CHARLES MINGUS — The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady (review)

CHARLES MINGUS — The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady album cover Album · 1963 · Progressive Big Band Buy this album from MMA partners
5/5 ·
siLLy puPPy
Simply one of the greatest recordings ever released. CHARLES MINGUS took on the unsurmountable task of putting out an album that was structured like one long track that contained four suites. On these suites he utilizes an 11-piece big band and creates the perfect fusion of classical music mixed with jazz and ethnic traditional music. Throughout this epic journey we encounter the strange intersections of big band jazz and Spanish guitar, gypsy dance themes and brilliant piano runs. This album doesn't give you one chance to be bored in it 39:26 running time.

With this much going on you can only imagine the difficulties of putting something like this together in the early 60s but MINGUS was a perfectionist and engaged in painstaking overdubbing techniques to ensure everything came out just as he wanted it. The result is one of the most celebrated recordings in human history which not only pulls every musical heart-string in its breadth of emotional content but fulfills the highest potential of the possibilities of what a big band can accomplish. MINGUS would go on to create even more progressive big band albums but none of them would quite outdo what he so magically wove together so perfectly as on this one. The absolute best of the best here.
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