Charles Mingus
bass, composer
Bassist, composer and bandleader; Barry barely mentions him in the sources, where he appears mainly as the leader that Charles McPherson and Lonnie Hillyer, from Barry’s Detroit circle, went on to play with.
- mentions
- 11
- recordings
- 5
- Barry speaking
- 0
Every mention
11 moments in the recordings, 0 of them Barry speaking. Each says who is talking.
Passing It On
- 4:09
Speaker unclear
Giants Barry played with: Hawkins, Max Roach, Lester Young, Mingus; unclear whether he or the interviewer names Mingus.
Barry Harris- Jazz Master, Educator, Saint
- 6:28
Speaker unclear
The same interview clip in a tribute film; Mingus named in the list of giants.
Ep. 20 | Charles McPherson: Meeting Charlie Parker, Studying with Barry Harris, and the Art of Bebop
- 0:00
Interviewer
Podcast intro: after moving to New York in 1959, McPherson worked with Mingus for twelve years.
- 17:23
A student
McPherson: Miles, and to some extent Mingus, were doing modal things.
- 20:49
A student
McPherson: Mingus in the 1950s used modes before Miles; George Russell did too.
- 1:02:20
A student
McPherson met and played with Bud Powell while working in New York with Mingus.
- 1:04:02
A student
McPherson: Mingus never told him he liked his playing, but praised him in print.
- 1:04:35
A student
McPherson gave his benefit fee to the man in need, and Mingus warmed to him.
- 1:05:41
A student
McPherson: Mingus was controversial and combative but had a good heart.
Barry Harris, Red Rodney, Charles McPherson, Ray Drummond, Ben Riley - 1992-08-29, Riverside Park
- 0:00
Someone else
Radio announcer calls McPherson a veteran of Charles Mingus’s Jazz Workshops.
Detroit Jazz: Ancient to the Future
- 2:46
Someone else
A poet’s roll call of bassists names Charlie Mingus with Paul Chambers.
In the interviews and notes
McPherson says he started working with Mingus in 1960, so for some years he and Barry saw each other but did not work together, until they joined up again in the middle or late 1960s.
Ted Panken (interviewer); Tommy Flanagan, Tommy Flanagan ¶214
Among the young players at Barry’s house in Detroit, McPherson names the trumpeter Lonnie Hillyer, who later played with Mingus.
Ted Panken (interviewer); Tommy Flanagan, Tommy Flanagan ¶204
Panken names Mingus’s Jazz Workshop, Coltrane and Ornette Coleman as what was going on when Barry reached New York. Barry does not take up any of them: he thinks first of Bud Powell’s return, which came later, and says Bird, Tatum and Prez were dead by then.
Barry Harris on WKCR-FM ¶273Barry Harris on WKCR-FM ¶274Barry Harris on WKCR-FM ¶276
To show how widely Charlie Parker was copied, Tom Cleary cites a Mingus tune title joking that a gunslinging Bird would have left many dead copycats.
Tom Cleary (University of Vermont), Charlie Parker and Alan Turing: cracking the bebop code ¶15
Cleary, who learned from Barry to run the 7th scale of the V chord over both the ii and the V, lists the Mingus arrangement of I Can’t Get Started among bop and hard bop uses of ii-V pairs moving by half steps.
Recordings that name them
Barry’s performances and records in the archive that credit or name them.
Method ideas nearby
Ideas of the method taught in the classes where they come up, with how many mentions fall in each.