SPIN Best Albums of 1972: Let My Children Hear Music (celebrating 50 years!)
In the liner notes to Let My Children Hear Music, Charles Mingus thanked revered Teo Macero for helping assemble “the best album I have ever made.” It’s hard to argue with his pick — this is certainly among the composer’s most surface-level beautiful work, unfolding dense quilts of sound stitched somewhere between fusion, third stream and the avant-garde. “The Shoes of the Fisherman’s Wife Are Some Jive Ass Slippers” previews the project’s orchestral density, opening with a slow, ascending chromatic climb — only to dissolve and reform as a gentle swing. But the most characteristic moment could be the “Hobo Ho,” Mingus’ swaggering bass riff a platform for woodwind swells both soothing and chaotic. – R.R.