The music on this disc emerged from the final sessions at which Mingus largely used conventionally notated music before moving decisively to the freer, more organic method of simply playing his collaborators their lines on the piano. The upshot of that shift, of course, was Pithecanthropus Erectus and the beginning of Mingus’ classic phase. As a result, it's inevitable that the material on this imaginative reissue, which combines Jazzical Moods and The Moods of Mingus, recorded with much the same personnel across a few months at the back end of 1954, will be viewed as showing Mingus the promising bassist and bandleader in the process of becoming fully himself – Mingus the Genius. In fact, there's already plenty of collective improvisation going on here (‘Purple Heart’, ‘Getting Together’), while the sinuous, complex ‘Thrice Upon A Theme’ brings together jazz and classical forms in a manner that Mingus dubbed ‘jazzical’ – amazing that euphonious coinage didn't catch on, isn't it? The set is nicely packaged with intelligent new and original liner notes and some hilarious mid-century responses. The original reviews show the critics running scared: Nat Hentoff gave Jazzical Moods five stars in Down Beat but confessed to preferring jazz “to swing in the central-Basie tradition”, while ‘E.J.’ in Gramophone opted to omit a star rating for The Moods of Mingus because “this is music which can't be judged by normal jazz standards.” “I can only say,” he added, “after listening to the record four times, that I'd prefer jazz to continue along its more usual pathway.”