Charles Mingus was a jazz giant, even if most of the world had no idea, and his broad and varied compositional touch and immense social and musical vision made him a maverick even when he was trying to stitch the past and the future of jazz all together, hanging on to the old while inventing the new, a difficult hat trick that he pulled off more often than he didn’t. This 11-track set collects pieces from 1959’s brilliant
Mingus Ah Um (“Better Git It in Your Soul” and “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat”), that same year’s
Mingus Dynasty (“Mood Indigo”), 1962’s (it was actually recorded five years earlier in 1957)
Tijuana Moods ("Dizzy Moods"), and later “third stream” compositions like “The Shoes of the Fisherman’s Wife Are Some Jive Ass Slippers,” providing a quick portrait of this iconoclastic artist in what was arguably his most creative period.