1. Track A - Solo Dancer (Stop! Look! And Listen, Sinner Jim Whitney!)*
2. Track B - Duet Solo Dancers (Hearts'Beat and Shades in Physical Embraces)
3. Track C - Group Dancers ((Soul Fusion) Freewoman and Oh, This Freedom's Slave Cries)
4. - Mode D - Trio and Group Dancers (Stop! Look! And Sing Songs of Revolutions!)
- Mode E - Single Solos and Group Dance (Saint and Sinner Join in Merriment on Battle Front)
- Mode F - Group and Solo Dance (Of Love, Pain, and Passioned Revolt, then Farewell, My Beloved, 'til It's Freedom Day)
A+
Well Charles Mingus didn't make it easy for me. This album, which I happen to own on CD, comes with liner notes constituting a lengthy screed by Mingus against music critics, who he derides for their lack of technical education and tendency towards facile judgements. So I feel like kind of a dink for trying to write about this album. But then again there is a second set of liner notes, written by Mingus' psychoanalyst, where the writer professes to a lack of musical knowledge and just sort of explores the music in relation to Mingus' mental state. So I'm not really sure what to think.
As you may have gathered by this point, what with the peculiar track list and the even more peculiar liner notes, this is not your typical album. In fact, it bears almost no relation to the previous albums on this list - the only point of comparison might be with Duke Ellington, who attempted similarly complex and ambitious works. But then again Charles Mingus was a very strange, tortured, and volatile man, and his music reflects this.
Honestly it's quite difficult to describe this album. It's a single continuous suite of songs, which makes listening to it on CD a bonus as presumable, without the need to flip the record, it's more in line with what Mingus originally intended. As to what it sounds like, I don't really know how to describe it. The first track, "Solo Dancer", is probably the best, and encompasses a lot of what the rest of the album is about. It starts with the great Dannie Richmond playing a snappy beat in an odd time signature, over which are slowly layered repetitious bass notes on the tuba and a snarling saxophone vamp. This builds and builds as a horn solo launches into the sort of music you'd associate with a gritty neo-noir, and then just when you can't take the sprawling, intense music anymore suddenly the whole thing collapses into a gentle, latin-tinged bit of bebop. I'm sorry if that doesn't do it justice, but the rest of the album is equally difficult to describe. There are snatches of African and Latin music, including a flamenco guitar, and really the whole thing is I guess sort of a ballet. Anyway this is High Art and very difficult to explain. All I'll say is that you should definitely listen to it. It's like literally nothing else. A swirling maelstrom of jazz and classical influences that defies classification even as it swings like nobody's business.
That said, if you're going to get a Charles Mingus album I recommend Mingus Ah Um, which is a great record of much saner and more conventional music that really should have been included in the Book. Black Saint is a great album but its intensity makes it difficult to listen to very often. But it's hard to argue that this isn't Mingus' masterwork. It is to the other jazz albums on this list what Wagner is to "Pop Goes the Weasel".
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