Charles Mingus - The Black Saint And The Sinner Lady (Impulse Acoustic Sounds Series) Vinyl LP

On January 20, 1963, bassist and composer Charles Mingus entered the studio for a single session that yielded one of the most personal and socially conscious works of his career: The Black Saint & The Sinner Lady. Released later that year on Impulse! Records, the album stands as a singular achievement in 20th-century jazz, a through-composed suite that Mingus conceived partly as a ballet. Divided into four tracks and six movements, its sweeping, ornate orchestrations blur the boundaries between jazz and folk while channeling an intensity that was deeply autobiographical. With liner notes penned by Mingus’s psychotherapist, the album was both daringly intimate and musically groundbreaking. “My music is evidence of my soul’s will to live,” Mingus declared—and few recordings capture that life-force with such haunting eloquence.

Born in Arizona in 1922 and raised in Los Angeles, Mingus studied double bass with Red Callender and Herman Rheinshagen of the New York Philharmonic, developing a foundation in classical music that informed his jazz innovations. Gospel, blues, and folk traditions shaped his melodic sensibility, while his years touring with Louis Armstrong, Kid Ory, Lionel Hampton, and Duke Ellington broadened his perspective. Even if his career had been limited to his virtuosic bass playing, Mingus would have earned his place as a jazz legend. But his bass gave him unique insight into the low sonorities and inner harmonies of ensemble writing, fueling compositions that remain among the most dramatic, inventive, and enduring in the history of jazz.

• Mastered by Ryan K. Smith at Sterling Sound from the original analog tapes
  
• 180-gram LPs pressed at Quality Record Pressings
• Stoughton Printing gatefold old-style tip-on jackets
• Series supervised by Chad Kassem CEO of Acoustic Sounds