Some years bear a strange significance in music history. Single calendars that compress massive explosions of musical ingenuity within their pages.
In 1967, it was psychedelic and progressive rock. In 1977, it was punk. 1991 brought multiple waves of noisy guitar bands, from grunge to shoegaze to post-hardcore to the massive umbrella of alternative rock.
For jazz, that year was 1959, which saw several seminal releases: Coltrane’s Giant Steps, Brubeck’s Time Out, Coleman’s The Shape of Jazz to Come, and Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue, which is arguably the greatest jazz record of all time by every metric.
But even among such legendary peers, Charles Mingus’ masterpiece, Mingus Ah Um, stands unwavering on its own two feet and swings mightily at all challengers.