Barry Harris RIP

[JSngry]

26 minutes ago, John L said:

It feels like the end of an era.    

That will be when Sonny goes....god forbid that's not within the next 100 years...

[gmonahan]

A pianist who could be counted on to make any session he was on outstanding. His recordings with Sonny Stitt are still among my favorites of all time. He lived long and very, very well. RIP.

 

 

gregmo

[Big Al]

So long, Barry. And thanks.

[mhatta]

RIP.  Barry visited Japan several times until recently and played and taught, always great.  "Live at Dug" (a live recording at a Jazz café in Tokyo) is one of my favorites, even it had a not-so-good drummer.

I don't think it's wrong to call Barry Harris a follower (or even copycat) of Bud Powell, but it's interesting that Barry doesn't sound like Bud (and Bud doesn't sound like Barry, either); Barry owes a lot to Bud stylistically, but always sounded authentic and original.  For me, this is one of the mysteries of jazz.

[Shrdlu]

Sad news.

A favorite track is "One Down", with Elvin, on the "Preminado" album, recorded February 19, 1961.

 

[Gheorghe]

Isn´t this shortly before his Birthday ? I think he was born in the middle of december like me.....

Such a great pianist. 

Sorry I never saw him live. I saw so many greats but it seems that Mr. Harris was not so much touring in Austria. 

One of the rarest recordings I have is an encounter with Bud Powell from late 1964 when Barry plays some of Bud´s tunes and they discuss the music, at Nica´s place. 
If I remember right, Barry does Un Poco Loco, Darn that Dream etc. Then Bud plays "Somebody loves me" with stride piano....

[Shrdlu]

Er war ausgezeichnet.

[Larry Kart]

9 hours ago, mhatta said:

RIP.  Barry visited Japan several times until recently and played and taught, always great.  "Live at Dug" (a live recording at a Jazz café in Tokyo) is one of my favorites, even it had a not-so-good drummer.

I don't think it's wrong to call Barry Harris a follower (or even copycat) of Bud Powell, but it's interesting that Barry doesn't sound like Bud (and Bud doesn't sound like Barry, either); Barry owes a lot to Bud stylistically, but always sounded authentic and original.  For me, this is one of the mysteries of jazz.

I would say that the main difference is that Barry's touch was a good deal more dulcet, if you will, than was Bud's. That extended as well to the relative vigor and angularity of their accenting.

[Gheorghe]

3 hours ago, Shrdlu said:

Er war ausgezeichnet.

Das kannst Du laut sagen 

[Pim]

Rip mr Harris

[Larry Kart]

Back in 1979 I spent a delightful evening in a Rush St. Chicago restaurant, The Singapore (great spare ribs), with Harris and Eddie Jefferson (sadly this was a  short while before Jefferson would be murdered in Detroit). We were waiting for Dan Morgenstern and Ira Gitler to join us, but they'd been delayed by a gas main explosion), so to pass the time Barry and Eddie kept regaling me with one great story after another. Don'r recall any of them at this distance in time, though. When Dan and Ira arrived, the fun continued.

[romualdo]

What a master he was

I was lucky enough to see his trio perform at the VV in NYC in 2017 (September) plus the added bonus of a scatting chorus by Lee Konitz who was seated near us in the audience.

Very special night indeed.

[Quasimado]

RIP Barry - thanks for the beautiful, meaningful, swinging jazz ....

[Kevin Bresnahan]

RIP to a master. End of an era for sure. Not too many left who have played with so many Jazz greats.

In looking through his discography, I am surprised at how many sessions I have with him at the piano. His funky piano on the title track of Lee Morgan's "The Sidewinder" would probably be my favorite recording of his.

I did see Harris live at least once but I just can't remember where/when it was. It was probably during one of my trips to New York in the late 90's.

Harris' "Luminescence!" is probably my favorite of his leader dates. It has a killer band - Slide Hampton, trombone; Junior Cook, tenor; Pepper Adams, bari; Bob Cranshaw, bass; & Lenny McBrowne, drums.

[Mark Stryker]

For folks interested, I created an annotated Barry Harris playlist. 

https://ethaniverson.com/2021/12/10/mark-strykers-barry-harris-playlist/

[Quasimado]

Thanks for that, Mark - hours of enjoyment ahead.

[AllenLowe]

this was a shocker, old as he was. I talked to him in September and he was doing well, but 91 is 91....

Barry was my first musician friend when I lived in NYC in the '70s. Just a great man, humanitarian, musician, et al.

[kh1958]

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/09/arts/music/barry-harris-dead.html

[BFrank]

Things I didn’t know about him [from the NYT Obit]:

In 1960, at 30, he was finally persuaded by the saxophonist Cannonball Adderley to join the tide of Detroit musicians who had moved to New York. He continued living in the metropolitan area for the rest of his life, teaching and performing almost nonstop and appearing on albums like the trumpeter Lee Morgan’s 1964 hit “The Sidewinder.”

Not long after arriving, he became friends with Pannonica de Koenigswarter, the heiress and musicians’ advocate known as the jazz baroness, and she invited him to take up residence at her sprawling home in Weehawken, N.J., overlooking Manhattan and teeming with scores of cats. (Ms. de Koenigswarter arranged for Mr. Harris to stay in the house after she died; he continued living there for the rest of his life.)

In 1972, Thelonious Monk moved in, and he stayed until his death 10 years later. So Mr. Harris carried on at the elbow of a fellow master, trading information and further soaking up his language. The Monk songbook remained a pillar of Mr. Harris’s repertoire throughout his life; perhaps thanks in part to his time spent living with Monk, his playing grew both more lyrical and more tautly rhythmic as he got older.

[mikeweil]

On 10.12.2021 at 3:31 PM, bresna said:

In looking through his discography, I am surprised at how many sessions I have with him at the piano. His funky piano on the title track of Lee Morgan's "The Sidewinder" would probably be my favorite recording of his.

Same here. That Sidewinder solo is a classic. And the way he reacts to Dexter Gordon's super laid back phrasing on one Blue Note album is another favourite. He was pure bebop, sure, but so adaptable at the same time.

[Brad]

On 12/10/2021 at 1:02 PM, Mark Stryker said:

For folks interested, I created an annotated Barry Harris playlist. 

https://ethaniverson.com/2021/12/10/mark-strykers-barry-harris-playlist/

That was pretty terrific.

WKCR ran a 12 hour memorial broadcast yesterday.  I listened to a good part of it and they played selections from First Time Ever and Live at Dugs, which were unknown to me. They also played a 1975 interview with Phil Schaap, recorded during a Coleman Hawkins birthday broadcast. Lost a lot of greats this year. 

[aparxa]

Sad news, thank you for the music!

[Shrdlu]

Thanks for posting that, BFrank. The Slimes wants money before you can read their stuff. Gotta be joking.

[Al in NYC]

I've been out in rural Ontario for the past couple of weeks, so I'm just now catching up on this sad news.  Oddly, just before I went out there I was back in Detroit for a few days in November and had a conversation with a friend of mine about, among other things, Barry Harris.  We talked about our favorite recordings of his (Magnificent! is my choice) and our experiences seeing him play, especially his annual Kwanzaa benefit concerts in Detroit and his luminous 2014 performance at the Detroit Jazz Festival.  Then my friend told me of a memorable night he spent in the early 2000s with his friend, the late Detroit pianist Bess Bonnier, which ended up at Barry's Detroit house at 2 AM. Great food and drink were provided by Barry's wife and daughter, while Barry and Bess sat at the piano trading songs, lines, tricks, and old war stories of the Detroit jazz scene of the 1950s until the sun was high in the sky.

As many here have said, Barry's death represents the winding down of so many threads in jazz history, especially bebop and the direct Bird and Bud lineage.  For as much as Barry Harris was one of the great flame-keepers of the music here in NYC, for us Detroiters and ex-Detroiters his passing also represents the sun now setting quickly on the most fecund and vital period in the city's jazz, and musical, history.

Edited December 17, 2021 by Al in NYC

[Brad]

Remembrance by Charles McPherson in JazzTimes.

Charles McPherson Remembers Barry Harris