Money Jungle

Money Jungle (1962) is a piano-bass-drums trio record pairing Duke Ellington with Charles Mingus and Max Roach. The music blends Ellington's harmonic and melodic sensibility with Mingus's muscular, sometimes confrontational bass and Roach's precise, propulsive drumming, yielding a lean, often intense approach to post-bop and modern jazz. The session favors sparse trio textures, strong rhythmic interplay, and a range of moods from blues-tinged introspection to angular, percussive drive, illustrating a meeting of a veteran composer-pianist with younger modernist players.