COMPOSERS: Charles Mingus
LABELS: Atlantic Jazz
ALBUM TITLE: Atlantic Reissues: Charles Mingus
PERFORMER: Charles Mingus
CATALOGUE NO: 8122-75205-2
Blues & Roots was bassist Charles Mingus’s answer to those who said he didn’t swing. To get a congregational sound, Mingus made his musicians play compositional parts from memory, rather than from charts. The resulting dense blue tidal wave of sound is testimony to Mingus’s belief that blues can do more than swing. Garry Booth