It’s like there was some crazy rift in the jazz time continuum, dropping the best record from thirty years later into their laps in the present day. The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady is another old school record worth dropping in your music collection, and as much as I like to rag on people who worship vinyl, this is a genre that’s actually best suited to the medium.
Let’s say you think your spouse is lying about something and you confront them about it. If they tell you a ten minute story and just one part of it is something you know is a lie, it makes you question the veracity of the entire story. When Alex Rodriguez says has a cousin that popped out of freaking nowhere like The Great Gazoo, grabbed something off the street from the Dominican Republic and injected it into his butt for years without him so much as asking what it is, you start to question everything he tells you later during the interview. Our relationship with music is similar. If there’s one thing that grates us on the record, a sqeaky vocalist or bad production or awful lyrics, it weighs down the entire experience. Nowhere is this more evident than in jazz – a song that’s too long or too short, has one instrument that’s out of sync with the others, or just doesn’t hold your attention, can make an otherwise great song unlistenable.
As a composer and a man, he was abrasive, violent, and difficult. He never hestitated to stop a show to chew out an audience member who wasn’t paying attention or a band member who wasn’t playing his part properly, sometimes throwing them out in the middle of a show. But for those who were willing to get close and pay attention, Charles Mingus defied the slim margin of error his actions might have given him, and left impressions that lasted a lifetime. Mingus was a bassist, bandleader, composer and sometimes a piano player who grew up in Watts during the 30’s – he lived in a strict household and wasn’t allowed to listen to anything besides gospel inside the house, but one day he snuck in a copy of Duke Ellington’s “East St. Louis Toodle-Oo” under the watchful eyes of his parents, and the record both inspired him to take up music himself, and created a lifelong affinity for Ellington’s work.
A prodigy on bass, he worked his way up the ranks as soon as he left high school, playing small nightclubs, touring, and building a reputation that would eventually land him in some of the most talented jazz ensembles ever assembled. His style, wild and unrestricted, earned him numerous guest spots on other records, even as he worked to start his own label where he could get free of the politics of the music business and nurture promising talent.
In the year 1963, Charles Mingus wrote “The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady”, which is considered to be among the peaks of the genre. The album was so person in nature that he asked his therapist, Dr. Edmund Pollock to listen to the record and provide the liner notes for inclusion in the final copy. Mingus chimed in with a little of his own writing:
“I feel no need to explain any further the music herewith other than to say throw all other records of mine away except maybe one other.”
And yeah. It’s that good. The album is about 40 minutes long, but even though it’s not technically as long as Bitches Brew, it feels longer – the six piece was written as a ballet and is often referred to as an assessment of his inner self, sprawling, disturbed, and unlike any other jazz piece created. Charles Mingus referred to the style he used here as a sort of ethnic folk dance melody. The orchestrations that are applied here are rich, with a lot of interwoven layers – this was the first jazz album to apply overdubbing technology.
“The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady” consists of muted brass that is almost vocal like, some low rumbling of the tuba and the baritone sax, and great highlights of the alto saxophone by Charlie Mariano. Charles Mingus also includes shifting beats, moaning discord and multiple offlines that make it very complex. There is so much emotion in this piece of music that you can clearly sense from the mourning, fury, suffering and frustration that Mingus incorporated.
The original score of the album was practiced at a Village Vanguard meeting. Mingus let the band members to shape the music even further at this point. “The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady” album was one of the most highlighted developments in avant-garde jazz in the 1960’s. It’s also the best work that Mingus did in his jazz career. Not only was it an expression of the intense emotions that he was experiencing at the time but also shows his skill as a jazz composer and technician.
1. Solo Dancer
2. Duete Solo Dancers
3. Group Dancers
4. Medley: Trio & Group Dancers, Single Solos & Group Dance, Group & Solo Dance
Tags: Charles Mingus, Duke Ellington, The Black Saint and the Sinner lady
The greatest jazz album I’ve heard, I think- well done!