Eddie Harris: Part 1

The acoustic Vee-Jay years...

The recent passing of Les McCann cast my memory back to 1993. Not long before I left California for Chicago, my girlfriend at the time and I went to see him and Eddie Harris at the Kuumbwa Jazz Center in Santa Cruz. We had great seats right up front by the piano. During the show, McCann kept flirting with my girlfriend. After the show, he invited us backstage. Well, maybe he just invited her, and I followed them.

He sat down and right after he asked my girlfriend her name, he asked her, “Who’s your favorite drummer?” An odd question, I thought, right off the bat. It seemed to me that he was sizing her up. She thought for a few seconds and told him, “Billy Higgins.” That was a really good call.

Now, during the years I was in California, Frank Morgan had recently gotten out of San Quentin and was playing a lot in the South Bay. We’d go see him whenever he was playing - sometimes at unlikely places, like a Holiday Inn. There might be twenty people there. You can read more about Frank Morgan here:

Frank Morgan and me

During that time, Morgan always played with the Cedar Walton Trio, with Tony Dumas on bass, and Billy Higgins on drums - so she knew a lot about Billy Higgins. What she didn’t know was that Billy Higgins was also one of McCann’s favorite drummers and had played a lot with Eddie Harris during his years with Atlantic Records.

She passed his test and for the next half hour, right in front of me, Les McCann tried to steal my girlfriend. He didn’t talk to me. I just stood back and listened, which was fine. Eddie Harris, one of my favorite tenors, was right there next to Les, breaking down his horns. He had a big smile and laughed at Les. This surprised me. My only impression of Harris came from the cover of his Excursions album - wearing that long, black leather jacket. He looked like a gangster, with a Tommy Gun in the briefcase:

But he was quiet, funny, and playful, not gangster-like at all. I’ll never forget that scene: Les talking and carrying on; my girlfriend digging the attention; Eddie just taking it all in like he’d seen that movie before; and me -- invisible. Finally, Les asked my girlfriend if she’d like to go out later. Luckily, I guess, my girlfriend bid him farewell and that was the end of that. The funny thing is she dumped me a few months later, so maybe Les knew something I didn’t.

That was the only time I got the chance to see Eddie Harris. Nearly three years later he tragically died of congestive heart failure in Los Angeles on November 5, 1996. He was 62 years old. On that day we lost one of the truly great American jazz musicians.

Over the next two weeks, on that Big River called Jazz, we’ll journey into the world of Eddie Harris, first through his early acoustic Vee-Jay years and next week through his later electric Atlantic years.

---

Eddie Harris grew up in Chicago. His mother was from New Orleans and his father was from Cuba. His father died when he was young, and he was raised by his mother. Slowly he became interested in music. As a teenager, he started to hang with local South Side musicians Richard Abrams, Don Garrett, Walter Perkins, Charles Stepney, and Bill Lee (Spike Lee’s dad), who were all on the same wavelength and trying new things.

Harris got his first professional gig playing piano with Gene Ammons at the Pershing Ballroom. He soon got together a band with Stepney, Perkins, and Lee playing opposite Ahmad Jamal. Then he was drafted and went to Europe to play in the 7th U.S. Army Band, where he met and played with Cedar Walton. After the service, he went to New York but didn’t like that scene and returned to Chicago, where he recorded his debut as a leader, Exodus To Jazz. In a 1994 interview with Ted Panken on WKCR radio, Harris talked about that hit record:

I just went back to Chicago. And what happened? That’s how I made “Exodus”. I was scheduled to go back to Europe and play, because Quincy Jones was going to hire me to take a guy’s place named Oliver Nelson, and he had me to play with him when I was over in Europe with his band. He said, “Man, I’m happy to run into you. You can go back to Europe with me.” I said, “Okay.”

I stopped by to see my mother, and she asked me what was I doing, and I said, “I’m going back over to Europe with a guy named Quincy Jones.” She started crying. She just made a big issue out of this. I said, “What’s wrong? What’s wrong?” She said, “I understood you was going to make a record.” I said, “Oh yeah, I can do that when I come back.” She said, “It’s a shame. I’m ashamed to tell people that you play music. Because everybody’s made a record but you.” I said, “I don’t care nothin’ about that. I’m working. I’m playing.” She said, “Well, you ought to make this one record, because Vee-Jay asked you to make a record.” But they’d asked me to record on piano, because they wanted me to sound like the guy down the street at Cadet Records which I used to show chords to. But this guy had the Gentlemen of Jazz, this Ramsey Lewis, and that was selling. So they wanted me to do that down the street at Vee-Jay. And I wasn’t particular about that, so I didn’t care nothing about making a record. But my mother said, “Oh, please make this one record, then you can go to Europe, Asia, anywhere.” I said, “But won’t nobody want me then if I stay here and make the record.”

So I went down to Chess, and I talked with them, and they said, “Well, we don’t want you to play the saxophone; you’re too weird.” And I told him where to go. Well, there was a guy named Sid McCoy, and a guy named Abner, who ran the company… It was actually Vivian and Jimmy’s company, V-J, and Abner was the president, and Sid McCoy was the A&R, artists and repertoire guy. Abner, who had gone down there to college with me, said, “I’ll tell you what. I’ll let you play several numbers on saxophone.” I said, “Okay, that’s fair enough.” I told Quincy that. He said, “One record?! Oh, man.” And to this day, when he thinks about it, he says, “One record” — because that one record turned out to be “Exodus.” Isn’t that amazing? A million-seller.

Exodus To Jazz was recorded in Chicago and released in 1961:

From that album here is Harris’ composition W.P.:

Interestingly, the year before, Vee-Jay Records released Wayne Shorter’s debut album, Introducing Wayne Shorter:

One of the sidemen on Harris’ Exodus To Jazz was guitarist Joe Diorio. His story is a more common story among jazz musicians - the top-flight journeyman artist that few ever hear of.

Joe Diorio came to Chicago after playing in some local bands in his native Connecticut. He immersed himself in Chicago’s jazz scene and ended up playing with Eddie Harris and recording on many of his Vee-Jay dates.

In the late 1960s, Diorio moved to Miami to join Ira Sullivan’s quartet, where he recorded Ira Sullivan, a 1976 Horizon release that included Jaco Pastorius, who along with Pat Metheny at the time was teaching at the University of Miami. Later, Diorio moved to Los Angeles to teach first at the new Guitar Institute of Technology and then at USC’s Thornton School of Music. In 1989 he released an interesting album with Robben Ford called Minor Elegance, released on MGI Records, a German jazz label connected with the Münchener Gitarren-Institut (Munich Guitar Institute).

---

Of all of Harris’ Vee-Jay releases, Jazz for “Breakfast At Tiffany’s” is the most interesting. It features Harris’ jazz interpretation of Henry Mancini’s movie score. This was his third album on Vee-Jay, and what I find most intriguing is for this session he added seminal musicians Donald Garrett and Charles Stepney.

From that album here is Mr. Yunioshi:

Check out the bass on that track. That’s Harris’ old friend Donald Garrett, who a few years later moved to San Francisco and met Zusaan Kali Fasteau. Together they formed The Sea Ensemble. You can read more about Garrett and The Sea Ensemble here:

The Sea Ensemble

Also, playing vibes on that album is another of Harris’ old friends Charles Stepney, who in the mid-1950s got his start in music by studying piano and vibes at Wilson Junior College in Chicago. After college, he gigged with Harris before recording on Jazz for "Breakfast at Tiffany's". However, by 1967, Stepney had nearly given up on music. In a 1970 interview with DownBeat magazine, he said, “I was broke and convinced I would never make it in this field. Maybe I ought to try being a shoe salesman or bookkeeper or something.” On the day he was going to drop off his instruments to a potential buyer, Marshall Chess, the son of the founder Chess Records, asked him to take on an ambitious project that led to forming the psychedelic soul group Rotary Connection. Here’s their first album released on the Cadet Concept label, a subsidiary of Chess Records and managed by Marshall Chess:

This album provides the Chicago take on the California 5th Dimension and Broadway Hair feel so in vogue at the time. I find this first Rotary Connection release interesting for Marshall Chess playing the theremin on Lady Lane and Chess receptionist Minnie Riperton’s vocal debut.

The album was a unique and surprising success; however, my favorite of the group’s six releases is their last, Hey, Love from 1971, which predicts the sounds Stepney would later help bring to Earth, Wind & Fire albums. For example, I find the beginning of Hey, Love’s Love Is foreshadows Getaway from Earth, Wind & Fire’s 1976 album Spirit.

For Stepney, Rotary Connection was the start of an amazing career as an arranger and record producer. Over the next nine years, he produced hits by Muddy Waters, Ramsey Lewis, The Dells, Deniece Williams, and most of all Earth, Wind, & Fire - That’s the Way of the World and Gratitude both went triple-platinum in 1975. To this day, Gratitude is still one of my favorite albums. We’ll take up Earth, Wind & Fire a little further on our journey. Tragically, while Stepney was planning to work with Michael Jackson and Barbara Streisand, he suffered a heart attack that took his life on May 17, 1976. He was only 45 years old.

Here’s one more for the road. I first heard Eddie Harris’ Vee-Jay music not on the originals but rather on a used 1975 double LP compilation put out by GNP Crescendo called Black Sax:

As I look at that album now, I put a checkmark by Velocity. I must have liked it then, and I still do when I want to hear some nice vintage Eddie Harris:

In his first year with Vee-Jay Records, Eddie Harris released three albums and seven over three years. Often overlooked by jazz purists, I find Eddie Harris’ Vee-Jay releases all high-quality jazz, albeit lo-fi recordings. The strength of these albums convinced Columbia Records to sign Harris; however, Harris didn’t hit his stride again until signing with Atlantic Records and going electric.

Next week, on that Big River called Jazz, we’ll dig our paddles in and explore the world of Eddie Harris’ Atlantic releases.

Please hit this link to buy me a cup of coffee, if you’d like to show your guide some appreciation for this and past journeys. Know in advance that I thank you for your kindness and support.

If you like what you’ve been reading and hearing so far on our journey and would like to share this with someone you think might be interested in learning more about our great American art form: Jazz, just hit the “Share” button.

From Astaire to Sun Ra: A Jazz Journey is a reader-supported publication. If you feel inclined, subscribe to my journey by hitting the “Subscribe now” button.

Also, find my playlist on Spotify: From Fred Astaire to Sun Ra.

Feel free to contact me at any time to talk shop. I welcome and encourage that.

Until then, keep on walking….