Album of the day (#3034): The Black Saint And The Sinner Lad

[albummaster]

Today's album of the day

The Black Saint And The Sinner Lady by Charles Mingus (View album | Buy this album)

Year: 1963.
Country:
Overall rank: 135
Average rating: 86/100 (from 762 votes).

Thumbnail. Click to enlarge.

Tracks:
1. Solo Dancer
2. Duet Solo Dancers
3. Group Dancers
4. Trio And Group Dancers

About album of the day: The BestEverAlbums.com album of the day is the album appearing most prominently in member charts in the previous 24 hours. If an album, or artist, has previously been selected within a x day period, the next highest album is picked instead (and so on) to ensure a bit of variety. A full history of album of the day can be viewed here.

[Fischman]

I'll have to expose myself here and say this is not my favorite Mingus or even in the rarified top tier of my Jazz collection.

I'm a huge jazz fan... in fact it's my #1 genre.
And I'm a Mingus fan in particular.... and I do think this is a great album,

but I don't quite get the love that this album gets, at least on this site. Yes, it's a great album, a five star album. I get that. I hear that when I listen.

But Mingus has a number of 5 star albums, at least three or four of which I comfortably rank ahead of this one.

The composition is impressive, as is the musicianship, but at times, it feels rather messy. I've read reviews that say this album is as much about Mingus' own tortured psyche as anything, and that may be a fair description. Maybe I'm just not into tortured psyche music (hence the total absence of Nirvana in my collection).

I do like to listen to this once in a while, but I can listen to Ah Um, Pithecantrhopus Erectus, or Let My Children Hear Music any day.

That said, I do hear more each time I listen to it, so maybe I should listen to it more.

[mickilennial]

yeah I do tend to prefer Let My Children Hear Music to this, but its still a valuable record in my collection

[Hayden]

One day I'll whip up something more concise and detailed about this album, but I find it more of a painting than anything. It's jazz as paint more than music.

Mingus has at least 5 perfect records though. No harm in this not being anyone's favourite.
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[craola]

while i too place let my children hear music ahead of this one, it's really a different beast. let my children is more composed, whereas there's an element of free jazz to this, the sinner lad.
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[RoundTheBend]

I loved how the title was truncated to "The Black Saint And The Sinner Lad"

[Kool Keith Sweat]

This album gets the "tortured psyche" discussion because Mingus asked his psychologist (perhaps appropriately named Pollock) to review the album and included the review after his own liner essay. You don't need the psychologist's input to recognize the anger and depression (but mostly anger) present in so much of Mingus' music. (is it really so surprising that a black man in 1960's America was angry?) Mingus was so in bed with his anger, that he expressed it perfectly in much of his music's rhythms and timbres well before this recording. But he calls for so much vibrato and overblowing from his reeds and horns on this one that the end product is as close to Ayler as you can get without being Ayler - a spiritually wrenching, highly emotive result. But, this one is of course much more composed than Ayler, which makes it more accessible. I imagine it's also more accessible, particularly for the rock crowd, because it's so emotionally condensed. Splicing was common in jazz recording, particularly to transpose one night's or one take's happening solo on to another night's or take's particularly locked-in rhythm section, but Mingus went about as splice-happy as Mark Hollis on this particular recording - a process that seems to be a draw for rock ears (the perception that improvisation yields only so much listenable material, is best heard if condensed to a "best-of" through splicing, and cannot be as "perfect" or "balanced" as something someone labored over for some time). It's good though. My favorite Mingus recording along with The Clown and Pithecanthropus Erectus.