Billy Harper

[soulpope]

6 minutes ago, erwbol said:

I wonder how long the object has been on eBay already. Weeks, months?

The seller seems not to be in hurry .... btw the price is well within the range for "Baystate Spiritual Series" CD`s offered via Discogs ....

[Kevin Bresnahan]

11 hours ago, BFrank said:

I like The Believer even if it's not top-tier Billy. I bought it from his fan club merch table when I saw him at Yoshi's quite a few years ago. I think it's a needle drop 'home-made' CDR, though.

Make sure you have it backed up to your hard drive. The fan club CD-R is shit. Mine failed many years ago and I had to threw it out.

[BFrank]

7 hours ago, bresna said:

Make sure you have it backed up to your hard drive. The fan club CD-R is shit. Mine failed many years ago and I had to threw it out.

Will check - thanks!

[Harbour]

I have most of that baystate series, there’s  some great stuff. It’s a shame they didn’t continue it further since there’s still a few not on cd, this max roach set with billy harper looks interesting 

 https://www.discogs.com/Max-Roach-Quartet-Live-in-Amsterdam/release/6041737

[felser]

23 minutes ago, Harbour said:

 this max roach set with billy harper looks interesting 

 https://www.discogs.com/Max-Roach-Quartet-Live-in-Amsterdam/release/6041737

I've listened to it on youtube.  It's fabulous.

[soulpope]

6 hours ago, felser said:

I've listened to it on youtube.  It's fabulous.

👍Yep👍 ....

[Pim]

That whole group is just: wow. Mosaic should do something with it. 

[BFrank]

15 minutes ago, Pim said:

That whole group is just: wow. Mosaic should do something with it. 

Mosaic should round up all the Max and Billy sessions!

[erwbol]

4 hours ago, BFrank said:

Mosaic should round up all the Max and Billy sessions!

I would buy that (through Jazz Messengers)!

[soulpope]

Enjoy  .... :

 

[Pim]

 

I am listening to these two on my recently bought vinyl and I am blowed away by them. Expected them to be good but not this good. Started with Knowledge of Self and decided instantly I want to be a Billy Harper completist (which is probably easier than being a Waldron completist  ). I thought Love on the Sudan would be a bit less interesting but it is just as good. What also blows my mind is that the whole band is killing, but that part from Kenny Barron and Mickey Tucker, I really don't know any of the other guys. Everett Hollins, Malcolm Pinson, Greg Maker: they all seem to have played with Harper only (small exception here and there). 

Anyway it is time for a Billy Harper '70's recordings Mosaic: with all the stuff he made for Denon, Baystate and MPS and maybe include some Capra Black too! Vinyl quality is excellent but this deserves a new remaster . I know Felser is a huge fan, Hutchfan and Soulpope also as I can recall? 

 

[Kevin Bresnahan]

Does Denon ever license their stuff? I can't remember anyone ever reissuing their stuff except themselves. I think MPS used to license out their recordings... didn't Prestige used to release their stuff in the US? Baystate.... who even owns that anymore?

Looking up Baystate, it looks like some of this stuff went to RCA but some of it seems to have referred back to the artist. After all, how else could Billy Harper issue his own version through his fan club?

[jlhoots]

Such Great Friends is a really great (& expensive) CD (format I have it in).

[HutchFan]

2 hours ago, Pim said:

Anyway it is time for a Billy Harper '70's recordings Mosaic: with all the stuff he made for Denon, Baystate and MPS and maybe include some Capra Black too! Vinyl quality is excellent but this deserves a new remaster . I know Felser is a huge fan, Hutchfan and Soulpope also as I can recall? 

Yes. I'd buy that in a heartbeat.  

[jlhoots]

[BFrank]

On 11/11/2019 at 8:48 AM, Pim said:

 

I am listening to these two on my recently bought vinyl and I am blowed away by them. Expected them to be good but not this good. Started with Knowledge of Self and decided instantly I want to be a Billy Harper completist (which is probably easier than being a Waldron completist  ). I thought Love on the Sudan would be a bit less interesting but it is just as good. What also blows my mind is that the whole band is killing, but that part from Kenny Barron and Mickey Tucker, I really don't know any of the other guys. Everett Hollins, Malcolm Pinson, Greg Maker: they all seem to have played with Harper only (small exception here and there). 

Anyway it is time for a Billy Harper '70's recordings Mosaic: with all the stuff he made for Denon, Baystate and MPS and maybe include some Capra Black too! Vinyl quality is excellent but this deserves a new remaster . I know Felser is a huge fan, Hutchfan and Soulpope also as I can recall? 

 

Big fan here, too! A Mosaic would be GREAT.

[Rooster_Ties]

3 hours ago, BFrank said:

Big fan here, too! A Mosaic would be GREAT.

I cannot think of a more deserving artist alive today, for a Mosaic big box of some sort.

How Billy has never broken through (more), is beyond me, and he's still playing as well as ever today.  He's been on my "top-5" list of greatest tenor players for going on 25 years now -- right up there with just about anyone.

His music is both stratospheric and (I think) approachable too.  I can't think of a tenor-player who played and still plays more intensely, yet in a way that's not off-putting to those "put off' by really intense players.  Or maybe his 'language' just speaks to me super-strongly.

In any case, I think there's a strong case to be made for him being one of the top-10 tenor-players of the last 50 years.  I've never heard a record of his that was in any way substandard - or certainly none that I can think of.

Thank goodness I've had so many chances to hear him since I moved out to DC back in 2011 -- at least 5 or maybe 6 times.  Top of his game now, far as I'm concerned, and a true gentleman.

Edited November 12, 2019 by Rooster_Ties

[felser]

20 minutes ago, Rooster_Ties said:

His music is both stratospheric and (I think) approachable too.  I can't think of a tenor-player who played and still plays more intensely, yet in a way that's not off-putting to those 'put off' my really intense players.  Or maybe his 'language' just speaks to me super-strongly.

and a true gentleman.

Agreed on the musical assessment.  My wife is able to "get" his music.  We saw him at the Painted Bride Art Center in (I think) the late 90's (Eddie Henderson, Francesca Tanksley, et al), and we still talk about it.  And he radiated such personal dignity.  I didn't get to meet him at all.  I can't even begin to "objectively" rate him because his music strikes me more deeply than any other musician's, and only 70's McCoy Tyner and 70's Charles Tolliver and 70's/80's Hannibal have come even close to that experience for me.  I appreciate the masters.  In some ways,  I feel and breathe Harper.

[BFrank]

2 hours ago, felser said:

Agreed on the musical assessment.  My wife is able to "get" his music.  We saw him at the Painted Bride Art Center in (I think) the late 90's (Eddie Henderson, Francesca Tanksley, et al), and we still talk about it.  And he radiated such personal dignity.  I didn't get to meet him at all.  I can't even begin to "objectively" rate him because his music strikes me more deeply than any other musician's, and only 70's McCoy Tyner and 70's Charles Tolliver and 70's/80's Hannibal have come even close to that experience for me.  I appreciate the masters.  In some ways,  I feel and breathe Harper.

My wife "gets him" too! We've seen the Cookers a lot and she always enjoys the show, especially Billy.

I've been seeing him and getting his albums since I first saw him with Max in the late 70s. Never disappointed!

[Pim]

I never saw Harper live unfortunately and I am afraid I never will. I don’t thinks he or The Cookers ever play in the Netherlands in the future. Jazz is dead over here. Or maybe jazz is not but a lot of fans are. David Murray was able to fill just about half a Bimhuis last year. That says enough I guess. 
 

Glad to see he has more fans around the world. He is one of my very favorite artists too. One of the few sax players that is able to play pretty much inside but still sound deeply intense. And indeed I haven’t found one record that is bad although I really don’t like the singing on the  DIW record.

[kh1958]

He is deserving of one of the major awards for musicians from the National Endowment for the Arts, Doris Duke Foundation or MacArthur Foundation.

I believe I have seen him live six times.

With Malachi Thompson at Sweet Basil.

With David Weiss and Charles Tolliver at the Iridium.

With The Cookers at Winter Jazz Fest.

With Elio Villafranca, and paired with David Murray at the Appel Room.

With Randy Weston in San Antonio.

And (finally) as a leader at Smoke.

[Rooster_Ties]

Every time I've seen him, it's been with The Cookers (4 times?) -- except one other time...  There was a local tribute to Lee Morgan here in DC earlier this year, that Billy came down from New York for, and played material from Lee's entire career (including tunes from Lee's book from when Billy played with him in Lee's last band) -- two 75-minute sets, iirc -- which was just stunning.

Can't think of an artist more deserving of an award.  The consistent quality of playing from throughout his career is as good as any player I can think of (with his longevity).

The man seems like the very definition of gravitas as well, from all my brief interactions with him (from talking about touring Japan with Gil Evans, to his more recent work with Mark Masters (particularly the Grachan Moncur songbook album Harper is on).

Edited November 13, 2019 by Rooster_Ties

[erwbol]

On 11/13/2019 at 7:52 AM, Pim said:

Jazz is dead over here. Or maybe jazz is not but a lot of fans are.

We live in a country of herd animals. And the herd doesn't dig real jazz, brother. Only some vocal pop music marketed as jazz maybe. But not too often.

[Rooster_Ties]

Jesus, I just stumbled on a factoid that Billy Harper had a quintet in 1966 with McCoy Tyner, Elvin Jones, Freddie Hubbard, and I'm not sure who was on bass.  I don't suppose they ever recorded anything? - or surly I'd know about it.

There's a documentary piece supposedly about this group -- does that still exist anywhere?  Something called "The Big Apple", that ran on NBC (probably a local-affiliate production, is my guess).  Here's where I just found out about all this...

http://blogs.mercurynews.com/aei/2013/01/17/billy-harper-at-70-a-profile-from-2005-the-music-unfurled-like-an-anthem-from-antiquity-but-swirled-like-coltrane-and-was-carried-along-by-a-gripping-almost-pentecostal-power/

• Raised in small-town Tyler, Texas, he was playing rhythm ‘n’ blues in Houston nightclubs at 16, and, after graduating from North Texas State University, moved to New York in 1966.  Almost instantly, things happened: (1) His second day in town, he was robbed of all his possessions (except his saxophone); (2) an NBC TV producer heard about him through the jazz grapevine and put him in a local documentary called “The Big Apple, ” chronicling the struggles of four new Manhattanites. (Jerry Quarry, the boxer, was one of the others). For his segment, Harper, not lacking in confidence, convened a band that included several legends: pianist McCoy Tyner, drummer Elvin Jones and trumpeter Freddie Hubbard.

 

The documentary is also mentioned very briefly in Billy's bio page on the Cookers website, and also his bio on the Blue Note site too...

http://www.thecookersmusic.com/about/billy-harper/

http://www.bluenote.com/artist/billy-harper/

 

OK, some more sluthing, and it wasn't a working band at all, but totally a one-off just for this documentary (it sure sounds like), and it was Reggie Workman on bass...

https://www.gratefulweb.com/articles/national-jazz-museum-harlem-2011-november-schedule

• It was an incident that other musicians started hearing about, which helped get Harper's name around. Another was a stroke of good fortune when he became part of an NBC television special called "The Big Apple."
• "It was about a few people's first experience in New York. I was one. Because Kenny Dorham told them about me, so they got me as the jazz musician. There was the boxer, Jerry Quarry. He had a section. There was a business person, an opera singer, a model and a jazz musician. I was the one. So I was on television. They were filming how I would try to sit in. Life with me. I thought it was a big thing at the time. I had been trying to survive and sometimes I had to eat sandwiches with cheese, no meat."
• They were filing segments of his life around the city and wanted some footage from the Village Vanguard. "But the Vanguard wouldn't even let them in to film. It would have been good for the Vanguard to have that. So they said, 'OK. why don't you put your own band together? We'll let you film it.' So, I was smart enough to think: OK, I'll do that. I got Elvin on drums, Freddie Hubbard on trumpet, McCoy Tyner on piano, Reggie Workman on bass. So when we played, that was seen all over the place. Certainly all over New York. I think Miles and some other people must have seen that too. Then, in a small way, I kind of made it. But also word had spread with that thing with Philly Joe and Elvin at the club. Everything happened from there."

Anyway, all news to me.

Don't suppose any of this footage, or the documentary is floating about anywhere -- ??

[JSngry]

First I've heard about Billy coming from Tyler instead of Houston. Add him to the list!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyler,_Texas#Notable_people