The lineageDetroit, Bird, Bud, Monk, Hawkins, the Jazz Cultural Theater

Barry learned his first piece, a church song, when he was about four; all he could later remember about it was that it was in B flat. As a boy he accompanied a junior chorus and another lady’s choir, and by high school he was playing for dances.

The Spirit of Bebop12:4813:46Piano Jazz with Marian McPartland4:054:38

One day his mother asked him outright whether he was going to play church music or jazz. He said jazz, she accepted it, and he said he had played jazz ever since. He never dropped the church entirely: he made a point of playing a church song at any concert his mother attended, and audiences kept asking him for one.

The Spirit of Bebop13:4614:19Piano Jazz with Marian McPartland5:366:10

A pianist who spoke at his funeral added that Barry and his mother played for a church in Detroit, and that Barry loved to sing.

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Barry saw music in the schools as the foundation for his generation. Students could use school instruments and even take them out to play gigs, and there were big bands as early as middle school. He regretted that school music has since been cut, so that many children no longer even know what an instrument is.

The last train to Monk: an interview4:445:216:35

Jazz, Barry said, was everything to him, and he started music almost in kindergarten. At 62, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, a woman in a wheelchair was brought up to him and said she had taught Barry Harris. He doubted it at first, but she turned out to have been his music teacher at his elementary school in Detroit, and he was amazed to meet her again at that age.

Ep.2 | Everything no one has ever told you about jazz | Barry Harris0:000:331:06The last train to Monk: an interview5:55

A friend who travelled the world with Barry for his last twelve years said at his funeral that Barry learned Bud Powell’s solo on Webb City at 14 or 15, and that it set him free: once he had learned it, he could solo. Barry said, modestly, that it left him knowing more than everybody else, and so he shared it. He began teaching while still a young man in Detroit.

Barry Harris Funeral1:00:001:00:38The Great Pianist Barry Harris’ Funeral At Abyssinian Baptist Church In Harlem46:4947:22

In high school Barry would run home and sit at the piano, so young musicians knew where to find him and came to practise jazz at his house. He named Donald Byrd, Yusef Lateef, Joe Henderson, Roland Hanna, Sonny Red, John Coltrane, Sonny Clark and Frank Foster among them. His mother cooked whatever little food they had, and they jammed all day.

Ep.3 | Everything no one has ever told you about jazz | Barry Harris0:331:08The Spirit of Bebop23:3024:36

Roland Hanna told Barry that he and Sonny Red used to climb the stairs to Barry’s house just to learn changes and chords. Sonny Red was Barry’s closest practice partner: the two of them practised together all the time.

Interview: Detroit, Bud Powell and the shuffle17:3918:13The last train to Monk: an interview8:26

Barry said Paul Chambers learned to play the bass in his house, starting from not being able to play at all, and that Joe Henderson learned there and studied with him too. When people doubted him, he pointed to a 1958 Down Beat yearbook that called him the major jazz influence on the young players of Detroit.

Believe: a talk to musicians6:51The Spirit of Bebop23:30The last train to Monk: an interview8:58

Coltrane came to Barry’s house wanting to hear what he was teaching, and Barry had him listen to two young players, Charles McPherson and Lonnie Hillyer.

The last train to Monk: an interview8:58

Barry said he had been teaching since he was about 15. In Detroit people knew to come to him, including Motown musicians and the young bassist James Jamerson.

Believe: a talk to musicians6:16

Gene Gee, speaking at Barry’s funeral, said he knew Barry’s ideas before he ever met him, through his own teachers, among them Yusef Lateef, Bennie Maupin and Joe Henderson; all were from Detroit and all had studied Barry’s concept. He saw Barry around 1968 at Diggs Den in Harlem, with Pepper Adams and Gene Taylor, and also saw him playing with Coleman Hawkins.

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For Barry’s generation, hearing Charlie Parker for the first time settled everything. He said Sheila Jordan knows as much about Bird as he does, and that through all the later styles and fashions the two of them kept believing. For him Bird, Dizzy Gillespie and Bud Powell were the innovators.

Accepting the Bruce Lundvall Visionary Award5:356:096:44

To hear the real thing, Barry told students, listen to Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Bud Powell; he called Bud a very great man whom students hardly know. He felt not much came after them. Monk added to the music with tunes everyone loved, such as ‘Round Midnight and Ruby, My Dear, and by writing new tunes over existing songs such as I Got Rhythm.

Believe: a talk to musicians49:0649:39

Barry called bebop the youngest of musics, because it has not been fully explored and we still know little about it. After Charlie Parker and others died, he said, the people who remained didn’t really understand it; even Miles Davis didn’t grasp what Bird represented.

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A former student stressed that Barry presented his concepts not as his own inventions but as information he got from Dizzy Gillespie and the musicians who came before him, which he was simply passing on. For that student, the class was also about community: being among the other students while watching Barry lay out those ideas.

These 3 Words From Barry Harris Changed How I Played Music!1:071:39

Barry and Walter Davis recorded part of the soundtrack for Clint Eastwood’s Charlie Parker film, playing to a click track alongside Bird’s records with strings and a large orchestra; Barry was on Laura and April in Paris. For a society-band scene they had to flub on purpose, as if the band had just realised Bird had walked in. Barry singled out Eastwood as the one star who really supports jazz, also for his part in Round Midnight.

Interview: Bird, Hawkins, Monk and New York3:214:295:025:36

Barry looked back on that period as a golden era, with so many good musicians at the same time. He counted Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young as bebop players too, and said the golden age probably began when Hawkins came back from Europe.

Interview: Bird, Hawkins, Monk and New York8:238:57Interview: Detroit and after6:226:54

He called Hawkins’s recording of Body and Soul the greatest recording ever made, and marvelled that something so abstract became a hit.

Interview: Detroit and after6:5410:59

For Barry the most important period was about half of the 1940s and most of the 1950s. In the 40s, musicians who had all played in big bands broke away and formed small groups.

Interview on Italian television4:285:04

Barry called New York a finishing school: you didn’t go there to learn beginner things but arrived prepared, as if going for a master’s degree. When a new tenor player came to town, Coleman Hawkins and others would go and find him and cut him up on the bandstand, and newcomers such as Frank Foster or Billy Mitchell quickly found out who the best were.

On Coleman Hawkins0:000:34

When Hawkins first heard Barry he grumbled about yet another Detroit piano player; he had already used Hank Jones, Roland Hanna and Tommy Flanagan. Sitting in, Barry was called a tune he had never played, but he could handle it because, as a musician, he knew songs by ear. He went on to play with Hawkins until Hawkins died.

On Coleman Hawkins0:341:12Interview on Italian television0:000:35

Barry was a Bird, Bud Powell and Dizzy man, but working with the older Hawkins changed him a little. Hawkins played so well and had a different idea of how to put things together, and he put Barry on the right track about how broad the music is. Barry had always linked All the Things You Are with Charlie Parker’s Bird of Paradise; hearing Hawkins play it one night showed him how much more there was to play.

Interview on Italian television1:08Interview: Bird, Hawkins, Monk and New York9:3210:08

Barry even moved in with Hawkins because he was worried: Hawkins would overdo things. In the end Barry had to get him into hospital. Hawkins had always said of hospitals that you go in the front door and out the back, and that is what happened.

On Coleman Hawkins1:121:462:22

Barry criticised the way nearly every tenor saxophonist tries to sound like Coltrane and plays the tenor high, like an alto. He held up Coleman Hawkins as the model: the beauty was down low, and a low instrument should be heard in its low register.

Believe: a talk to musicians10:2010:52

Barry told Marian McPartland that his workshop grew out of one run by Joe Newman’s organisation, the Jazz Coalition. He was due to teach its last session at four o’clock, forgot because he was at the off-track betting office, and arrived three hours late to find everyone still waiting. On the spot he proposed keeping the class going for good: everyone would chip in a few dollars to cover the rent, and he would take nothing for himself.

Piano Jazz with Marian McPartland14:4515:1815:51

A friend told the story a little differently at Barry’s funeral: on the day set for the New York workshop, around the mid-1970s, a bitterly cold and snowy one, Barry forgot about it and went to off-track betting, then rushed over by taxi three hours later expecting an empty room. It was full of people patiently waiting. From then on he vowed to give a workshop every week, and he kept it up for over 40 years, planning his travels so he would miss no more than one week.

Barry Harris Funeral1:01:181:01:551:02:30The Great Pianist Barry Harris’ Funeral At Abyssinian Baptist Church In Harlem47:55

Barry didn’t plan the Jazz Cultural Theater: he had been saving for a brownstone when Larry Ridley, Jim Harrison and others talked him into it. He ended up running it largely alone, paying about $3,000 a month in rent and over $200,000 in five years, money he earned by playing and teaching. He said it was good for him because it kept him away from gambling.

The last train to Monk: an interview27:1328:0928:49

Barry thought of the Jazz Cultural Theater, on Eighth Avenue, more as a school than a venue; it sold no alcohol. People donated instruments so that teenagers could come in and learn to play, which he saw as the main idea. There was an introductory piano class, a master piano class, and a big class that starts with the pianists, then brings in the singers, then the horn players. A band also performed there monthly. He estimated that about five thousand people from all over the world came through in four or five years.

Interview: Bird, Hawkins, Monk and New York0:31Passing It On5:14

The theatre gave people a place to play and learn and helped build an audience. The largest group of students were Japanese, who came to New York to study there as if going to college. There was tap dancing too, with Tina Pratt teaching and dancers such as Jimmy Slyde dropping in.

Interview: Bird, Hawkins, Monk and New York13:3220:1034:40

A colleague remembered the Jazz Cultural Theater as a place of classes where musicians with nowhere else to go could even sleep on the sofa; Barry treated everyone as people who wanted to learn music. When the colleague told him about a 10-year-old drummer in Hartford, Barry invited the boy down, paid for his hotel and his family’s food, and had him play with the band at the Vanguard. The colleague described Barry as constantly encouraging the young.

Barry Harris- Jazz Master, Educator, Saint3:344:064:42

Barry told of a mother whose son died suddenly, within a day of going into hospital; she then began taking lessons in her son’s place and could now play a couple of Monk tunes. He also had an 8-year-old student who played Monk. He spoke of teenagers from a Brooklyn high school who refused to leave even though no teacher, principal or parent turned up, and of homeless children aged about 9 to 14 who were presented on his concert, whom he called the most beautiful kids he ever had.

Interview: Bird, Hawkins, Monk and New York19:3621:1721:51

Standing outside a place where musicians were playing, Barry was told by a stranger that he obviously didn’t like jazz, since he was walking away. Barry struck his chest, said he was jazz, and gave his name, and the man was overcome with embarrassment. Nearly every musician playing inside had been in Barry’s class, and when they introduced him the room stood up to applaud.

Interview on Italian television3:534:28Believe: a talk to musicians8:008:33

On tour in Japan, Barry was taken to a very expensive restaurant, and once got a full Japanese breakfast when he wanted an American one. He visited a town where everyone wore Barry Harris shirts, and said Japan was the only place in the world where he knew he was a star.

Passing It On12:10

Barry said people all over the world are studying this music. He was struck by boys in Italy who played remarkably at 12 to 14, and thought the centre of jazz could move to another country.

Interview: Detroit and after14:3515:46

A friend recalled at his funeral that when the pandemic stopped his weekly Tuesday night workshops, along with a big-band concert he had spent months preparing, Barry was very low. Friends set him up to teach on Zoom from his own piano, and soon over 300 students were joining from India, China, Japan, Europe (especially Italy and Spain) and Buenos Aires, for sessions from 1:30 to 5:30, for about a year and a half. He joked that after a lifetime of travelling to his students, they now came to him. Even when briefly in hospital he insisted on being home in time for his Saturday class.

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As teenagers, Barry and his friends borrowed the bass and drums from their high school, rode the streetcar to gigs, and played school dances and dances at a roller rink. Detroit ballrooms such as the Mirror and the Greystone were where you heard Charlie Parker and the other stars. Barry thought his own awareness of jazz probably began with boogie woogie, then grew as he learned tunes and how to play the blues.

The Spirit of Bebop14:19

Barry said he learned jazz by dancing to it. Whenever he went to hear Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington, Count Basie or Stan Kenton, it was in a dance hall and people danced. In his view, once nobody danced to jazz, musicians started getting away with music you could not dance to. He pointed to salsa musicians and dancers as people who have kept a real command of the off-beats, the ‘ands’, that many jazz players have lost.

Feeling the ‘and’0:381:12

He remembered having to play Cherokee as fast as he possibly could for shake dancers such as Baby Scruggs. He could not understand why jazz was later separated from dancing when the two had always gone together, so he made a point of putting dancers on his big concerts to show that people dance to jazz.

Interview: Bird, Hawkins, Monk and New York33:0134:40

Barry was careful to say that he sat in with Charlie Parker rather than played with him. The time he remembered best was at the Greystone Ballroom: Bird’s band, coming from Chicago, didn’t show up, so Barry and the other young local players played his first set with him. Bird was kind to them, and Barry called him the most gracious, beautiful person he had ever met.

The Spirit of Bebop22:56Interview: Bird, Hawkins, Monk and New York6:42Barry Harris- Jazz Master, Educator, Saint7:01Passing It On4:42

Bird also came through Detroit with rhythm-and-blues-style outfits such as Candy Johnson and his Peppermint Sticks, and once played at another bar with a local band featuring an alto player called Emperor Nero; Barry thought he may have sat in on some of those occasions too. What struck him every time was that everyone played over their heads with Bird. He felt Bird gave off a kind of magnetism that made people play well, and that few players today have that effect on others.

Interview: Bird, Hawkins, Monk and New York6:427:157:498:23

Barry first saw Charlie Parker with Strings at a roller rink that had been turned into a dance hall, with only six or eight string players. The feeling Bird gave him that night became his standard: when you play, he said, he wants you to give him that same feeling.

Artists House Master Class Barry Harris - Student Interviews After Concert12:5613:3214:03

Barry said the Detroit players did not formally collaborate; they simply went to hear each other play. He followed Tommy Flanagan and Kenny Burrell, whom he considered the most advanced of the young players, and said he learned most from them. He also told listeners to look up an album by the pianist Will Davis, and named Willie Anderson among the many players in town who could really play.

Interview: Detroit, Bud Powell and the shuffle5:085:43The last train to Monk: an interview13:45

Detroit had good musicians who would straighten the young ones out. Barry recalled being shy and being told bluntly that he had better learn how to play, and being corrected on how I Got Rhythm is put together. The city also had a jazz society some 5,000 strong, with Kenny Burrell as its first president, and young players such as Roy Brooks, Charles McPherson and Lonnie Hillyer played alongside older ones.

Interview: Detroit and after2:222:563:31

Barry named Terry Pollard as one of the greatest pianists, though most people have never heard of her. At 17 she was better than the rest of them: she had perfect pitch and played in any key, F-sharp included, while the others struggled. He urged students to listen for her and to hear her records with Terry Gibbs. He also remembered a recital where he played Chopin’s Revolutionary Etude and Tommy Flanagan played something more complicated.

Interview: Detroit and after4:375:125:48The last train to Monk: an interview18:36

Asked whether there was a Detroit piano sound, Barry said he wasn’t aware of one at the time, though he agreed there is a similarity between Tommy Flanagan and Hank Jones. He traced it to having learned properly from strong local players such as Will Davis.

Interview: Detroit and after7:31

The Detroit pianist Will Davis had a set ending he played at the close of ballads, and Barry pointed out that it was essentially the Giant Steps progression, used before that became a well-known tune. Barry himself said he never wanted to learn Giant Steps and had never really played it with a rhythm section.

Giant Steps in the piano class7:4813:3014:04Artists House Master Class Barry Harris - Student Interviews After Concert10:06

Barry said he felt for Tommy Flanagan, who had to play on the Giant Steps record. He thought Tommy did a hell of a job and wondered what he himself would have done in that spot back then, since Coltrane had practised the tune for a long time before recording it. In the same talk he said bass players need to learn more about chord progressions.

Giant Steps6:226:548:01

As house pianist at a Detroit bar, the Rouge, Barry worked a week with Lester Young. What he remembered most was that Lester counted off tempos just by moving his shoulder.

Interview: Bird, Hawkins, Monk and New York8:2310:40Barry Harris- Jazz Master, Educator, Saint6:287:01

He also worked a week with Flip Phillips, whom people pigeonholed as the honking tenor player of Jazz at the Philharmonic, though Barry found he could really play. At the Bluebird in Detroit Barry accompanied many visiting artists for a week at a time, Nancy Wilson among them.

Interview: Bird, Hawkins, Monk and New York8:23The Spirit of Bebop24:36Piano Jazz with Marian McPartland6:42

One of Barry’s first jobs on the road was leaving town with Ruth Brown and Willis ‘Gator Tail’ Jackson. He remembered Detroit as full of great places: Billie Holiday played the Flame Bar, and he saw a singer he called Carmen perform at the Rouge. He also recalled Soupy Sales, on whose show Barry and the other musicians appeared every time they came to play Baker’s Keyboard Lounge.

Piano Jazz with Marian McPartland7:1638:34

Barry was known before he ever left Detroit: New York pianists such as Sonny Clark and Walter Davis came to town looking for him. Musicians began calling him to New York to make records even though he didn’t want to leave Detroit; he thought Benny Golson was the first, and he also recorded with Thad Jones.

The Spirit of Bebop25:11Interview: Detroit and after2:56Ep.3 | Everything no one has ever told you about jazz | Barry Harris1:081:40

After Clifford Brown and pianist Richie Powell were killed in a car accident, Barry and Donald Byrd joined Max Roach’s band. When Harold Land left, Sonny Rollins came in, so the group was Byrd, Rollins, Barry, George Morrow and Max Roach. Barry called it a very good band and regretted that, as far as he knew, nobody ever recorded it.

Ep.3 | Everything no one has ever told you about jazz | Barry Harris1:402:14Interview on Italian television5:045:39

Barry graduated from high school in 1947 but mostly came to New York only in 1960, later than Marian McPartland had assumed. He sometimes wished he had come to New York back then, because he missed hearing many players there in the 1940s.

Piano Jazz with Marian McPartland13:3414:12

When the Detroit players finally moved to New York they came in force, twenty to thirty of them by Barry’s estimates, and he said they all made it as musicians because they came from such a strong musical background.

The Spirit of Bebop25:44Interview: Detroit and after1:45

Barry placed Art Tatum in the 1930s, the era of stride: Tatum was like a big band by himself and needed no drummer. Bud Powell arrived as the big bands were breaking up into small groups, though Bud could stride too. Barry noted that Jaki Byard was a teenager in the 30s, while he himself was one in the 40s, the era of Bird and Bud.

Interview: Detroit, Bud Powell and the shuffle10:10The last train to Monk: an interview17:1417:52

Barry passed on a story from a pianist he knew about the old days at a bar where the pianists would gather and take turns at the piano, one starting a song and then handing it on to the next. Art Tatum, Barry said, was too much for all of them: he came in and played everything, in every key.

On Bill Evans and other pianists2:112:46

Barry spoke with awe of the pianist Chris Anderson: you had to see him play to understand how he did a song and how he voiced a tune. Barry said he had never heard anyone play like that in his life, and that when Anderson played, Barry felt as if he had never played the piano at all. He mentioned that they had done Stella by Starlight with Anderson.

Stella by Starlight4:094:465:56

Barry mentioned an arrangement that only Walter Davis could play all the way through, while he himself could manage only fragments. Walter had an ear Barry said he could not match, and Barry admitted he could not transcribe the way people do now.

Practising the sixth diminished scales24:5425:37

Barry named a piano teacher in Holland, who had recently died, as one of the greatest musicians he had met, someone who really knew things. A photo shows the two of them on a park bench looking like brothers. About twenty pianists in Holland, Barry said, all came from this one teacher.

Interview on Italian television14:09

Barry told listeners who revere Miles Davis that some of Miles’s best playing was with Charlie Parker. He recommended a record with Paul Chambers, Donald Byrd, Phil Woods and Art Taylor, saying Chambers takes a better solo on it than any he took with Miles. He also claimed Red Garland started playing chords up high because Miles was taken with Ahmad Jamal’s little devices, and he questioned the choice of tunes like Someday My Prince Will Come.

Believe: a talk to musicians46:1647:25

In a class, Barry played a recording with Phil Woods from around 1958. He said that when he first heard it he went to the piano and played right along with it, and he pointed the class to Paul Chambers on bass. He lamented that this music got lost: he had tried to keep it alive, but players such as Cannonball and Miles took over the scene, and, he said, we let them.

The 2016 workshop, part 3: Monk’s tunes, not his style27:1229:1730:2430:59

A colleague who had been friends with Cannonball since before he was famous recalled Cannonball telling him that Barry had quit the band, bringing in his uniform and handing it back. When Cannonball asked what was wrong, Barry told him he wasn’t going to play that kind of thing: the band had made three or four hit songs that had to be played, and Barry didn’t want to do that. The colleague told it as an example of how true Barry was to his art.

Barry Harris- Jazz Master, Educator, Saint1:452:172:49

Asked where the bassist should stand, Barry said right beside the pianist’s left hand, as it was all through jazz history. Bassists used to watch the pianist’s left hand because the pianist knows movement, how to get from one chord to the next. Many bassists today, in his view, know only roots and can’t tell whether the II chord of a II-V is a minor seventh or a minor seventh flat five.

Believe: a talk to musicians17:1721:2622:00

Barry made up the introduction to The Sidewinder, which was later used in a commercial, yet he never received anything for it. Jazz musicians, he said, get very few royalties or residuals; record companies report that old records still haven’t paid for themselves, so the public wrongly imagines jazz musicians are wealthy.

Interview: Bird, Hawkins, Monk and New York23:30

Gene Gee, speaking at Barry’s funeral, recalled a gig with Barry. When he asked what they would play, Barry only said he knew some tunes. Just before they went on, Barry played a phrase at the piano and had Gene play it back, then another, and another. That became the first tune of the set: it had no name, and Barry had made it up on the spot and taught it by ear.

Barry Harris Funeral43:07

Gene Gee also remembered a studio session where Barry played Cherokee alone for about 20 minutes straight without ever repeating himself. He needed no bass or drums: he was his own rhythm section.

Barry Harris Funeral44:15The Great Pianist Barry Harris’ Funeral At Abyssinian Baptist Church In Harlem30:45

Barry’s travelling companion described his unusual hands: his thumb sat at a much wider angle than most people’s and his fourth finger reached far out, so he could stretch an eleventh. That reach let him play voicings nobody else could. His touch had a huge range, from drawing thunder out of the piano to playing light as a feather.

Barry Harris Funeral1:03:071:03:411:04:23The Great Pianist Barry Harris’ Funeral At Abyssinian Baptist Church In Harlem49:37

A funeral speaker who came to Jazzmobile in 1968 at Billy Taylor’s invitation to learn piano, and had Barry as teacher there, later became a pianist for Barry’s choir and for his vocal solos. The speaker also noted having had the same classical piano teacher as Barry, Sophia Rosen.

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A student described Barry’s character. He was fantastically intelligent and used to pose puzzles, for instance asking a student whether she would rather have a million dollars or a penny that doubles every day for a month, knowing that two to the 30th power is more. He was generous: he expected students to come to class even if they had no money, and sometimes gave money, unasked, to students he thought needed help.

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