The room › Artists › Charles Mingus
Where to start with Charles Mingus
Start with Better Git It in Your Soul — Mingus Ah Um, 1959. That is the track sitting closest to the centre of all 21 Charles Mingus tracks in Zubissou Sounds — a listening room of 14,971 tracks placed one at a time by hand, not an algorithm.
This page is not a discography and not a ranking. It describes exactly one thing: the 21 Charles Mingus tracks that one person put in one room, and where they sit relative to each other. The starting point above is chosen by a rule you can check — of the 21 tracks, it is the one nearest the average position on the four knobs the room runs on, and where two sit equally close the one on a named record wins. Nothing here calls any record better than any other.
The dates here run from 1959 to 2011. They are the dates attached to the releases in this room rather than recording dates, so the later ones are likely reissues — but 52 years is still more than one version of the artist.
The mood knob swings 42 points across these tracks, the widest of the four — it is the axis this artist actually travels along in this room.
Three ways in
The one track, if you only play one
Better Git It in Your Soul — Mingus Ah Um, 1959. Of the 21 Charles Mingus tracks here, this one sits closest to the average of all of them across the four knobs the room runs on. It is the least surprising thing in the collection, which is exactly what an entry point should be.
If you want the melancholy end
Duet Solo Dances — The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady, 1997. The lowest mood reading of any Charles Mingus track in the room (32 out of 100). This is as far towards melancholy as the collection goes.
If you want the euphoric end
Better Git Hit In Your Soul — Mingus At Antibes, 1977. The highest mood reading here, at 74 out of 100 — a 42-point swing across the collection towards euphoric.
Where Charles Mingus sits in the room
Zubissou Sounds does not have playlists or genres you click. It has knobs. Every track carries a position on each one, set by hand when the track was added, and you find music by setting the room to a state rather than by searching for a name. These are Charles Mingus's average coordinates and the range they cover.
| Knob | Average | Range | Low → high |
|---|---|---|---|
| mood | 50 | 32–74 | melancholy → euphoric |
| energy | 59 | 58–82 | ambient → driving |
| density | 68 | 65–72 | sparse → wall |
| head · body | 56 | 42–80 | cerebral → groove |
All four run 0–100. They are placed by a person, not derived from audio analysis or from any streaming service's feature data.
What is here, record by record
| Album | Year | Tracks |
|---|---|---|
| Mingus Ah Um | 1959 | 9 |
| Blues & Roots | 1960 | 6 |
| The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady | 1963 | 4 |
| Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus | 2011 | 1 |
| Mingus At Antibes | 1977 | 1 |
Every Charles Mingus track in the room
| Track | Album | Year |
|---|---|---|
| Better Git It in Your Soul | Mingus Ah Um | 1959 |
| Bird Calls | Mingus Ah Um | 1959 |
| Boogie Stop Shuffle | Mingus Ah Um | 1959 |
| Fables of Faubus | Mingus Ah Um | 1959 |
| Goodbye Pork Pie Hat | Mingus Ah Um | 1959 |
| Jelly Roll | Mingus Ah Um | 1959 |
| Open Letter To Duke | Mingus Ah Um | 1959 |
| Pussy Cat Dues | Mingus Ah Um | 1959 |
| Self-Portrait in Three Colors | Mingus Ah Um | 1959 |
| Cryin' Blues | Blues & Roots | 1960 |
| E's Flat Ah's Flat Too | Blues & Roots | 1960 |
| Moanin' | Blues & Roots | 1960 |
| My Jelly Roll Soul | Blues & Roots | 1960 |
| Tensions | Blues & Roots | 1960 |
| Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting | Blues & Roots | 1960 |
| Medley: Mode D-Trio and Group Dancers/Mode E- Single solos and Group Dance/ModeF-Group and Solo Dance | The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady | 1963 |
| Track A- Solo Dancer | The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady | 1963 |
| Track C-Group Dancers | The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady | 1963 |
| Better Git Hit In Your Soul | Mingus At Antibes | 1977 |
| Duet Solo Dances | The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady | 1997 |
| II B.S. | Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus | 2011 |
Near neighbours in this room
These are the artists whose average knob position sits nearest to Charles Mingus's in this room. It is a coordinate match, not a claim that they sound alike.
- Where to start with Weather Report — jazz, 14 tracks
- Where to start with Miles Davis — jazz, 34 tracks
- Where to start with Herbie Hancock — jazz, 16 tracks
What the open databases say
MusicBrainz lists Charles Mingus as a solo artist, from Nogales, the United States and born in 1922. Its contributors tag the artist jazz, post-bop, hard bop, avant-garde jazz and third stream. These are the open database's facts, not mine — you can check them against the MusicBrainz entry.
Questions
How many Charles Mingus tracks are in Zubissou Sounds?
There are 21, across 5 albums. 21 of them carry a date, running from 1959 to 2011. That is the whole of what this room holds — it is one person's collection, not a discography.
Is this a best-of, or a ranking?
No. Nothing here is ranked and no track is called better than another. The starting point is picked by arithmetic — the track closest to the centre of all the others on four measured axes — and the rule is printed above so you can disagree with it.
Where do the knob numbers come from?
They are set by hand, one track at a time, by the person who added the track. They are not audio analysis and not a Spotify feature. Mood, energy, density and the head/body balance each run 0 to 100. All 21 of these tracks have been read individually — nothing on this page is running on a default.
Can I listen to these here?
Not yet from this page. Zubissou Sounds is in private beta — the room itself plays through Spotify, and 21 of these 21 tracks are matched to a Spotify ID and ready to play the moment you are in. The waitlist form is at the bottom of this page.