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Joe Harriott | |
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| Born | Joseph Arthurlin Harriott (1928-07-15)15 July 1928 |
| Died | 2 January 1973(1973-01-02) (aged 44) Southampton, England |
| Burial place | Bitterne,Southampton |
| Occupations | Jazz musician and composer |
Joseph Arthurlin Harriott (15 July 1928 – 2 January 1973)[1] was a Jamaicanjazz musician and composer, whose principal instrument was the alto saxophone. According to George McKay inCircular Breathing: The Cultural Politics of Jazz in Britain, Harriott was 'responsible for a series of brilliant experiments in new music in Britain through the 1960s'. His work was 'crucial' in two areas of innovation: free music and then global music fusion.[2]
Initially abebopper, he became a pioneer offree-form jazz. Born inKingston, Harriott moved to the United Kingdom as a working musician in 1951 and lived in the country for the rest of his life. He was part of a wave ofCaribbean jazz musicians who arrived in Britain during the 1950s, includingDizzy Reece,Harold McNair,Harry Beckett andWilton Gaynair.
Born inKingston, Jamaica,[1] Harriott was educated atAlpha Boys School, an orphanage in the city. At Alpha he learned to play the clarinet, the instrument that was assigned to him shortly before his tenth birthday.[3] He took up the baritone and tenor saxophone while performing with local dance bands, before settling on the alto saxophone.[4] Harriott arrived in London in the summer of 1951, aged 23, as a member of Ossie Da Costa's band.British subjects did not require work permits or immigration visasat that time. When the band had completed their tour, Harriott decided to stay in London.[1] He caught the attention of London's jazz scene while sitting in at theFeldman Club onOxford Street on 26 August 1951.
Like the majority of alto players of his generation, he was deeply influenced byCharlie Parker. Harriott developed a style that fused Parker with his own Jamaican musical sensibility - most notably themento andcalypso music he grew up with. Even in his later experiments, Harriott's roots were always audible. However, it was his mastery of bebop that gained him immediate kudos within the British jazz scene upon his arrival in London.
During the 1950s, he had two long spells with drummerTony Kinsey's band, punctuated by membership ofRonnie Scott's short-lived big band,[1] occasional spells leading his own quartet and working in the quartets of drummersPhil Seamen andAllan Ganley. Harriott began recording under his own name in 1954, releasing a handful of EPs forColumbia,Pye/Nixa andMelodisc throughout the 1950s. However, the majority of his 1950s recordings were as a sideman with the musicians previously mentioned, also backing a diverse array of performers, from mainstream vocalistLita Roza, to traditional trombonistGeorge Chisholm, to the West African sounds of Buddy Pipp's Highlifers. Harriott also appeared alongside visiting American musicians during this period, including a "guest artist" slot on theModern Jazz Quartet's 1959 UK tour. He formed his own quintet in 1958, and their style of hard-swinging bebop was noticed in the United States, leading to the release of theSouthern Horizons andFree Form albums on the AmericanJazzland label.[1]
On August 3, 1963, the Joe Harriott Quintet featuringMike Falana was appearing at the Marquee in Oxford Street.[5]
By now firmly established as a bebop soloist, in 1960 Harriott turned to what he termed "abstract" or "free-form" music. He had some loose free-form ideas by the mid-1950s, but finally settled upon his conception in 1959, after a protracted spell in hospital withtuberculosis.[1] At first he struggled to recruit other like-minded musicians to his vision. Indeed, two of his core band members,Harry South andHank Shaw, left when these ideas surfaced. He finally settled on a line-up ofShake Keane (trumpet,flugelhorn),Pat Smythe (piano),Coleridge Goode (bass) andPhil Seamen (drums).[1]Les Condon temporarily replaced Keane on trumpet in 1961, while Seamen left permanently the same year, his place taken by the return of the quintet's previous drummer,Bobby Orr.Frank Holder toured with Harriott and contributed to recording projects during this period.
Harriott's free-form music is often compared toOrnette Coleman's roughly contemporary breakthrough in the United States, but even cursory listening reveals deep divisions between their conceptions of "free jazz". In fact, there were several distinctive models of early free jazz, fromCecil Taylor toSun Ra. Harriott's was another of these. His method demanded more complete group improvisation than displayed in Coleman's music, and often featured no particular soloist. Instead of the steady pulse of Ornette's drummer and bass player, Harriott's model demanded constant dialogue between musicians, which created an ever-shifting soundscape. Tempo, key and meter always free to alter in this music, and often did so. The presence ofBill Evans-inspired Scottish pianist Pat Smythe also gave the band a completely different texture to Coleman's, which had dispensed with the need for a pianist early on. Indeed, Smythe captured the radical potential of the band in 1960, with his observation that 'If it clashes, well, that's part of it'.[6] Harriott's own playing style underwent some changes during this period, dispensing with orthodox bebop lines in favour of more angular, cut up phrasing. What remained however, was his lyricism, searing tone and sense of attack.
Harriott was always keen to communicate his ideas, be it on stage, in interviews or album liner notes. In 1962, he wrote in the liner notes for hisAbstract album, "of the various components comprising jazz today - constant time signatures, a steady four-four tempo, themes and predictable harmonic variations, fixed division of the chorus by bar lines and so on, we aim to retain at least one in each piece. But we may well, if the mood seems to us to demand it, dispense with all the others".[1]
He recorded three albums in this vein:Free Form (Jazzland, 1960),Abstract (Columbia (UK), 1962) andMovement (Columbia (UK), 1963).[1]Abstract received a five-star review fromHarvey Pekar inDownBeat, the first such honour for a British Jazz record.Free Form andAbstract together formed a perfect pair of cohesive, trailblazing free jazz sessions. The next album,Movement, featured some of his most fiercely abstract compositions, but these were tempered by some other, morestraight-ahead pieces.
Harriott's free-form compositions normally formed only a portion of live gigs. Indeed, the final album recorded by the quintet, 1964'sHigh Spirits (Columbia), was a straight-ahead jazz interpretation of compositions from the musical of that name, which was based on theNoël Coward playBlithe Spirit.[7] However, the continuing hostility of the older British jazz establishment to free form, and the drying up of recording and performance opportunities, saw Harriott's quintet cease to be sustainable in the changing musical climate of mid-1960s Britain.[1] The quintet effectively broke up when Shake Keane moved to Germany in 1965. From this point onwards, Harriott worked freelance on a number of projects.
He made several albums and EPs with pianist/composerMichael Garrick in the mid-1960s, notablyPromises,October Woman andBlack Marigolds.[1] The latter two were reissued byDutton Vocalion on CD in 2005, and Garrick'sPoetry and Jazz In Concert albums (which also featured Harriott) were released on CD by the same label in 2006. Another notable recording as a sideman was with the bluesmanSonny Boy Williamson II, on an April 1965 session that also featuredJimmy Page andBrian Auger.[8]
During the late 1960s he and violinistJohn Mayer developedIndo-Jazz Fusion - an early attempt at building on music from diverse traditions.[1] This involved a "double quintet" of five Indian and five jazz musicians playing together on a number of compositions largely conceived by Mayer.[1] Opinion is divided on the success of these experiments. At their best, they offered a new and unique fusion of styles, but at times one can also detect a restriction on the freedom of the jazzmen to improvise. Three albums resulted from the collaboration with Mayer:Indo-Jazz Suite (Atlantic, 1966),Indo-Jazz Fusions Volumes I and II (Columbia (UK), 1967 and 1968).[1]
Two other Harriott albums appeared in 1967 and 1968. The first,Swings High (Melodisc), was a strangely retrospective-sounding, but outstanding bebop record featuring old cohorts Seamen, Goode and Smythe; 1968'sPersonal Portrait (Columbia) was a mixed bag of jazz with strings and some affecting work with old bandmate Smythe andStan Tracey.
In 1969, Harriott recorded the albumHum-Dono in collaboration with the Goan guitaristAmancio D'Silva. This was an unqualified success. Also featuring trumpeterIan Carr and vocalistNorma Winstone, this album presented a more subtle and fluid mix of Harriott's signature alto sound, with D'Silva's unique Indo-bebop guitar style.
Also in 1969, Harriott made an appearance at Stan Tracey'sDuke Ellington tribute concert, which was also released as the albumWe Love You Madly on Columbia. Harriott contributed a moving solo on "In a Sentimental Mood" that was captured for posterity by TV cameras, thus leaving the only existing footage of him in performance. He also made an important contribution to composerLaurie Johnson's 1970 LP,Synthesis (also Columbia).
Harriott's work in 1969 was to be the last substantial performances of his career. While he continued to play around Britain wherever he was welcome, no further recording opportunities arose.[1] He was virtually destitute in his last years, and ravaged by illness.[1] He died of cancer on 2 January 1973,[1] and is buried inBitterne churchyard, inSouthampton. On his gravestone, his own oft-quoted words provide his epitaph: "Parker? There's them over here can play a few aces too."
Since his death, Harriott's often overlooked contribution to the birth of free jazz has gradually been recognised. While he influenced important European free jazz pioneers such asJohn Stevens,Evan Parker andAlbert Mangelsdorff, in the States his profile and influence was much smaller, despite the admiration of such figures asCharles Mingus. He also suffered mightily from lazy journalistic comparisons with Ornette Coleman, but more recently his originality has been recognised across the globe. American saxophonistKen Vandermark's CD of Harriott free-form compositions, entitledStraight Lines, has introduced his music to another generation of free jazz fans. British players such asCourtney Pine,Gary Crosby and more recentlySoweto Kinch have also acknowledged his influence and played his music on stage.[9] An important biography by Alan Robertson,[10][11] as well as the publication of Coleridge Goode's poignant reminiscences of him,[12][13] have helped to make Harriott's story more widely known.
Harriott's profile has also been helped by CD reissues of his most important albums, notablyFree Form,Abstract,Movement andHum-Dono, but other key albums have yet to be reissued. In recent years, other recordings of Harriott in his prime have surfaced.Michael Garrick has compiled and released a CD on his own Jazz Academy label, entitledGenius. This consists of some early 1960s live performances and home recordings made with a pianist friend, William Haig-Joyce. In 2006, a 1963 live recording made at a small club inLeicester was unearthed and issued on CD, entitledLive At Harry's. In early 2007, many of his hard-to-find mid-1950s sessions, both as leader and sideman, were made available on the 2-CD compilationKiller Joe.
A four-CD set entitledThe Joe Harriott Story (Proper Box) was issued in 2011.[14]
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