“The music business does not quite know what to do with me. They accept me because I’m supposed to be a jazz musician. ‘I’m a musician’s musician.’ Consequently, I’m not supposed to be doing the things I’m doing. I can’t play funky, I’m not supposed to be talking, singing, and smiling up on the bandstand. I’m supposed to look serious and uptight with the world. Well, I play music for enjoyment. I’m up there to have a good time. ” There seemed to be no “bag” big enough to contain Eddie Harris, who — while going deeper into an R&B vein with albums like Eddie Harris Sings the Blues, I Need Some Money and Bad Luck Is All I Have — always managed to include some mainstream jazz on his records. And yet in recent years he has been plagued by the “funk player” label that has grown with albums like That Is Why You’re Overweight, How Can You Live Like That? and I’m Tired of Driving, which some critics have called “commercial dross.” After the first show at Delevan’s, Eddie Harris was congratulated by a fan in the back hallway. “I really enjoyed your show,” the young man said. “I have a bunch of your records, and I was kinda hoping you’d play that “Is It In?” tonight...” “I don’t play funk anymore, " Harris replied. “I’ve been trying to get away from that for more than EDDIE HARRIS CAN PLA Y ANYTHING U J 1 lo o s e n up, befree andyou canplay anything... you don’t have to get caught up in images.... Images limit the degree to which a person can go outside, step out beyond the norm. I f you keep your selfimagefree, you can get into anything you want. ” By Lynn Darroch Drawing by Susan Gustavson Z >n Tuesday, May 18, it was still light outside the big windows behind the v / bandstand at Delevan’s when Eddie Harris walked on unannounced to begin the first set of a three-day engagement. The bar was only half-full as he unceremoniously launched the first tune, a swinging, straight-ahead number around which the Ron Steen Trio (with George Mitchell on piano, Phil Baker on bass and Ron Steen on drums) could finely tune their sound. Harris stood solidly, silhouetted by the last light from the windows, his cheeks sagging. His expression was deadpan and immobile except for the taut muscles around his lips and the curious eyes that roamed through and assessed the crowd. Physically, Eddie Harris looks much the same today as he did in photos from the mid-60s: the same sloping shoulders, high forehead, and lower jaw jutting out to support his bite on the mouthpiece. He assembles his stocky body behind the tenor to deliver a distinctively sharp, slightly metallic sound that could belong only to him.... Yet from that unchanging platform of personal style that gives every performer his or her own recognizable stamp, Eddie Harris has followed his curiosity through one of the most varied and innovative careers in contemporary jazz. “I’m an experimentalist... I like to get into new things, to break new ground. My mind is always probing for different sounds.... You’ve got to keep growing.... If I didn’t experiment with music, it would mean nothing to me. I would go into another field, because experimenting is what it’s all about.” #<orn in Chicago in 1936, Harris’ JL^first instrument was the piano. As a youth he sang with choirs and gospel groups, played the vibes, and studied clarinet and tenor sax. After a hitch with the U.S. Army Symphony in Europe in the late 1950s, he made his first record for the Vee Jay label, a jazz version of the movie theme, “Exodus,” the first jazz single to sell over a million copies; he’s made over fifty albums since. While still in Chicago, he led small groups and composed, arranged and played for the Experimental Band, a group of avant-garde musicians that later became the American Association of Creative Musicians and produced the current members of the Art Ensemble of Chicago. In 1965, he started a long recording association with Atlantic, and in 1967 (two years before Miles Davis legitimized fusion with Bitches Brew), he began using the electronic Varitone attachment on his tenor sax, a departure for which he received a lot of criticism from jazz purists, and later developed a reed trumpet and other electronic devices to amplify and alter his sound. In the early 1970s, he began singing through a synthesized saxophone and made E.H. in the U.K. with British rock guitarists Jess Beck and Stevie Winwood. All the while, however, he maintained a “serious” jazz reputation with works like the widely played “Freedom Jazz Dance” and other late-60s-post-Coltrane improvisations. “Really, I’m so bad I come out of any bag," he said. Harris also authored several books, including The Intervalistic Concept for All Single Line Instruments, and a pamphlet titled Do You Want To Be a Musician? Significantly, Eddie Harris was having a certain amount of commercial success with his experiments, using the popular soul and R&B sounds of the day to create early fusion classics like “Listen Here” as well as the seminal tracks he recorded with Les McCann (“Cold Duck” and “Compared to What?”) on the Swiss Movement album. two years. ” In 1979, on Playin’ With Myself, Eddie Harris definitely stepped outside the funk bag to offer what Downbeat magazine called “an exemplary pure jazz offering,” and in 1980, on his first record for an independent label (Sounds Incredible on Angelaco), he demonstrated again what a strong, unique player he has been all along. myself have enjoyed Eddie Harris' sharp-edged sound for years; through all the changes he usually manages to sound good, play seriously, and be responsive to the contemporary. “One guy I really admire is Miles,” Harris said a couple of years ago. “His music spans many eras, yet even now he’s in tune with the new music ... he's broad enough to open his mind and accept change.” I admire Eddie Harris for some of the same reasons, but for the past couple of years there has been nothing about him in the national music press except record reviews. I looked forward to discussing his recent turn to a small label and more mainstream jazz. After the first show I introduced myself while he waited to use the pay phone. “I don’t do interviews anymore, ” he said. “I haven’t done any for over two years now. It’s nothing personal," he added when I started to protest. “I’ve just been misinterpreted too many times. You should go ahead and write about what you heard out there tonight; just write about the music.” Could this be the same Eddie Harris who once told an audience, “So don’t think because you caught one show, you caught me.” Well, what I heard that Tuesday at Delevan’s was indeed different from the time I caught him there almost a year ago, when the house was packed, I had to push forward to even see, and the crowd was loudly appreciative and not expensively dressed. A year ago there was no cover charge, but at Tuesday’s first show this year, with a cover charge and minimum, Harris’ closing cadenza on a ballad early in the set was accompanied by the jabber of half the house talking. On the next tune, “Shadow of Your Smile,” he turned his back to the audience when he wasn’t blowing — he hadn’t spoken to us directly or announced the tunes — and instead encouraged the band, loosening them up and in the process beginning to feel a little better himself. Maybe he was tutoring the relatively jazz-unsophisticated audience by example; they seemed to need direction, and appeared uncertain when to applaud — after every solo, they wondered? Meanwhile, the Clinton St. Quarterly 37
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