Charles Mingus – 1959
Charles Mingus is among the top four or five greatest composers in Jazz. He was a totally unique visionary and his 1959 album ‘Mingus Ah Um’ is among his best.
Difficulty = Intermediate
The calm beauty of this piece is all the more extraordinary when we “look under the hood”. A good place to start when we are dealing with an “Advanced Form” is almost always to look at the root movement. What we see is a series of 5ths which imply a series of V – I groups.
When we add the melody tones that fall on the 1st and 3rd beats we see a lot of chord extensions that create tension. In fact, Mingus is able to maintain a high degree of harmonic tension right through the piece.
Mingus uses a different harmonic structure for each of these V – I groups: the first is a minor/major 7 chord going to another minor/major 7 chord (Mingus used a lot of these high tension chords in his songs). Following this he employed a dominant 9 going to another dominant 9; a major 7 chord going to a 9 chord; a minor 9 chord going to and augmented; and a minor/major 7 going to a suspended chord. As I said before – extraordinary!