New Tijuana Moods
When it was first released in 1962, five years after it was recorded, Charles Mingus declared this musical account of a bacchanalian trip to the notorious border town the best record he ever made. That may be exaggeration, but it's certainly one of Mingus's best, a suite of pieces that gives form to the range of both his oversized emotions and his varied compositional techniques. The sextet, which sounds like a far larger group, includes several musicians who would become perennial Mingus associates--drummer Dannie Richmond and trombonist Jimmy Knepper--as well as the gifted trumpeter Clarence Shaw, an obscure musician with a distinctive lyricism. In its tumult, passionate breadth, and programmatic content,Tijuana Moodslooks ahead to Mingus's later masterpiece,The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady.--Stuart Broomer