Mingus Plays Piano album cover
Mingus Plays Piano

Charles Mingus

1963
Impulse!

The bassist sits down and improvises on known songs and unknown ideas for an hour, making it sound very much like he plays the piano as much as he plays any other instrument. (He generally did not.) What comes through is that non-stop melodic imagination, the same one you hear in “Better Git Hit In Your Soul” or “Fables of Faubus”—long, long phrases that feel a little bit like a late-night conversation rising and dimming with the moods of the talkers. A quiet monsterpiece.

Sasha Frere-Jones

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