Pithecanthropus Erectus by Charles Mingus (1956)

Pithecanthropus Erectus represents a case where an artist's body of work is simply so good that their less timely masterworks, a watershed moment of work from nearly any other artist in the field, simply remain in the bleachers.

Mingus noted that this was the first album where he taught arrangements to his musicians by ear instead of putting the chords and arrangements in writing — the Jay Z method if you will.

According to Mingus' liner notes, the title song is a ten-minute tone poem, depicting the rise of man from his hominid roots (Pithecanthropus erectus) to an eventual downfall due to "his own failure to realize the inevitable emancipation of those he sought to enslave, and his greed in attempting to stand on a false security." The song's title refers to the Java Man fossil, which at the time of its discovery was the oldest human fossil ever found. Good lord was this man brilliant.

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