“Everything he’s done on record is part of the essential Mingus…He is one of those relatively few jazz figures who has inexorably accumulated a wholly singular body of work – like Duke and Monk and Miles and Trane…All of Mingus’ music is a symphony fused from the parts of his life, like a book.” – Nat Hentoff, from his liner notes to The Art of Charles Mingus: The Atlantic Years(Atlantic SD 2–302)