A welcome follow-up to Proper's The Young Rebel box, which I compiled, covering the first decade of Mingus's career, but the praise is due to the composer himself. Contents are pretty self-explanatory since, even to non-specialists, the album titles are legendary. What's on these well-filled CDs consists of all of Pithecanthropus Erectus, half of The Clown, all of Tijuana Moods and East Coasting, half of Blues And Roots, all of Mingus Ah Um, half of Mingus Dynasty, all of C.M. Presents C.M. and five-sixths of its follow-up called simply Mingus. Need I say more? Except that the material gains enormously by being heard in chronological order, underlining the fact that, though these albums had their distinctive flavours, the wild mix of moods and techniques is common to each set and indeed each tune. Obviously, there are tracks and whole albums omitted but, even with a couple of inclusions that I feared might be underwhelming, there's absolutely no wasted space. How can this be less than a five-star rating, except for the fact that the next three years were perhaps even more extraordinary? But, if you want most of what there is to know about this half-decade, you can't go wrong here.