Harder Bop
Early in 1990 I attended a lecture by perhaps the top Charles Mingus scholar of the day, at the International Association of Jazz Educators Conference in Miami. He was discussing his upcoming Mingus fakebook, the first authorized and legitimately published collection of Mingus compositions, a new volume dedicated to documenting the composer’s work with more detail than the normal barebones schematics of a fakebook, and with historical context for the music.
I wanted to hear this man speak because I was obsessed with Mingus. I devoured every Mingus record I could find, and everything I could read about him, including articles by this scholar: Mingus revealed to me (and to all of us) that jazz could go to impossible places we hadn’t thought of until he took us there. I was a young and aspiring jazz composer, and Mingus broke my world. I needed to know everything about him.
During the lecture, a galley proof for this new fakebook, which wasn’t available yet, made its way around the room. When I got my hands on it, I immediately turned to What Love , one of my favorite Mingus compositions: I wanted to see how they would depict the tune’s crazy goings-on as a lead sheet. (To this day I’m always looking at other jazz composers’ lead sheets to learn new and better ways to express my own musical ideas.)
Harder Bop