The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady – Mingus’ masterpiece

Charles Mingus – The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady (Verve, 2019)

This is one of Charles Mingus’ great albums. It even gave name to a jazz label.

Composer and bassist Charles Mingus’ music is beautiful, bold, and so alive that it sometimes borders on the chaotic. Jazz historian and composer Günther Schuller thought Mingus was one of the great American composers and that his only equal in jazz was Duke Ellington.

The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady (1963) is one of Mingus’ most ambitious and successful works. He does some things on it which I have never heard anyone else try, like featuring solo acoustic guitar against a seven-horn section. It is not only unusual, it also works.

Mingus on Impulse

A big part of the success was that Mingus got to rehearse this music live with a band for six weeks at the Village Vanguard in New York before he recorded it. Since Mingus’ music was so complex it often led to musicians having trouble performing it, and to himself not having time to rehearse or arrange it. That had been the case of his previous album Town Hall Concert (1962) where an announced concert was altered into an open rehearsal.

Bob Thiele who was producer at Impulse records at the time was present at the Town Hall concert and wanted to do something similar with Mingus for the label, and it became Mingus revenge for the earlier failure. He continued to work with arranger and orchestrator Bob Hammer and a lot of the same musicians.

Like a lot of Ellington’s works The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady is a suite. Mingus wanted to record it as a long performance but the marketing people at Impulse wanted it segmented for the possibility of radio play.

Mingus creating in the studio

Throughout the recording the mighty sounding horn section is featured on contrasting themes which builds up and releases tension. The musical influences are diverse and goes from Ellington to Flamenco music.

Among the featured soloists are Jerome Richardson on soprano saxophone, alto saxophonist Charlie Mariano, pianist Jaki Byard and guitarist Jay Berliner. During some of the solos you can also hear the pulsating rhythm section of Charles Mingus and drummer Dannie Richmond to great effect.

A lot of work was done in the studio including overdubs and editing. Mingus was no purist or newcomer to these methods. On his 1953 live recording with Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell and Max Roach from Massey Hall he overdubbed his own bass part, and on his two Columbia albums Mingus Ah Um (1959) and Mingus Dynasty (1960) he had used lot of editing. Today these two albums have been restored without the editing, but I still prefer the old edited version.

Mingus’ psychologist 

The packaging of the album is a chapter in itself. Mingus reworked the Impulse slogan on the back cover to: ”The new wave of folk is on Impulse!” instead of the usual ”The new wave of jazz is on Impulse!” He wrote part of the liner notes himself and also asked his psychologist Dr Pollock to write part of them.

The album was a commercial failure only selling 10.000 copies on release, but it has gained greatly in importance. In the 1970s the Italian jazz label Black Saint took its name from the album releasing music by saxophonists David Murray and Anthony Braxton and many others.

Today the album stands out as a masterpiece in recorded jazz, and in musical importance there are only a few albums in the jazz canon which are on the same level. You only have to listen to it to hear why.