Moanin' · Charles Mingus

Charles Mingus - Moanin' (1960)

It's been 25 years since I last listened to a bit of Charlie Mingus. I rarely get into jazzy jazz. When you start at fake jazz, avant-garde jazz and jazz fusion it's a bit hard to go back. When you want the mental free jazz or the funky jazz funk or the spiritual jazz or the symphonic soundtrack jazz or the fake fake jazz it's hard to do the jazzy jazz. Anyway this is the jazziest jazz I've dug in a long time. I mean it's funky and swinging and down n dirty bluesy jazz but it's also jazzy jazz. You could pop on a beret, smoke a jazz cigarette and click your fingers like a revolting hepcat beat poet turd to this. I think this is as close to Flintstones jazz that I'll ever get. Funnily enough Mingus encompassed so much more than jazz into his musical vocabulary and detested the term jazz.

The Incredible band here are:

CHARLES MINGUS, bass, leader & composer
JACKIE McLEAN, alto sax

JOHN HANDY, alto sax

BOOKER ERVIN, tenor sax
PEPPER ADAMS, baritone sax
JIMMY KNEPPER, trombone

WILLIE DENNIS, trombone

HORACE PARLAN, piano
DANNIE RICHMOND, drums

*Moanin' isn't a cover of the Bobby Timmons penned tune he performed with Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers on their 1958 self-titled LP.