Donald Harrison, Nouveau Swing
George & Cynthia Geder
Heard title cut on the radio, went out and bought it.
I like it on first listening.
Can anyone tell me more about Donald Harrison?
Suggest other CD's?
Thanks!
--
Continuum Resources
George & Cynthia Geder
http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Set/2342/
Bob Entwistle
I've got Nouveau Swing and also like it. I don't think I've got the
most common Donald Harrison selection but some things I do have are:
-an album called Indian Blues which he recorded with his father where
there is an amalgam of jazz and Mardi Gras music. There are a few
Indian chants New Orleans style, a guest appearance by Dr. John and
piano from Cyrus Chestnut. Good album! (on Candid & probably hard to
find)
- an album by Eddie Palmieri of Latin Jazz with Donald, Conrad Herwig
and other good players. Try to catch this band live as Donald plays
often with Palmieri. Album is "Palmas" on Elektra Nonesuch.
- a CD called "Eric Dolphy and Booker Little Remembered Live at Sweet
Basil". Harrison and Terrence Blanchard join with the rhythm section
that made the original recording with Dolphy. Good, but conjures up
remembrances of the original stuff and not too many people compete
successfully with Dolphy.
I believe Harrison played in Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers so there's
probably some Blakey material out there. Also, I believe he has played
with Terrence Blanchard on other things. Perhaps, someone could comment
on that.
Bob
Jeff Duperon
George & Cynthia Geder wrote:
>
> Heard title cut on the radio, went out and bought it.
> I like it on first listening.
> Can anyone tell me more about Donald Harrison?
> Suggest other CD's?
> Thanks!
> --
> Continuum Resources
> George & Cynthia Geder
> http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Set/2342/
Jeff Duperon wrote:
Donald Harrison was born in New Orleans, The home of Jazz. His career
really took off when he joined Art Blakey and the Jazz Messemgers along
with fellow New Orleanian Terrence Blanchard. I hope you have heard of
Terrence Blanchard because that is another story. Donald and Terrence
left Blakey to form their on group and produced several LP/CD's. The
last time I saw Donald he was at a small club in New Orleans at a set
that featured Terrence. The two players had not performed together in
over two years. Donald walked to the back of the room, pulled out his
ax and began playing. As he walked to the bandstand Terrence
acknowledged his friend and they performed a great call and response
sequence that excited the audience tremendously. I only wish it could
have been recorded. I would suggest that you pick Art Blakey and the
Jazz Messengers "New York Scene" 1984 - Concord Records and check out
'Oh, By the Way' or the 1987 - ProJazz release, Hard Champion and listen
to 'Witch Hunt' Donald also has a 1991 release on Candid recorded live
at Birdland. The Donald Harrison Quintet: For Art's Sake with New
Orleans native Marlon Jordan on trumpet, Cyrus Chestnut, piaon,
Christian McBride, Bass and Carl Allen on the drums. I hope this
information can get you started.
Regards
mrjazzjr
Darcy Rogers Mazel
George & Cynthia Geder wrote:
>
> Heard title cut on the radio, went out and bought it.
> I like it on first listening.
> Can anyone tell me more about Donald Harrison?
> Suggest other CD's?
> Thanks!
> --
> Continuum Resources
> George & Cynthia Geder
> http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Set/2342/
Donald Harrison as co-leader with Terence Blanchard:
New York Second Line
Discernment
Nascence
Crystal Stair
Black Pearl
with Art Blakey:
Oh By The Way
N.Y. Scene
Live At Kimball's
The Art Of Jazz
with others:
Early Bird (Donald Brown)
Foreign Intrigue (Tony Williams)
Here And Now (Geoff Keezer)
Te-Vou (Roy Haynes)
The Art Of Blakey (Message)
Hang In There (Mickey Tucker)
Essence Of Funk (Essence All Stars)
Jackie's Blues Bag (Essence All Stars)
The Colossal Saxophone Sessions (Various Artists)
as a leader:
For Art's Sake
Indian Blues
Lenny M.
Jon Vanhala
>George & Cynthia Geder wrote:
>>
>> Heard title cut on the radio, went out and bought it.
>> I like it on first listening.
>> Can anyone tell me more about Donald Harrison?
>> Suggest other CD's?
>> Thanks!
>> --
>> Continuum Resources
>> George & Cynthia Geder
>> http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Set/2342/
>
club or send me an email for his schedule.
Jon Vanhala
Impulse Records
jvan...@unistudios.com
Jon Vanhala
>George & Cynthia Geder wrote:
>> Can anyone tell me more about Donald Harrison?
Here's a bit of the liner notes for Donald's new debut release on
Impulse:
``When I first came to New York I was 18 years old. Dexter Gordon told
me, ‘Don't tell Charlie Parker's story, don't tell Cannonball's story,
tell your story.'''
Donald Harrison tells that anecdote often and with a great amount of
pride. And for good reason. If there is one truism about jazz in the
mid-'90s, it's that there are a lot of fine young players out there
and that any number of them CAN pick up the horn and tell Charlie
Parker's story or Cannonball Adderley's story or Dexter Gordon's
story. There are dozens of young players highly skilled at the art of
musical biography, but — as the great Dexter Gordon knew —jazz is an
art of autobiography. It's music — as McCoy Tyner so memorably put it
to Valerie Wilmer — that's as serious as your life.
Donald Harrison tells nobody's story but his own. And on Nouveau Swing
it's a story rooted in the groove. “Groove is in the heart,'' goes the
pop ditty, but groove, before it gets into your heart, starts in the
beat. “Nouveau Swing'' harvests beats from all over Tropical America
— from Brazil and Jamaica and Trinidad and New Orleans, with a bit of
Detroit, Chicago and New York, New York thrown in for swinging good
measure.
Nouveau Swing is a groove album — a funky, soulful album that features
Donald's pure-as-honey, richly romantic alto playing over a snappy,
goose-loose rhythm section. It's a straight-ahead acoustic jazz album
that subtly integrates the rhythms of today's dance floors — from Rio
to Jamaica to Brooklyn — with the sounds of today's jazz vanguard.
“This has the full spectrum,'' says Donald Harrison, “it has dance and
it has intellect and spirituality. I was going for the full experience
of what you can do with music.
“The concept is to take rhythms that I've become familiar with through
playing the music, and dancing to the music in a social setting, and
putting them underneath the swing rhythms of straight-ahead music
while keeping a level of freedom for the musicians. It's just a swing
beat with new rhythms underneath, the rhythms of the '90s instead of
the rhythms of the '40s and '50s and '60s.''
There are no other horns, no oddball instrumental combinations. This
is Donald's purest album to date — a true blowing session that
spotlights, above the groove, one of the most distinctive and
beautiful alto saxophone styles in jazz.
Donald “Duck'' Harrison was 18 years old — and on the receiving end of
Dexter Gordon's wisdom — half his lifetime ago. He came to New York at
one of those crucial moments in jazz history. Gordon — the bebop tenor
saxophone king — had returned from a long expatriation in Europe a
couple of years earlier and had helped set the stage for a general
resurgence of interest in straight-ahead jazz. Fusion was dying on the
vine and a new generation of young musicians was capturing the ears of
the jazz world by playing bebop and post-bebop styles the way they
were meant to be played.
For the first time since jazz's earliest days, kids from New Orleans
were setting the pace, most of them students from an arts-oriented
high school called NOCCA, where Ellis Marsalis, Kidd Jordan and other
members of the jazz faculty were grooming big-time players, like
Donald Harrison, Terence Blanchard, Wynton and Branford Marsalis,
Marlon and Kent Jordan, and Harry Connick, Jr.
Donald Harrison's 18-year career trajectory since that arrival in the
big town has been one of studying, experimenting and playing his life.
He and Terence Blanchard, of course, followed the Marsalis Brothers
into Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers and then left to form their own
highly successful modern hard bop quintet. But while Terence carved a
straight path, Donald's restiveness began to show. He played funky, he
tossed in a bit of Kidd Jordan and Bill Pierce, he began to beat
against the strictures of the music. And when Terence and Donald
parted ways — after five impressive albums — Donald followed no
obvious path. He followed his heart.
He made straight-ahead albums (For Art's Sake, Full Circle); a
groundbreaking album that melded straight-ahead jazz, New Orleans funk
and the chants of New Orleans' Mardi Gras Indians (Indian Blues); a
fusion album (The Power of Cool). He played with an astonishingly
diverse array of leaders: How many people can fit in with Roy Haynes,
Eddie Palmieri, Lena Horne, Larry Coryell and Digable Planets? And
that's IN ONE YEAR!
Nouveau Swing features Donald's alto and a kaleidoscopic rhythm
section: the spectacular Anthony Wonsey on piano and four men in
different groupings highlighting their particular strengths —
Christian McBride or Reuben Rogers on bass, Carl Allen or Dion Parson
on drums.
“All these guys understand different styles of music. You look at
Christian McBride — he loves James Brown, he loves funky music. You
know, these guys know both sides. I made a tape for Carl Allen, I
said, ‘This is the concept I'm going for, this is the kind of feel I
want. Just put James Brown in the snare and the bass drum and swing on
the ride and hi-hat, like Art Blakey, Roy Haynes or Max Roach, and
make some breaks like a jazz drummer.' And I made a tape of how I was
thinking of it, and he'd go home and practice and the next thing I
know Carl is free in the concept — he's coming up with new stuff on
top of it.
“Dion and Reuben are both from St. Thomas. I told them I wanted to
deal with reggae and dance hall and calypso and soca, all that stuff.
They both knew how to really get the essence of what we were trying to
do.''
Most of the tunes are Donald Harrison originals, all of them are deep
in the new soul jazz pocket. Donald Harrison X-rays the beats:
NOUVEAU SWING: “It's a mixture of what the kids are doing in Brooklyn
— hip-hop influenced jazz. I had a chance to play with Digable Planets
— I dug what they were doing, they were mixing jazz and hip-hop
together. So I flipped it over to a jazz concept.''
BOB MARLEY: “What's happening is what is called a steppers beat from
Jamaica, where the bass drum is going on all four. That's something
they use in Jamaica. So the bass drum and the snare drum are playing
close to what someone from Jamaica would be doing. With the ride
cymbal we've got a broken swing pattern, and we've got the hi-hat
going on two and four, which is normal for jazz music. Bob Marley is
the leader of reggae music, of bringing it to the forefront. I wanted
to give a jazz tribute to Bob Marley.''
COME BACK JACK: “That's a tune by Leo Nocentelli, the guitarist from
the original Meters, the great New Orleans funk band. They played it
but they never recorded it. I was on the road with Leo and Idris
Muhammad and we played that song. We played it funky, but I was
hearing it swinging. So I turned it into a swing song — I changed a
few little things in the bass line and took these accents and we had a
swing song.''
LITTLE FLOWERS: “Little Flowers' is a soca and calypso, but it's
modern soca and calypso, it's not the old style. There's a swing beat
in the cymbal and the hi-hat and the bass drum and the snare drum are
playing soca and calypso — Dion switches, the one part is soca and the
other part is calypso. These beats are from Trinidad.''
EIGHTY-ONE: “That always had a funky beat to me. That's Ron Carter's
tune, from Miles' E.S.P. album. Ron Carter is one of the most
influential bassists in the last 30 years and he writes great tunes. I
love the song and it fit great on this album.''
SINCERELY YOURS: “On this one, I took the Motown beat and slowed it
into a ballad and disguised it by putting the brushes on it. It still
has a little bit of the drive of Motown, but it sounds like a jazz
tune.'' (Yo, Donald, put some lyrics to this and send it off to Luther
Vandross or Toni Braxton.)
SETEMBRO: “I heard this on Quincy Jones' Back on the Block record.
Sarah Vaughan sings it. I heard Sarah sing it and I decided I was in
love with it. There's a lot of places in the Americas where African
rhythms have taken hold — Brazil is one of them, of course. I just
fell in love with that song and I wanted to do it. We were in the
studio and I just told Carl, ‘Put the most modern Brazilian groove you
can put on it and let's go — one, two, three four.' I've been in
Brazil with Larry Coryell and with Terri Lyne Carrington and the
rhythms there are deep. Music is everywhere. It reminds me of home.''
(The song is by the great modern Brazilian songwriter Ivans Lins who,
coincidentally, made a recent album with Donald's old partner Terence
Blanchard.)
ONE OF A KIND: “It's really a minor blues and the harmony shifts in
different ways, minor chords shifting in minor thirds. It's just
another way of looking at a minor blues with different rhythms than
you would normally play.''
NEW HOPE: “I just wanted something that was very subdued, very relaxed
— we didn't play a lot of notes. Something where you're not stretching
your mind too far. It's a similar beat to a lot of New Orleans music,
in that that accent is on four.''
CHRISTOPHER JR: “This is for Charles Christopher Parker Jr. I wrote a
tune that hopefully sounds a little bit like what he would write.
Bebop.''
SOUTH SIDE PEOPLE: “We were just messing around, that's the Chicago
blues.''
DANCE HALL: “That's Jamaican chanting, like rap, where they're talking
fast and you can't understand what they're saying unless you're
Jamaican. We've got a little bit of that, the way a saxophonist would
approach it, trying to keep a jazz groove.''
DUCK'S GROOVE: “That's a New Orleans second line beat. I guess I
started this new second line. 'Cause Idris Muhammad's got one kind of
beat and Vernel Fournier's got another kind of beat and I started the
new beat for the young guys, which everybody is playing now. A way of
approaching the second line in modern jazz. The first person I showed
was Marvin ‘Smitty' Smith back in '82. Then Ralph Peterson was the
second guy. Now every young guy who's playing jazz knows how to play
that second line beat the way I approached it with Smitty. It's that
approach that they're playing.''
So after cruising around Trinidad and Jamaica, flying down to Rio,
zipping up to Detroit and Chicago, the Duck brings his groove back
home. But it ain't over yet. When a New Orleans band is called back
for encore after encore, there's only one way to send the crowd home.
I've seen the Neville Brothers do it a hundred times, and Donald does
it here. Hit them in the spiritual bone with a taste of “Amazing
Grace.'' You get a nice half-chorus here and it sends you home from
the dance hall in peace.
“New Orleans is one of the most Catholic cities in America, I guess,
and I grew up Catholic,'' says Donald Harrison. “I used to go to
Baptist churches also and I am spiritual, so I wanted to bring that
out finally. I pray a lot, and I always pray for world peace and that
everybody will be happy. This is my way of doing it through music.''
It's amazing to realize that at least an entire jazz generation has
come up since Donald Harrison left New Orleans for the first time. He
was lucky — his is the last generation to have played with Art Blakey,
the last to get first-hand advice from Dexter Gordon. But there is one
living thread that connects all of jazz history. A man who can play
with Digable Planets, Lena Horne, Eddie Palmieri, Larry Coryell and
Roy Haynes in one year can only have learned from the only many hired
by Louis Armstrong, Lester Young, Sarah Vaughan, Thelonious Monk, John
Coltrane, Chick Corea and Pat Metheny. Nouveau Swing is dedicated to
Roy Haynes.
“Roy Haynes is the greatest teacher of studying the music and being
well-versed in any style of jazz, but then playing in a way that's
really fresh and from your heart,'' says Donald. “Roy Haynes sounds
like Roy Haynes, but he fit in with everybody from Louis Armstrong to
John Coltrane. When I've been able to go in different situations, I
remember his comments about listening to your surroundings, just
listening and seeking out your place.
“Roy Haynes is really about touch — if you get your touch to a certain
place you can play in any style. I finally understand what he means —
you don't have to fight it, just relax. The more relaxed you are, the
better it comes out. I think that has helped me immensely.''
Another word I would use is honesty. Donald Harrison, like Roy Haynes,
is incapable of musical dishonesty. Nouveau Swing is a smashing album
because, with all its different rhythms, it hits you right in the gut,
it's about as soulful and honest a jazz album as anybody is making
these days.
Eighteen years after he headed to New York, Donald Harrison is no
longer a young lion. Nouveau Swing is the work of a master.
— Lee Jeske
Jon Vanhala
>George & Cynthia Geder wrote:
>>
>> I like it on first listening.
>> Thanks!