Music Arcades: Charlie Mingus: In Your Soul

These 'bargains' can be difficult to judge. The lesson from cases like 14 Original Recordings is that there's probably a reason why it's only £3, and why the CD inlay card doesn't say anything about where those recordings came from. But In Your Soul was a penny cheaper than 14 Original Recordings. Its two-page inlay card says nothing about where these live recordings came from, when, or who played on them. So similar is the presentation to the other CD that I checked to see if they're on the same label: they're not, though both labels and releases seem now to have vanished.

I'm no connoisseur of Mingus's work or this phase of jazz, but my experience of listening to this CD is that it's 72 minutes well spent, at a price (less than the cost of a beer in many places in London) better than you'd get almost anywhere except eMusic. A genuine bargain, for once, then.

A bit of web sleuthing suggests that In Your Soul was previously (and more widely?) issued under the title Folk Forms: that album, listed as a compilation has the same tracks each with the same length, so they must be the same versions.

If you haven't already done so, read the fictionalised portraits of Mingus and many of his contemporaries in But Beautiful, do so. It's amazing — don't take my word for it; read Dan Hill's — and by no means just for jazz connoisseurs.