Wes Montgomery
guitar
Jazz guitarist from Indianapolis; Barry worked with him at the old Five Spot in New York, recorded with him on Harold Land’s West Coast Blues, and used to run into him at the cowboy movies.
- mentions
- 6
- recordings
- 6
- Barry speaking
- 1
What Barry says
Listing the work he found in New York in the early 1960s, Barry says he worked with Yusef Lateef, at Junior’s bar, at the old Five Spot with Wes Montgomery, and with Charles McPherson and Lonnie Hillyer at the new Five Spot.
Describing a trifling period of racetracks, betting shops and shows, Barry says he used to see Wes all the time, because Wes went to the cowboy movies just as he did.
In a class on Stella by Starlight, after showing how he would move through the early bars, Barry turns to what Wes Montgomery and others did there (the old automatic captions name Wes; the newer transcript skips that line) and says he does not like it: he wants to hear it all the way. He then shows what he would always play for the first chord instead.
In his own words
I used to see Wes Montgomery all the time. He’d be going to the cowboy movies just like me.
I worked in quite a few joints. I worked at the old Five Spot with Wes Montgomery.
Every mention
6 moments in the recordings, 1 of them Barry speaking. Each says who is talking.
Stella by Starlight
- 3:01
Dislikes how Wes and others played the opening of Stella by Starlight; he wants to hear it all. Wes is named in the old captions only.
’Round Midnight
- 0:51
Speaker unclear
Garbled caption in a Round Midnight masterclass names ‘West Montgomery’; the point cannot be recovered.
Interview: Detroit, Bud Powell and the shuffle
- 23:16
Interviewer
The radio host plays Harold Land’s West Coast Blues, with Wes Montgomery, Joe Gordon, Barry and Louis Hayes.
Barry Harris Spanish TV
- 16:11
Someone else
Spanish TV narrator: after Lateef, Barry went to California to work with Wes Montgomery and Harold Land.
Interview: tap dance and bebop
- 26:08
Someone else
A translated introduction lists Wes among the players Barry worked with after coming to New York.
Barry Harris Workshop Madrid 2018
- 0:00
Someone else
A Madrid workshop video names Wes among the musicians Barry has played with.
In the interviews and notes
Barry says that in his early New York years, around his gigs with Yusef Lateef and at Junior’s, he worked at the old Five Spot with Wes Montgomery.
Barry remembers seeing Wes all the time because they both went to the cowboy movies.
In Panken’s telling, Barry’s early New York work included odd gigs with Lateef and Lee Morgan and, later, jobs at the Five Spot, Minton’s and Boomer’s with Wes Montgomery and Charles McPherson.
A guitarist counts Barry among the greats of bop piano and names Harold Land’s West Coast Blues, featuring Wes, among his favourite records with Barry on them.
jazzguitar.be members (usernames kept per post), Tom Jobim - Wave Analysis using Barry Harris Method ¶303
In a thread on Barry and Wes, one member says the only comment he has heard Barry make about Wes was a criticism of Wes’s harmonisation of Stella by Starlight.
The same member hears post-bop rather than bop lines from Wes even on his most bop-like sessions, the Harold Land date and the Nat Adderley album before it, and notes that Wes stressed the II of a II-V where Parker dropped it.
jazzguitar.be members (usernames kept per post), Barry Harris & Wes Montgomery (jazzguitar.be forum thread) ¶47jazzguitar.be members (usernames kept per post), Barry Harris & Wes Montgomery (jazzguitar.be forum thread) ¶56
One member suggests that Barry, steeped in classical voice-leading, did not care for the parallel chord movement Wes used, which may have sounded to him like moving power chords.
Another doubts that Wes used anything of Barry’s: Wes used diminished chords as dominants to harmonise lines, an old technique that Barry made into a named scale but did not invent.
Others hear Barry’s ideas in Wes: one points to a phrase from Sundown built from chords on the seventh and third with a diminished arpeggio from the second, and another says he uses Barry’s chord system to play chord solos in the manner of Wes.
jazzguitar.be members (usernames kept per post), Barry Harris & Wes Montgomery (jazzguitar.be forum thread) ¶498jazzguitar.be members (usernames kept per post), Tom Jobim - Wave Analysis using Barry Harris Method ¶57
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.
- 14.3Learn from the masters by ear; study the small things2
- 8.1Put the ii chord away2
- 10.1Be a movement player1
- 10.4Borrowing1
- 13.3Standards worked in class1
- 13.4Monk’s and Bud’s tunes; learning from records1
- 8.7The diminished as ‘ruler’1
- 9.6Half-diminished = minor with the sixth in the bass; major -> relative minor -> minor/61