Charles Mingus - Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus (1973 Japanese Impulse! Gatefold LP)

Vinyl: NM
Sleeve: EX
Obi: EX

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Charles Mingus - Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus | Vinyl LP - 1973 Japanese Impulse! Gatefold Stereo Reissue

• Seven compositions drawn from across Mingus's catalogue, rewritten, recharged and rerecorded with two separate eleven-piece ensembles across sessions from 1963
• A rare earlier Japanese pressing on IMP-88112, manufactured by Toshiba Musical Industries Ltd., predating the better-known 1976 ABC Impulse! Best Collection series by three years
  
• Presented in gatefold sleeve with obi, one of three Mingus albums for Impulse! recorded during his most sustained and celebrated creative period

By January 1963, when the first of the two sessions that make up this album was recorded, Charles Mingus had been signed to Impulse! for less than two years and had already delivered The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady, one of the most ambitious recordings in the label's history. For this album, recorded across January 20 and September 20, 1963, Mingus turned instead toward his own back catalogue, working with arranger and orchestrator Bob Hammer to revoice seven compositions for large ensemble, most of them renamed in the process. "II B.S." is "Haitian Fight Song" reconstructed, "Theme For Lester Young" is "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat" from Mingus Ah Um (1959), "I X Love" is a reworking of "Duke's Choice", "Hora Decubitus" reworks "E's Flat, Ah's Flat Too" from Blues & Roots, and "Better Get Hit In Yo' Soul" is the third time Mingus committed that gospel-charged 6/8 theme to tape. The one composition that belongs to someone else is "Mood Indigo", credited to Duke Ellington, Barney Bigard and Irving Mills, which Mingus treats with an extended bass solo before the ensemble enters. "Celia", written for Mingus's second wife and dating back to East Coasting (1957), completes the programme. The result is less a retrospective than an act of reclamation: Mingus demonstrating that the compositions were living things capable of bearing the weight of new arrangements and new personnel.

The two sessions used different ensembles. January 20 produced "I X Love", "Celia" and "Better Get Hit In Yo' Soul", with Charlie Mariano on alto saxophone, Dannie Richmond on drums, Jay Berliner on guitar, Quentin Jackson on trombone, and Rolf Ericson on trumpet. September 20 produced "II B.S.", "Mood Indigo", "Theme For Lester Young" and "Hora Decubitus", with Eric Dolphy on alto saxophone and flute, Booker Ervin on tenor saxophone, Walter Perkins on drums and Britt Woodman on trombone. Richard Williams on trumpet and Jerome Richardson on soprano saxophone, baritone saxophone and flute, along with Jaki Byard on piano, tuba player Don Butterfield and Dick Hafer on tenor saxophone, clarinet and flute, appear across both sessions. Released on Impulse! in January 1964 as A-54, the album sat alongside The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady and Mingus Plays Piano as the third of Mingus's three Impulse! albums from a concentrated period of creative activity that ended abruptly with Eric Dolphy's death in June 1964, after which Mingus did not record again for six years.

This Japanese pressing on IMP-88112, released in 1973 and manufactured by Toshiba Musical Industries Ltd., predates the better-known 1976 ABC Impulse! Best Collection series and is one of the earlier Japanese reissues of the album. Presented in gatefold sleeve with obi.