CHARLES MINGUS — Mingus Dynasty (review)

CHARLES MINGUS — Mingus Dynasty album cover Album · 1959 · Post Bop Buy this album from MMA partners
3.5/5 ·
Sean Trane
Second Columbia label album for Mingus, and it consists of two late-59 sessions, some twelve days apart with two somewhat similar line-up, if you’ll except that on that later one, there were two cellist in lieu of more brass. Indeed, along with his then-usual suspects of Richmond (drums), Knepper (trombone), Mingus has enlisted saxmen Handy and Ervin and pianist Hanna and more to make yet another landmark in his discography after the often-excellent Tijuana Moods over two years before.

Opening on the later session’s Slop, a bluesy piano-driven boogie-woogie track, this is the only composition recorded that day that will grace the A-side. The rest of them are more or less closing the album. Of the same session, the Ellington reprise of Things doesn’t bring much new, so it’s kind of pointless (at least to moi). Ditto for the overlong Mood Indigo reprise. The closing Dungeon piece might deserve to have been recorded on the later session, because it presents the more Mingusian arrangements.

The former session consists of the remaining five tracks, including the excellent Diane track, one that reminds us of the future Meditation masterpiece, with an awesome would-be symphonic-cum-jazz arrangement, ala Debussy. While the following Orange has an Ellington big band feel intro, it crescendos to an enthralling mid-section, where the winds take centre stage and interplay wildly. Still recorded on that day, Gunslinging Bird is an exciting up-tempo piece with the winds pushing up a storm through your speaker’s membrane. Exciting stuff. Mill Valley is another beauty, with exquisite arrangements over a daring composition, with the middle section pushing mid-eastern-wards. There are some interesting brass arrangements on the otherwise fairly-standard Know How.

Probably my second fave Mingus album (despite its schizophrenic nature due to the two different sessions), Dynasty certainly stands proudly in that 1959 year, the revolutionary year for jazz, and Mingus’ contribution with the present speaks for itself and somehow the Chinese emperor artwork gracing the cover is not usurped, especially considering the partially-Chinese origins of Charlie.

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