The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady

Recorded on 20 January 1963 and released in July by Impulse! Records, the album is a single continuous composition, partly written as a ballet, divided into four tracks and six movements. It grew out of the failed Town Hall concert of October 1962, where Thiele heard the band and offered Mingus a contract. Mingus honed the piece with a ten-member group at the Village Vanguard. He had meant it to run as one long work and said in 1964 that his label urged him to split it into several pieces for marketing reasons. Bob Hammer was co-orchestrator and arranger, and Mingus brought in the classical guitarist Jay Berliner, whose Spanish guitar is heard in the third and fourth movements. Mingus said he wanted to mirror the period of the Spanish Inquisition and El Greco's mood of oppressive poverty and death.

The credits suggest a single day, but Charlie Mariano's alto saxophone was dubbed in about a week later. Mariano told the BBC in 1966 that Mingus pointed when he should start and wave when he should stop. Thiele said about fifty splices were made after the date, and Mingus praised the engineer Bob Simpson for editing the tape to his instructions. Mingus said in the liner notes, "I wrote the music for dancing and listening," and Impulse! sold it as ethnic folk-dance music. The sleeve carries notes by Mingus and a postscript by Dr. Edmund Pollock.

Billboard gave it a Special Merit Pick on 27 July 1963 and Cash Box named it Jazz Pick of the Week. Nat Hentoff wrote that the eleven-piece band often sounded twice as large, and Wilder Hobson called it Mingus's most ambitious jazz composition to date. The Penguin Guide to Jazz awarded a Crown, AllMusic's Steve Huey gave five stars, and the album appears in 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.