The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD calls this album "an extended tribute to ancestors", and Mingus's musical forebears figure largely throughout. "Better Git It In Your Soul" is inspired by gospel singing and preaching of the sort that Mingus would have heard as a child growing up in Watts, Los Angeles, California, while "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat" is a reference to saxophonist Lester Young. The origin and nature of "Boogie Stop Shuffle" is self-explanatory: a twelve-bar blues with four themes and a boogiebass backing that passes from stop time to shuffle and back. "Self-Portrait in Three Colors" was originally written for John Cassavetes' first film as director, Shadows, but was never used. "Open Letter to Duke" is a tribute to Duke Ellington, and draws on three of Mingus's earlier pieces. "Jelly Roll" is a reference to jazz pioneer and pianist Jelly Roll Morton and features a quote of Sonny Rollins' "Sonnymoon for Two" during Horace Parlan's piano solo. "Bird Calls", in Mingus's own words, was not a reference to bebop saxophonist Charlie "Bird" Parker: "It wasn't supposed to sound like Charlie Parker. It was supposed to sound like birds – the first part." "Fables of Faubus" is named after Orval E. Faubus, the Governor of Arkansas infamous for his 1957 stand against integration of Little Rock, Arkansas schools in defiance of U.S. Supreme Court rulings. It is sometimes claimed that Columbia refused to allow the lyrics to be included on this album, though the liner notes to the 1998 reissue of the album state that the piece started life as an instrumental, and only gained the lyrics later.
Edited and Unedited Versions
The original Columbia Records LP release of the album featured edited versions of six of the nine compositions. For these tracks, from one to three minutes of the performances were removed, either to meet the playing time constraints of the LP format, or because producer Teo Macero felt the pieces were more effective in edited form. Unedited versions of these pieces were first released, on LP, in 1979. The first widely-available CD edition of the album, 1987's "Columbia Jazz Masterpieces" edition, used the original LP edits. The edited version has been reissued on compact disc subsequent to 1987, including a 2019 release by Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab. The unedited version of the album was first widely released on compact disc in 1998 as part of the Sony Legacy series, and it too has remained available through additional compact disc reissues.
In 2009, Sony's Legacy Recordings released a special 2-disc 50th Anniversary Edition of Mingus Ah Um. In addition to the complete album, the Legacy Edition includes an alternative take of each of three tracks: "Bird Calls", "Better Git It In Your Soul", and "Jelly Roll". The Legacy Edition of Mingus Ah Um also includes Mingus Dynasty, its companion album recorded later in 1959.
Track listing
All songs composed by Charles Mingus, except 12, composed by Sunny Clapp. Original LP song lengths are given within parentheses.
