finished these two tracks, if it's not working for you, Mingus probably isn't for you, and the rest of the record isn't going to change anything.



Mind you, the rest is pretty good too, alternately energetic and explosive ("Bird Calls") and mellow and beautiful ("Self-Portrait in Three Colors") with at least one stunning arrangement ("Open Letter to Duke") and another bonafide classic in "Fables of Faubus". Composed about the then-governer of Arkansas and his segregation policies, "Fables" originally had vocals, but Columbia censored Mingus, fearing the outcome of such a move (check out "Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus" on Candid for the uncensored version of the piece). The resulting piece has to rely on horns only for sarcasm and bitter exposition, which it does remarkably well, and it is full of bluesy solos, including a Mingus solo that is as biting as any vocal could be.



The reissue features pristine sound-- it certainly could have been recorded yesterday, and three additional tracks that were unearthed in the '70s. All three (particularly "Pedal Point Blues") are fine material nad well worth having. Included in the liner notes are two essays-- the original album notes and a new one, both of which are interesting reads.



"Mingus Ah Um" is one of the classics of Charles Mingus' catalog, and is on the short list of essential jazz listening. Highly recommended."

Uh Huh

David Bradley | Sterling, VA USA | 04/21/2001

(4 out of 5 stars)

"This is pure 1950s Jazz, the kind that makes you feel like a filterless cigarette might be a good idea.The playing is flawless, the recording sterling, the swing endless.If I have one complaint here, it is Mingus's bass being hidden in a forest of other superb players. The first few bars of the record, just Mingus on bass, then piano, then horns and the rest, had me eager for a bass-heavy experience. It's all great stuff, but I wanted to hear the standup.This is a classic that any Jazz fan should own."

Indispensable

Ricard Giner (cootie@cootiesjazz.co | Brighton, UK | 06/03/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Ah Um is one of Charles Mingus's most richly textured albums, dense and dynamic all at once. It is almost as if the whole of the jazz tradition to that date, and some vision of its immediate future, were crammed into three-quarters of an hour. It is not as ambitious as The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady (1963) and still retains some measure of conventionality in the structures of some of its constituent pieces: introduction, ensemble statement of the theme, solos, development, recapitulation, closing statement.Peculiar wails weave themselves in and out of ironic quotations from Ellington, from Mingus, from the blues, all cloaked in the enormity of the Mingus sound, thrust forward by rhythms and counter-rhythms tightly driven by Dannie Richmond. It contains the passionate, aching "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat". An indispensable album."