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Mingus Ah Um

Mingus Ah Um

A jazz masterpiece by the master

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Kal Hodgson
Mar 21, 2025
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Mingus Ah Um
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1959 was a pretty remarkable year in jazz. In that year we got Miles’ Kind of Blue, Ornette Coleman put out The Shape of Jazz to Come, Bill Evans and his trio released Everybody Digs Bill Evans, we got Take Five from Dave Brubeck, Moanin’ by Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers and John Coltrane’s Giant Steps. Yet one album stands above them all to me: Charles Mingus’ Mingus Ah Um.

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1959 saw Mingus join Columbia, and this was the first album the bass player and composed released on that label. The joy of this album, which is full of tributes and memories of fellow musicians, is the variety of styles and the sheer sonic energy. Mingus and his band didn’t need the wailing guitars of punk to create revolutionary music, it’s all here with a remarkable eight piece band.

The cover, as exciting as the music within, is a quasi-Cubist slice of artwork by S. Neil Fujita, bringing to this limited mind the work of Kandinsky. It’s a burst of colour slicing through a c…

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