Charles Mingus - The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady (1982 Japanese Impulse Masterpiece Series LP)

Vinyl: NM
Sleeve: EX
Obi: None

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Charles Mingus - The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady Vinyl LP - 1982 Japanese Impulse Masterpiece Series Gatefold Stereo Reissue

• Mingus's most ambitious work, recorded in a single session on 20 January 1963 and conceived as a jazz ballet for 11 musicians
• Jay Berliner's classical guitar and Jaki Byard's piano anchor an extraordinary ensemble that includes Quentin Jackson (Duke Ellington's trombonist) and Don Butterfield on tuba
  
• 1982 Japanese pressing on MCA Records as part of the Impulse Masterpiece Series, manufactured by Victor Musical Industries, gatefold sleeve

Recorded in a single session on 20 January 1963 and released on Impulse! Records in July of that year, The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady stands as one of the most ambitious and emotionally consuming works in jazz. Mingus conceived the piece as a ballet for dancing and listening, constructing a single continuous composition divided into six movements across two sides, the eleven-piece ensemble navigating dramatic contrasts between tenderness and turbulence, Spanish-inflected melody and free-blowing intensity. Bob Hammer served as co-orchestrator and arranger alongside Mingus, and the unusual instrumentation, including Jay Berliner's classical guitar, Don Butterfield's tuba, and the dual saxophone and flute voices of Jerome Richardson and Dick Hafer weaving around Charlie Mariano's alto, gives the recording a dense, orchestral weight that few jazz records have matched. Quentin Jackson, who had been one of Duke Ellington's trombonists, brings particular authority to the lower brass, and Jaki Byard's piano, alongside Dannie Richmond's responsive drumming, ties the sprawling suite together. Engineer Bob Simpson and producer Bob Thiele captured the session in New York, and Mingus later acknowledged Impulse's willingness to give him complete creative freedom. The album's liner notes are themselves extraordinary, pairing Mingus's own raw, personal statement with an evaluation from his psychotherapist Dr. Edmund Pollock, making the gatefold package an integral part of the listening experience.

This 1982 Japanese pressing on MCA Records (VIM-4655) was released as part of the Impulse Masterpiece Series and manufactured by Victor Musical Industries, Inc. The gatefold sleeve houses an album that Mingus himself called his living epitaph, music he described as covering his life from birth until the day he first encountered Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. At over six decades from the original session, The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady has only grown in stature, regularly appearing on lists of the greatest jazz records ever made, and this pressing represents a fine opportunity to own it in a format built to do it justice.