Tonight's Jazz Feature is a belated tribute to the Birthday of bassist/pianist/composer/iconoclast/ Charles Mingus. Mingus was born on Earth Day, April 22, 1922 in Nogales, Arizona and died in Cuernavaca, Mexico on January 5, 1979 from ALS. This album on tonight's Jazz Feature is his first for Columbia Records and it literally brought Mingus out of the Jazz underground and into the forefront. It was also his best selling album and widened his audience by leaps and bounds. The album is one of the many classics that were recorded in 1959 like "Kind of Blue". "Time Out", "Giant Steps" this is of course "Mingus Ah Um". With his basic Jazz Workshop quintet of 1959 with John Handy on alto and tenor saxophones and clarinet, Booker Ervin on tenor saxophone, Horace Parlan on piano, Dannie Richmond on drums and Charles Mingus on bass that is augmented by three Mingus alumni from previous Jazz Workshops, Jimmy Knepper on some tracks and Willie Dennis on others on trombones and Shafi Hadi as a non-soloing addition on alto and tenor saxophones in the ensembles. The album was done in two sessions, the first on May 5, 1959 and the second on May 12, 1959.Nine compositions in all and presented in the sequence that Mingus wished. Tonight's Jazz Feature: ":Mingus Ah Um"......as Mingus would say "DIG IT".

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