Barry Harris: Professor of Bebop at 70

[Mark Stryker]

DETROIT FREE PRESS

AUGUST 27, 2000

PROFESSOR OF BEBOP AT 70, NATIVE DETROITER BARRY HARRIS SHARES THE SECRETS OF THE JAZZ TRADITION WITH STUDENTS IN NEW YORK

BYLINE: MARK STRYKER FREE PRESS MUSIC WRITER

DATELINE: NEW YORK

On the Upper West Side of Manhattan, just beyond the shadow of Juilliard, the bejeweled conservatory of classical music, sits the Lincoln Square Community Center. A gritty gathering place cut from cold concrete, it is the current home to the longest running master class in jazz. The professor is pianist Barry Harris, one of the greatest musicians ever produced by Detroit.

At 70, Harris remains the foremost bebop muse on the planet, channeling the spirit of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk through his own foxy wit, harmonic imagination and rhythmic rumble. Widely recorded, Harris has worked with many of the key figures in jazz since the '40s. Less well known is that he has long been considered a legendary teacher, a mentor to scores of musicians since his days as a precocious teenager in Detroit more than 50 years ago. A bebop guru, Harris has codified the modern jazz language into an integrated system. Today, he holds weekly workshops in which, like a swinging Socrates, he guides students in a quest for Truth, Beauty and the hippest chords to play on "Body and Soul."

The students -- fresh graduates from overly starched music schools, mid-career pros searching for new avenues of expression, middle-age amateurs with a passion for jazz and the warm camaraderie of the class -- flock to Harris. They come because of his subtle charisma and because his system comes stamped with Talmudic authority. In an age in which the traditional apprentice system has all but collapsed in jazz, Harris represents a direct link to the pantheon.

"The tradition of learning a folk music is to learn it from the folk that do it," says pianist Rodney Kendrick, 40, who began studying with Harris 20 years ago and still attends class, even though he's recorded several CDs.

"The only way you can teach this music is by example, as opposed to going to some schools where these cats tell you about ' 'Round Midnight,' 'Cherokee' or some song. They don't have a clue. They haven't played with anybody but the guy next door, who's just as clueless as they are."

Harris teaches on Tuesdays. The students show up in waves: pianists at 6:30 p.m., singers at 8:30 and horn players (saxophonists, trumpeters, guitarists, even violinists) at 10:30. They pay a one-time registration fee of $30 plus $8 a night. The space is large and hollow, like an elementary school gym, with dingy light and two baby grand pianos pushed to one side like orphaned twins.

As the clock ticks past 6:40 on a recent Tuesday, Yoko Kawaguchi, 31, moves to a piano and begins to play "Over the Rainbow" in a ballad tempo. Nearby, Harris cocks his ear, shuffles over to the piano bench and takes a seat next to her. Those milling about the room notice, and soon a dozen other pianists are huddled around them, some standing on chairs. Tape recorders are turned on. Manuscript paper is readied. Class is in session, though even Harris doesn't know the agenda.

Kawaguchi, a newly minted graduate of Indiana University, works carefully through the song, measuring each phrase like a cook wedded to a recipe. When Harris hears a missed opportunity to add a new spice, to improvise, his hands dart to the keyboard. He plays a clever descending sequence of diminished and dominant arpeggios that excites a transition with flavor and texture. Kawaguchi smiles. She copies the notes, tripping at first. Harris repeats the idea slower. Back and forth they go, Harris making up variations, exploring the problem from several angles. "OK, get up," he says. The other students take turns playing the sequence. An hour passes.

"Each class takes on its own shape," says pianist Michael Weiss, 42, a close friend of Harris who is also leading a band at the Detroit jazz festival. "Barry puts something on the table and says, 'Let's solve this together.' "

Harris has always been fascinated with the nuts and bolts of harmony: the bittersweet lyricism of chords layered on top of each other; voice-leading and finding new harmonic colors to apply to standard songs the way a painter like Bonnard might use six shades of red in a landscape. The relationship between chords and scales is another favorite topic. "A scale gives you movement," he tells the class, repeating a lesson learned decades ago from tenor saxophone master Coleman Hawkins. "Don't play chords, play movement."

Now it's time to play stump the teacher. Weiss, who has stopped by class to say hello, gets drafted into the colloquium on harmony. "Have you thought of this?" he asks, fingering complex chords derived from a minor scale. Harris looks puzzled. "Don't say nothing," he says before Weiss can jump in with an explanation. Then Harris tries the sequence, savoring each odd consonance like sips of an exotic wine.

It's 9 p.m. the following day, and Harris is downing sushi at a favorite Japanese restaurant on 8th Avenue in Midtown. He breaks into a gap-toothed grin. "I must be the dumbest kid in the class 'cause I've been in it the longest, and I'm the biggest thief in the class 'cause I steal from everybody," Harris says in his gentle, gravelly baritone.

Harris has hunched shoulders, a high forehead, a drooping bottom lip and soft, puppy eyes that peer above glasses. His hair -- full on the sides, thin on top -- is ivory white. A few black streaks darken his mustache. "The more I learn, the more I can see where Bird (Charlie Parker), Bud, Diz and those cats didn't do it all... You need to learn the rules so you can bend the rules, extend the rules and come up with new answers."

Growing up in Detroit, Harris had two kinds of music teachers. Formal instruction began with his mother, a church pianist. But like all musicians of his generation, Harris learned jazz from the rhythm of the streets, on the bandstand, at jam sessions and by copying solos from recordings. Harris would stand behind his friend and contemporary pianist Tommy Flanagan and steal chords. Saxophonist and composer Frank Foster, who would later write dozens of classic arrangements for Count Basie, gave Harris a cheat sheet around 1950 crammed with orchestration tips that Harris still keeps. Harris anchored the house trio at the hallowed Blue Bird Inn, backing stars of the day like Miles Davis.

A quick study, Harris soon took a leadership role in Detroit's close-knit jazz community, mentoring slightly younger peers like bassist Paul Chambers, trumpeter Donald Byrd and trombonist Curtis Fuller. All became stars. Harris' reputation grew, and musicians traveling through Detroit began stopping by his house to jam and study informally, including the nascent revolutionary saxophonist John Coltrane.

Harris' system made him unique, and the fundamentals he devised in the mid-'50s remain the backbone of his teaching. Harris put the virtuoso improvisations of Parker, Gillespie, Powell and other modern jazz pioneers under a microscope. He discovered the musical syntax and grammar that makes the bebop language work -- scales, chords, passing tones. He then organized a set of rules that helps musicians play like natives, without an accent. "Barry's theory is derived directly from the practice, and more often than not in universities they have it backward," says Weiss.

Not all of Harris' lessons have to do with the mechanics of music. Detroit-bred alto saxophonist Charles McPherson, 61, one of the leading keepers of the bebop flame, used to go to Harris' house nearly every day as a teenager to play. One day, Harris spied his report card littered with Cs. "Charles, this is real average stuff. You must be an average guy."

"Yeah, well, what's wrong with that?"

"Man, all your heroes, they're not average at all. Cats like Bird are very well-read. Bird could sit down and talk about philosophy and paintings; he was very erudite. You can't possibly play this kind of music and be an average guy. There's too much going on."

The talk changed McPherson's life. He started reading. Made the honor roll. Taught him a lesson some musicians never learn: "The more you know the more you have to play about," McPherson says. "You have more to say, other than just F minor to B-flat-7."

Harris inspires a striking level of devotion from his students, some of whom have been schlepping 90 minutes to class from Long Island every week for a decade. Schoolgirl crushes are not unusual. At class, a young student from Japan, who speaks little English, brings Harris special cookies from her homeland. Harris thanks her with grandfatherly pecks on the cheek. The students know that no other musician of Harris' stature is willing to practically give away his secrets at group seminars rather than pricey private lessons. They know if money's tight they can skip the cover charge. They know that much of the income Harris derives from the class covers expenses, and that it is not uncommon for him to pay airfare to Europe for several students when he conducts clinics overseas.

"Everybody wants a piece of heaven, and when you see it, you go to it," says Kendrick.

Like many teachers placed on a pedestal, Harris finds the adulation intoxicating. Yet nothing gives him more honest pleasure than the twinkling smile of a student graced by the sudden shock of discovery. "Everything's worth that smile," he says.

Harris' classes have been permanent fixtures somewhere in New York since about 1970. "One day I forgot about the class," he recalls. "At 7 o'clock -- I was supposed to be there at 4 -- I realized I forgot, and I jumped in a cab up to 58th Street. Everybody was still there waiting for me! That's when I said, 'We're going to have the class from now on.' "

By 10:40 p.m., the nearly three dozen singers -- whom Harris taught lyrics and elementary phrasing by rote -- have retired. Now Harris sits facing some 20 horn players and, like a hip drill sergeant, puts his squadron through rigorous calisthenics designed to train the fingers, ears and mind to work as a single unit. He sings melodic phrases and the class plays them back in unison. The instructions come quickly, given in numbers and letters that sound like secret code to the uninitiated: "Start on the tonic of A-flat and come down the scale, put a half-step between the 6 and 5 and stop at the 3rd of F."

Harris links ideas together like the cars of a train, and soon the students are playing serpentine lines that jitterbug through the harmony, dancing with syncopation and leaping intervals. One idea leads to another and, before long, Harris finds himself orchestrating an arrangement based on a 55-year-old Gillespie introduction to "I Can't Get Started."

Harris assembles the pieces like a puzzle. First the saxes croon supple chords. Then the trumpets play a nimble melody carved from curlicue rhythms and snazzy harmony. A lone tenor sax adds a moving counter-melody inside the ensemble. It's after midnight by the time Harris completes the eight-bar construction, and when the professor finally hears it played in a single take, he beams.

"Oh man, that's fun!"

{END}

Edited April 17, 2008 by Mark Stryker

[AllenLowe]

Harris was one of the musicians I knew well when I lived in NYC in the 1970s (I wrote the first piece that ever appeared about him in Downbeat, around 1976), but I've lost touch (I last went to see him about the year 2000, I would say) - his drummer Leroy Williams used to live in my neighborhood on the West Side, and worked for a while in a great trio at the West End with Bob Neloms and Percy France which I set up (and which Phil Schapp later took credit for, oh well) - I first got to know Barry when he was the Sunday pianist at Bradley's in the 1970s (though I first saw him at Jimmy's with Wilbur Little in the early 1970s) - he worked at Bradley's with Hal Dotson. Al Haig used to come in to see him (this was also the place where, prior to Barry, Jaki Byard was the Sunday pianist; one night he was blasting away when in walks Monk and Mingus, together! strange evening; Monk kept walking over and whispering in Jaki's ear, Mingus sat down and had a huge steak dinner) - I hope Barry is well, I know he had a stroke some time ago, he's a great guy and a charismatic, deep musician. Hear him on the right night and it is an experience like no other -

Edited April 17, 2008 by AllenLowe

[Fer Urbina]

Harris will be at Pizza Express London, May 21-25.

See here for details

F

[ValerieB]

Harris was one of the musicians I knew well when I lived in NYC in the 1970s (I wrote the first piece that ever appeared about him in Downbeat, around 1976), but I've lost touch (I last went to see him about the year 2000, I would say) - his drummer Leroy Williams used to live in my neighborhood on the West Side, and worked for a while in a great trio at the West End with Bob Neloms and Percy France which I set up (and which Phil Schapp later took credit for, oh well) - I first got to know Barry when he was the Sunday pianist at Bradley's in the 1970s (though I first saw him at Jimmy's with Wilbur Little in the early 1970s) - he worked at Bradley's with Hal Dotson. Al Haig used to come in to see him (this was also the place where, prior to Barry, Jaki Byard was the Sunday pianist; one night he was blasting away when in walks Monk and Mingus, together! strange evening; Monk kept walking over and whispering in Jaki's ear, Mingus sat down and had a huge steak dinner) - I hope Barry is well, I know he had a stroke some time ago, he's a great guy and a charismatic, deep musician. Hear him on the right night and it is an experience like no other -

what wonderful memories! i lived on W. 93rd St. betw. amsterdam & columbus until 1969 and lfrequented the jazz clubs around there (as well as all the others around town, of course).

you'll be happy to know that Barry is still very active: playing and teaching. he's a treasure! i actually remember when he played solo piano in the window of a bar in the theatre district in the 60's. great memories - all!

[david weiss]

Barry Harris is a treasure.

I've gone to those classes since I first arrived in New York and still go on occasion.

There isn't any excuse for any musician not to go to these classes, you won't get training like this anywhere and you can't beat the price ($14 per class now, less if you register and sign up for a bunch of them). They are still every Tuesday he is in town, check them out.

[AllenLowe]

"i actually remember when he played solo piano in the window of a bar in the theatre district in the 60's"

that was the Jimmy's gig, 52nd street, near CBS - it was a bar owned by a politico in NYC named Jimmy Aurelio (I think he worked for Lindsay, unsure) - Wilbur Little was on bass, and we used to go in, get a coke, and sit for 2 hours, as the bartenders didn't care - Barry also told me it was the only gig he ever worked for which he was able to collect unemployment insurance afterwards, as he was actually on salary -

Edited April 24, 2008 by AllenLowe

[ValerieB]

"i actually remember when he played solo piano in the window of a bar in the theatre district in the 60's"

that was the Jimmy's gig, 52nd street, near CBS - it was a bar owned by a politico in NYC named Jimmy Aurelio (I think he worked for Lindsay, unsure) - Wilbur Little was on bass, and we used to go in, get a coke, and sit for 2 hours, as the bartenders didn't care - Barry also told me it was the only gig he ever worked for which he was able to collect unemployment insurance afterwards, as he was actually on salary -

i'm not sure, Allen, but i don't think that was the name of the bar i was thinking of. maybe it was Juniors?!? that's ringing a bell now! it was in the upper west 40's, right down the street from the theater where i saw James Baldwin's, "Blues for Mr. Charley" about six times!

[AllenLowe]

sounds like a different place - he was at Jimmy's in the early to mid-1970s -

[ValerieB]

sounds like a different place - he was at Jimmy's in the early to mid-1970s -

guess so as this was the early to mid-1960s. i just remembered a night in the middle of a blizzard that my friend, Charlie Mariano and i went to this bar as a refuge from the storm.