Charles Mingus - Ultimate Jazz and Blues (2004)

Bassist, composer, arranger, and bandleader Charles Mingus cut himself a uniquely iconoclastic path through jazz in the middle of the 20th century, creating a musical and cultural legacy that became universally lauded. As an instrumentalist he had few peers, blessed with a powerful tone and pulsating sense of rhythm, capable of elevating the instrument into the front line of a band. Intensely ambitious yet often earthy in expression, simultaneously politically radical and deeply traditional spiritually, Mingus' music took elements from everything he had experienced from gospel and blues, New Orleans jazz, swing, bop, Latin music, modern classical music, and even the jazz avant-garde, and adapted it for ensembles ranging from trios and quartets to sextets and orchestras. His touchstone was the advanced harmonic and timbral swing palette pioneered by Duke Ellington. Mingus took the maestro's harmonic innovations to a different sphere, grafting on gut bucket blues, abrasive dissonances and introducing abrupt changes in meter and rhythm. While his early works were written out in classical fashion; during the 1950s, influential albums such as Pithecanthropus Erectus, The Clown, and Ah-Um, offered a new method of getting his unconventional vision across: he dictated the various parts of a composition to his sidemen, all the while allowing room for their individual musical personalities and ideas. This continued throughout the 1960s and 70s. His transition from bebop to his pioneering place in hard bop, brought to the fore an exciting array of future jazz luminaries including Jackie McLean, Eric Dolphy, Dannie Richmond, and Jimmy Knepper to mention a few of the musicians he mentored. Mingus was also a formidable pianist, easily capable of playing that role in a group which he did in his 1961-1962 bands, hiring another bassist to fill in for him.