I remember when the movie Sharkey’s Machine came out in the early 1980s:
I know, it’s Burt Reynolds, but it’s sneaky good - a modern film noir with noticeable similarity to Otto Preminger’s 1944 film noir Laura, starring Gene Tierney and Dana Andrews.
The film featured the hit song also titled Laura, composed by David Raksin. The tune was inspired by a "Dear John" letter he received from his wife during filming. Johnny Mercer later added the lyrics and it became a jazz standard recorded by pretty much everyone.
I think I saw Sharkey’s Machine in about 1984. I rented it, back when you could rent movies from places like Blockbuster. I’d read somewhere that the movie’s soundtrack was packed with some jazz greats, and two songs did catch my ear. The first was Chet Baker singing My Funny Valentine, which was the start of my lifelong affair with West Coast Jazz. You can read more about that here:
The second was an instrumental called Sharkey’s Theme, played by Eddie Harris. That was probably the first time Harris’s music entered my orbit. At about the same time, while listening to Herb Wong or Bob Perlocha’s radio show on the East Bay’s KJAZ, I heard Cold Duck, from Harris and McCann’s classic 1969 Swiss Movement- Live at The Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland:
I remember thinking, “Oh yeah, there’s Eddie Harris again.” So I went down to the used record store in Pacific Grove and bought my first Eddie Harris album, Excursions:
Released in 1973 by Atlantic Records, this double LP is very interesting. It’s a strange mix of outtakes from the earlier New York Atlantic sessions The Tender Storm (1966) and The Electrifying Eddie Harris (1968) with a new Chicago session that included Muhal Richard Abrams. The odd thing is I’ve always liked the outtakes better than the songs Atlantic released on the original albums. It seems to me that Harris and his band cut loose and pushed the envelope on the outtakes. But why did they finally decide to include the outtakes with the 1973 sessions? I suspect the answer is that by the early 1970s, the folks at Atlantic finally let Eddie Harris produce his records. And the results were, you know, electric.
This week on that Big River called Jazz, we use those outtakes released on Excursions to introduce Eddie Harris’s early Atlantic albums.
After recording with Vee-Jay Records, Eddie Harris signed a contract with Columbia Records. Unfortunately, none of his Columbia records met critical and commercial acclaim. So in 1965, he signed with Atlantic Records and went into the studio in August of 1965 with the Cedar Walton Trio with Ron Carter on bass and Billy Higgins on drums. Trumpeter Ray Codrington added trumpet on three tracks. The album was released in 1966 as The In Sound and followed the same formula used on his first Vee-Jay releases - an interpretation of a movie theme. In this case, it was the Love Theme from “The Sandpiper” (Shadow of Your Smile).
However, this album also included the Harris composition Freedom Jazz Dance, a song that Ron Carter shared with Miles Davis, who with his second quintet turned it into a hit on his 1967 Miles Smiles. In a 1994 interview with DownBeat, Harris explains how that happened, “Ron Carter came over to him. He came by and offered Ron more money while I was working at the Five Spot for a month. And I said, ‘Ron, you should take it. It’s more money.’ And he took the tune over there, because we were playing it at the Five-Spot, and the rest is history. Miles recorded it, and all of a sudden I was hip.”
Harris’s second Atlantic release was The Tender Storm, which also came out in 1966:
It was at this session that Harris first introduced the possibilities of electronics for a more innovative approach to his sound, specifically experimenting with Selmer’s Varitone amplified saxophone.
Once again, Harris brought to the studio the Cedar Walton trio, except Bobby Thomas took over for Billy Higgins on drums for all but one of the songs. All six songs on the album are covers, recorded at sessions in the spring and fall of 1966. During the spring session, Harris also recorded two original compositions that were left off the original release: Recess and Hey Wado. I find both originals superior to the covers. Here is Hey Wado, released later on Excursions:
Harris’s third Atlantic album was recorded in March 1967 and released in 1968 as The Electrifying Eddie Harris.
This album marked Harris’s transformation into jazz-rock fusion. Many consider this one of his best albums, perhaps because it has his mega-hit Listen Here. This session features an entirely new band with Harris’s Chicago friend Jodie Christian on piano, Melvin Jackson on bass, and Richard Smith on drums. This release marks a significant change to the earlier Atlantic releases - no covers. All the songs are Harris originals, except the first track Theme in Search of a Movie by Charles Stepney, and Judie’s Time by Melvin Jackson. This was a commercially successful album and earned Harris a 1968 Grammy Award nomination for Best Instrumental Jazz Performance for Small Group or Soloist with Small Group.
This time, four songs from the session were not issued on the original release but later included on Excursions: Of Age, Aleph the Fool, I’m Lonely, and Oleo. And once again, I find these four songs better than those released on the album - every bit as good as Listen Here. I like Christian’s more wide open piano on, for example, Muhal Richard Abram’s song Aleph The Fool:
Harris went on to release ten more albums for Atlantic before Excursions came out in 1973. Of those ten, two are particular favorites of mine: Silver Cycles (1969) and Free Speech (1970). Christian plays piano on both and contributes to some nice funky jazz classics. For example, from Free Speech, here is Wait Please:
Besides all the old outtakes, Excursions also includes a new session with Abrams recorded at Brunswick Recording Studios in Chicago. This makes me wonder if Harris’s intent all along was an old-with-the-new ordeal. I think so. He knew they were there and had the freedom to show them the light they deserved.
As good as those outtakes are, my favorite Harris song comes from the 1973 session, Fragmentary Apparitions. That song caught my ear the first time I played it. Harris and his old AACM friend Frank Gordon on trumpet play a nice mix of inside and outside. At the time, Gordon was a member of the Chicago-based group The Awakening and making music with Black Jazz Records in Oakland. You can read more about Black Jazz Records here:
Harris and Gordon are joined by Chicagoan Billy Howell on trombone, Larry Nash on electric piano, Rufus Reid on bass, and Leon “Ndugu” Chandler. All are in excellent form - this must have been a working band at the time of the sessions. Here is Fragmentary Apparitions:
I should add that the best way to hear this song is on the original vinyl with headphones. The level of musicianship and soaring beauty of this song is amazing. Even now when I listen to it my heart sings, forty years after I heard it for the first time.
Here’s one more for the road. It was with Atlantic that Harris hit his stride; however, after recording his last album with them in 1977, he continued to record many more fine albums with many different labels. To name just one, a favorite is Steps Up with the underrated Spanish pianist Tete Montoliu, released in 1981 on the SteepleChase label.
From that album, here is Blues at SteepleChase:
Eddie Harris hit the big time with Vee-Jay’s Exodus to Jazz, but it was with Atlantic and albums like Excursions that he made a name for himself as an innovator. That’s what I like most about Eddie Harris. He subverted the traditional role of his instrument, experimenting with an electric saxophone fitted with different mouthpieces and attachments. He even invented a reed mouthpiece for the trombone, trumpet, and coronet which made them a lot easier to play. In a DownBeat interview, he said, “I’m an experimentalist. I like to get into new things to break new ground. My mind is always probing for different things and different sounds. I’ve never been one to let my mind stagnate… If I didn’t experiment with music, it would mean nothing to me.”
Next week, on that Big River called Jazz, we’ll dig our paddles in and explore the world of Idris Ackamoor and The Pyramids.
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Thanks for introducing me to Eddie Harris. I found Exodus to Jazz, For Birds and Bags & The Real Electrifying Eddie Harris on Bandcamp. Soon I'll no doubt be looking for physical copies. I liked the mention of Sharkey's Machine. I have a very serious addiction to film noir & neo-noir. My favorite neo-noir is Thief, starring James Caan. I don't know if you are a fan of Tangerine Dream, but they did the soundtrack for Thief. It's my favorite soundtrack. Thanks for sharing another great article. PS- today is Henry Threadgill's 80th birthday.
I’ve never been a big Eddie Harris fan, but your essays always get me to open my ears a little more.