The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady (1963)

"Stop! Look! And Listen, Sinner Jim Whitney! (Solo Dancer)" I don't know where you start with Mingus but you have to start somewhere, and this is where I did, after reading about him in the Psychedelic Whatsit anthology of Lester Bangs. I'm not always inclined to agree with Bangs, no one is, but when he's right he's right -- witness, the Stooges -- and even when he over-appreciates things like Astral Weeks or maybe "Sister Ray" he's almost always on the right track. So with this: big, bruising music that registers hardest in deep regions: roaming mastodons of an ancient cliffside gloaming and the figure of Dr. Sigmund Freud brooding over the tableau in the dark clouds of gathering storm, it repays repeated listening in the most surprising ways, on levels intellectual as well as emotional and always on epic terms. Good stuff.

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