Charles Mingus - PASSIONS OF A MAN (Atlantic SD 3-600; three records)
Charles Mingus - ME, MYSELF AN EYE (Atlantic SD 8803)
Joni Mitchell - MINGUS (Asylum 5E-505)

Bassist and jazz composer Charles Mingus died in January at 54 of Lou Gehrig's Disease. He is remembered well in these three albums.

None are for the casual listener, for Mingus was a musician's musician. His challenges on his audience were great. But even if you just pretend to understand his music, there are rewards to be had in each of these albums.

"Passions of a Man" is subtitled "An Anthology of His Atlantic Recordings." These are small-combo pieces. They show Mingus had moments of accessibility. Like Wisconsin weather, though, you just wait a short time and his works evolve into something entirely different, frothy and trying.

"Me, Myself and Eye" is chiefly ensemble music. Thirty-odd friends gathered with Mingus in the last year of his life and energetically recorded old and new works. Degree of difficulty: 9.6 out of 10.

The most dramatic of the albums is Joni Mitchell's. Don't expect anything anywhere near her sweetly folky "Both Sides Now" of years past, for Mitchell is vastly changed - even from her intellectual albums of recent years.

In collaboration with Mingus (he is the music, she the words), she has come up with an album which seems horrendous at first listen. But wait. If you give it a chance, if you listen three, four times, there is much merit in it.

Her jazz singing is slow and deliberate. It is tough to latch on to meanings, and you do need background in what Mingus was about. Once the puzzle pieces fall together, you can savor what Mitchell accomplished.

Melancholy ("A Chair in the Sky") is mixed with droll humor ("The Dry Cleaner from Des Moines"). The range of thoughts and emotions touch many a base.

Also, there is a unique sound at times in the backup playing. It's a creamy, electronic thing that, frankly, you don't know whether it's a bass or a horn. But you do know it's distinctive and nifty.

Mitchell is going to lose lots of her old fans with "Mingus." Already intensely individualistic, she has moved on to higher climes to gain respect among a select company of serious listeners.

Her album is illustrated by four of her modern paintings. They are in keeping with the testing tone of the music.