Eddie Harris: a prodigy of saxophone, jazz and new instruments

October 20, 2020 at 12:20 p.m.

 

Eclectic musician, creative genius and comedy buff, Eddie harris he was the best electric sax player varitone or with a jazzman revolutionary.

Originally from Chicago, United States, Harris was born on 20th October 1934 and dabbled in music at the age of five in the local church choir.

Son of a Cuban father and a woman from New Orleans, the musician cemented his career by playing hymns on the piano in a self-taught way.

Later he learned to read sheet music and, during his stay at the DuSable High School, under the tutelage of the musical director Walter dyettHe practiced playing the clarinet, the vibraphone and the saxophone; instrument that Harris admired for its aesthetics and sound.

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Following his experience with Dyett, who also directed the musicians Nat King Cole, Dinah Washington, Clifford Jordan, Johnny Griffin, Gene Ammons, among others, Harris studied music at the Roosevelt University and perfected his technique on the piano.

While he performed his military service, he participated in the army band, in the Seventh Army Symphony Orchestra, and in a jazz group that emerged at that stage, with which he toured France and Germany.

Back in New York he signed with the Vee Jay Records label and made his first hit album. "Exodus to Jazz", in which he included a reinterpretation of the composition of Ernest gold For the movie Exodus.

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This piece had a wide radio broadcast and was positioned at number 16 on the R&B list in the United States, which made it the first jazz theme to get a gold record.

In the following years he worked for the Columbia Records and Atlantic Records labels, experimented with funk and jazz, and recorded the albums The in Sound (1965) and The Electrifying Eddie Harris (1967)

From that album stood out the single "Listen Here", which Eddie experimented with in later years.

In addition to his musical and interpretive work, in the mid-1970s Harris dabbled in comedy with the album The Reason Why I'm Talking St and the numbers "That is because you are overweight" y "Eddie who?".

Harris's facet as a comedian was not so well received by the public and brought him more detractors than fans; however he approached the comedian Bill Cosby, with whom he worked in the realization of the music of the program The Cosby Show.

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Harris' creativity extended to different musical areas, which included the invention of new instruments: such as the reed trumpet (a trumpet with a sax mouthpiece), the saxophone (saxophone with horn bulb) and the guitorgan (a combination of guitar and organ).

His last years traveled between Europe and the United States, where he performed mixes of jazz, soul, rock, post-bop and hard bop. He died on November 5, 1996 in Los Angeles and among his legacy he left the composition "Freedom jazz" dance, popularized by Miles Davis.

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