Charles Mingus (1922-1979) was an American bassist, composer and bandleader, one of the central figures of modern jazz. His music combined blues, gospel, bebop, Ellingtonian colour and fierce structural imagination.

In the Pristine catalogue he appears in the 1953 Massey Hall concert with Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell and Max Roach, one of the legendary documents of bebop performance.

Mingus’s bass playing was forceful, inventive and combustible, while his compositions expanded what jazz ensemble writing could contain. He was both engine room and architect.

His importance reaches far beyond any single recording. Mingus made jazz sound like argument, prayer, street parade and thunderstorm, sometimes all in the same chorus.