Category Archives: History

Bill Harris: Swinging and Inscrutable

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From YouTube, a transfer of Woody Herman’s band performing Bijou for Columbia records. The recording date is August 20, 1945 (coincidentally Jack Teagarden’s birthday). Bijou is a composition by Ralph Burns, who also composed Early Autumn and played piano with the band.

Bill Harris

Bill Harris in 1947 (Photo by William P. Gottlieb)

Bill Harris, who was born in Philadelphia on October 28, 1916, takes the trombone solo. His expressive, slightly quirky, style is perfect for the tune, and Harris became associated Bijou after the recording was released. (Check out the Swing and Beyond website for more on Bijou.)

Early on, Harris picked up other instruments, (tenor sax, trumpet), but he didn’t start playing trombone professionally until he was 22 years old. After that, it’s fair to say his improvising style left a big impression.

Unsurprisingly for a trombonist, some of Bill’s first professional work came in big bands: Bob Chester, Ray Mckinley, and Gene Krupa among them. Employment with Benny Goodman came in 1943 and ‘44. (He’d work with Goodman again in the 50s.) According Leonard Feather’s Encyclopedia of Jazz, Bill also led a sextet at the Café Society (Uptown) in New York City in Spring of ‘44. Woody’s orchestra came next, as Bill became a member of Herman’s so-called “First Herd.” He’d hang around for the “Second Herd” also known as the “Four Brothers” band.

It wasn’t all big-band for Harris though. A notable portion of his career involved an association with Norman Granz’s “Jazz at the Philharmonic” (JATP) series of touring jam-sessions. The concerts, begun in 1944 Los Angeles, often combined musicians of varying stylistic bent, which at the time meant swing players and burgeoning beboppers. For his own part, Harris was essentially in the swing camp, but he had no issues fitting in with the “modernists.” From a 1955 “Jazz at the Philharmonic All-Stars” concert in Berlin, here’s Harris blowing up a storm:

In addition to leading small groups himself, Harris also played the sideman role with other small group leaders, including tenor saxophonist Charlie Ventura, and bassist Chubby Jackson, who was also a member of Woody Herman’s first and second herds. With Charlie Ventura’s “Big Four,” below is “Characteristically B. H.” While the melody is be-boppy — maybe even monkish — Harris mostly floats above the rhythm section during his solo:

During the 50s, Harris often performed and recorded with other Woody Herman alum. Here he is playing Everywhere, a ballad of his own composition, with the “Ex-Hermanites”:

Harris spent some time gigging in Las Vegas before eventually retiring to Florida. He died in Hallandale, Florida, at the age of 56, but not before leaving a significant dent in the jazz trombone universe.

Jimmy Knepper Interview

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From the National Jazz Archive, an interview with jazz trombonist Jimmy Knepper, who died in 2003. Since high school — after I found the album Jimmy Knepper in LA in the bin at the local Record Bar — his playing has been a favorite.

Jimmy Knepper

Like many jazz musicians of his generation just after the Swing Era, Knepper became fascinated with “Modern Jazz” in general and Charlie Parker’s playing in particular.
At least once, Knepper recorded Parker live himself; he’s responsible for a recording initially distributed by Charles Mingus’s Workshop label called Bird at St. Nicks. (To conserve tape, Knepper turned the tape recorder on only during Charlie Parker’s solos.)

Despite the primary influence of jazz players on instruments other than the trombone, Jimmy’s improvising style is unique and features a personal sound that is immediately identifiable. It’s virtuosic without ever being cold or showy.

Knepper is perhaps best known for playing with Charles Mingus, but he had a varied career which included playing in the Broadway pit orchestra for the entire original run of Funny Girl.

Jimmy Harrison, Gone But Not Forgotten

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For jazz appreciation month, more about jazz trombonist Jimmy Harrison, Coleman Hawkin’s friend and bandmate mentioned in the Hawkins documentary from the previous post.

Jimmy Harrison

Jimmy Harrison

Harrison was born in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1900. He was raised in Detroit, Michigan. Like Jack Teagarden, he was largely self taught, but started the trombone later, as a teenager. It didn’t take too long for Jimmy to find work as a musician in Detroit, and soon he was gigging throughout the midwest. He eventually made it to New York City, and continued a promising trajectory. There were stints with with Fess Williams, Elmer Snowden, June Clark, Billy Fowler, and even, in the early 20s, Duke Ellington.

Kaiser Marshall, Fletcher Henderson’s drummer, remembered meeting Jimmy Harrison at Small’s 5th Avenue Club in 1923, when he was playing with cornetist June Clark’s five-piece band. He recalled:

“Jimmy played riffs and often played his trombone very high, so that sometimes you would think two cornets were playing instead of one…He was crazy about Louis Armstrong, and some of the things that Louis made on his cornet or trumpet, Jimmy could play the second part of it. In fact like I said, before you could think, two trumpets were playing.”

Harrison joined Fletcher Hendersons’s band in 1925, becoming bandmates with Coleman Hawkins in the bargain. Kaiser recalled that Harrison had a one-year contract with Charlie Johnson and that Fletcher Henderson had to “buy his contract in order get him.” The meeting between Jimmy and Jack Teagarden took place soon after, in part engineered by Hawkins himself at the Roseland Ballroom. Later, the musicians put together jam sessions at Marshall’s place. Kaiser again:

Jimmy Harrison

Harrison on record:

Blazin’ May 29, 1925 with Fletcher Henderson’s orchestra: Harrison’s solo is in at 1:10:
Sweet and Hot 1931 with Fletcher Henderson’s orchestra: Jimmy Harrison, trombone and vocal.

“Jack Teagarden … used to come over to our house often, sometimes staying all night, and we would have a slight jam ses­sion between Hawk who lived only a few doors from us. So Jack would play piano, Jimmy trombone, Hawkins tenor, and myself on my rubber-pad I kept at home. Then Hawk would play piano, Jack and Jimmy trombone. My, what fun we had!”

Most of Harrison’s best recorded solos are with Benny Carter‘s Chocolate Dandies, a group that at the time had a fair amount of overlap, personnel wise, with Fletcher Henderson’s aggregation.

Here’s Jimmy with his pre-Henderson employer, Charlie Johnson. With Johnson’s “Paradise Orchestra,” the tune is Walk That Thing, recorded on September 19, 1928:

Also with Johnson, The Boy in the Boat from 1928:

Here’s Jimmy with Benny Carter’s Chocolate Dandies group: Dee Blues, recorded on December 3, 1930:

In addition to arriving at similar jazz trombone styles inspired by Louis Armstrong, Harrison and Teagarden were both singers. Jimmy added something more, entertainment wise: a Bert Williams inspired, vaudeville-style “preaching” act. Some of these performances by Harrison were apparently recorded; none have yet surfaced.

Jimmy Harrison continued playing with Fletcher Henderson through early 1931. He joined Chick Webb‘s band next. Sadly, he became ill soon after, succumbing to a severe stomach ailment that has been described as “ulcers,” or possibly cancer. He was only 29.

Including Coleman Hawkins, musicians that enjoyed much longer careers in jazz never forgot about Jimmy Harrison. Benny Carter lauded him for his “warmth, tone, feeling and style,” and felt that recordings don’t give a full picture of his playing. Trumpeter Rex Stewart also testified to Harrison’s preeminence as a swing trombonist in mid-twenties New York, adding that, because of the trombonist’s early death, “History inadvertently and unwittingly bypassed Jim.”

Coleman Hawkins Remembers Jimmy Harrison and Jack Teagarden

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In 1956, Coleman Hawkins was interviewed by Bill Grauer and Paul Bacon for Riverside Records. At one point, Hawkins recalls a period — about April, 1928, it turns out — that he played at the Roseland Ballroom with Jimmy Harrison, a trombonist and fellow member of Fletcher Henderson’s band. Hawkins and Jimmy already shared a kidding, bantering friendship, and soon, the arrival of Jack Tegarden at the Roseland would give Hawkins another thing to tease Harrison about:

Below is a transcription of this portion of the Hawkin’s interview done by writer Richard Hadlock in the 60s. Hadlock tries to contain some of Coleman’s valuable digressions, but it’s mostly accurate. I recommend listening, of course.

“I’d heard about this Teagarden . . . Jimmy and all the rest of them were down­stairs, or I don’t even know if they were in yet. I heard him playin’, so I went downstairs to get Jimmy and the fellows to start kidding about it. I says, “Man, there’s a boy upstairs that plays an awful lot of trombone.” “Yeah, who’s that, Hawk?” I says, “He’s a boy from New Orleans or Texas or somethin. I don’t know. What do they call him? Jack Teagarden or somethin’. Jimmy do you know him?” “No, I’m not gonna know him . . . trombone player, ain’t he? Plays like the rest of the trombones, that’s all. I don’t see no trombones. I say the trombone is a brass instrument; it should have a sound just like a trumpet. I don’t want to hear trombone sound like a trombone. I can’t see it. I said, “Jimmy, he doesn’t sound like those trombones. He plays up high; sounds a lot like a trumpet, too.” He says, “Oh, man, I ain’t paying no mind.” Jimmy and Jack got to be the tightest of friends. After this night, I couldn’t separate Jimmy and Jack Teagarden. So we used to come up to my house practically every night . . . I don’t know how they made it, because we’d sit up there and fool around ‘til two, three, four o’clock in the afternoon–no sleep. And we were working every night. We used to go there and eat these cold cuts, cheese and crackers and stuff, and we’d do this and play–playin’ all night. Jimmy and Jack both jivin’ each other . . . trying to figure out what he lacks so he can get from the other one . . . and I dug what was going on . . . I had the piano, and they could play all night. It didn’t disturb anybody or nothin’. The house was all draped and carpeted . . . Both of them got their trombones, and I played pi­ano for them. This used to go on all night long, listening to records and eating and talking and back to playing again–every night. You couldn’t keep Jack out of Harlem . . . He made every rent party . . . Jack made himself right at home. And always had that horn. He must have never slept, playing horn night and day. But that was a funny experience when Jack came up, ‘cause Jimmy never heard anyone play trombone like that.”