Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus

I touched on him tangentially yesterday talking about Jazz, but I don't think I've mentioned how much I love the music of Charles Mingus.

Partly it's because Mingus came along at a point in my life where I was desperately trying to like Jazz and desperately hating it.  I wanted to be an open minded bohemian, and so I was listening to a lot of Free Jazz - Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, etc.  Eric Dolphy came up, and I read he'd played with Mingus, so I check him out, and it basically broke Hard Bop open for me.

"Better Git it in Your Soul" is the quintessential Mingus for me, but I also love "Jump Monk" and basically all of Roots and Blues.  I don't know how to describe it, but I think the best way to describe it is that it swings.  No, that's insufficient.  It swings; the rhythm is so hard and powerful, it almost rocks.  The horns don't sound like Kenny G, all rounded off and smooth, but they aren't Ornette Coleman either - it's almost Stonesy, at times.

Mingus opened up Rahsaan Roland Kirk, and while he gets out there, I love "A Handful of Fives."  But nothing for me in Jazz will ever be as good as the solo horn break in "Better Git it in Your Soul" when the other instruments drop out, and it's just sax and hand claps.  This is what jazz was always supposed to be about.