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.
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!