Tadd Dameron
piano, composer
Composer, arranger and pianist from Cleveland, a leading writer of bebop; Barry admired his arranging, recorded the album Barry Harris Plays Tadd Dameron, but says he never really knew him.
- mentions
- 4
- recordings
- 3
- Barry speaking
- 2
What Barry says
Barry calls Dameron special to everybody, above all as an arranger, and says he himself tried to learn to arrange like him.
He hears something particular in arrangers from Ohio. Writers few people know, such as an alto player named Willie Smith (not the famous one), who arranged for Little John and his Merrie Men, and Bugs Bauer all arranged alike, and Dameron is the peak of that sound.
Barry Harris on WKCR-FM ¶426Barry Harris on WKCR-FM ¶428Victor L. Schermer (interviewer); Barry Harris, Barry Harris: Iconic Jazz Pianist and Keeper of the Flame ¶23
Asked whether he followed Dameron’s records as keenly as Bud Powell’s and Bird’s, Barry doubts it, but says he listened a good deal because he liked the arrangements.
Barry Harris Plays Tadd Dameron, the record with Gene Taylor, was a project Barry wanted to make, simply to play Tadd’s many beautiful songs. When the interviewer calls it his favourite, Barry says he himself prefers the live Jazz Workshop record.
Barry Harris on WKCR-FM ¶417Barry Harris on WKCR-FM ¶418Barry Harris on WKCR-FM ¶432
He never really knew Dameron and never came into contact with him, though he might have met him without remembering. He did know Willie Smith, whose tunes were very much in Dameron’s style, and went to Cleveland to record songs from Flower Drum Song for him, a session never released.
Barry Harris on WKCR-FM ¶436Victor L. Schermer (interviewer); Barry Harris, Barry Harris: Iconic Jazz Pianist and Keeper of the Flame ¶23
At the 2005 North Sea festival Barry announces a Dameron tune before his Monk, then teases people who think you should play only original music: if Bach, Beethoven and Chopin were alive, the concert halls, which play dead composers, would not book them, so they would be jamming in a corner bar. Dameron, he adds, wrote quite a few songs.
Barry Harris Trio - 2005-07-08, North Sea Jazz Festival, Netherlands42:4043:1544:19
In his own words
Tadd Dameron was very special to everybody. There was something about Tadd Dameron, that’s why I wanted to try to learn how to… one tries to learn how to arrange like Tadd Dameron.
They all arranged alike. There’s something very similar… There’s something about Ohio, I don’t know… And Tadd Dameron is the epitome of it.
It was one I wanted to do. Because Tadd wrote a lot of beautiful songs. So to get a chance to play his songs, that’s all.
No, I never really knew Tadd Dameron. I never came into contact with him.
Every mention
4 moments in the recordings, 2 of them Barry speaking. Each says who is talking.
Barry Harris Trio - 2005-07-08, North Sea Jazz Festival, Netherlands
Interview: Bird, Hawkins, Monk and New York
- 30:14
Speaker unclear
Caption ‘Ted Dam’: Duke Jordan plays Dameron on the Columbia LP I Remember Bebop.
Barry Harris Spanish TV
- 15:04
Someone else
Spanish TV narrator says Barry names Dameron as another key musician in his formative years.
In the interviews and notes
Barry tells Ted Panken that Dameron was very special as an arranger, that he tried to learn to arrange like him, and that Dameron was the high point of a whole Ohio way of arranging.
Asked by Panken whether he ever met Dameron, who died in 1965, Barry says he never really knew him and cannot remember meeting him.
Barry Harris on WKCR-FM ¶433Barry Harris on WKCR-FM ¶434Barry Harris on WKCR-FM ¶435Barry Harris on WKCR-FM ¶436
Asked about his 1975 Xanadu album of Dameron’s music, Barry says he never knew him, but knew a Cleveland writer, Willie Smith, whose tunes and arrangements had the same special touch; Barry recorded an unreleased Flower Drum Song session for him.
Victor L. Schermer (interviewer); Barry Harris, Barry Harris: Iconic Jazz Pianist and Keeper of the Flame ¶22Victor L. Schermer (interviewer); Barry Harris, Barry Harris: Iconic Jazz Pianist and Keeper of the Flame ¶23
Leroy Williams says Barry’s students tell him about the record of Barry playing Dameron, and that hearing it he finds Barry like Dameron: both loved beauty.
Ted Panken (interviewer); Tommy Flanagan, Tommy Flanagan ¶127
The producer Don Schlitten calls Barry Harris Plays Tadd Dameron probably Barry’s most popular record in Japan, reissued there four or five times, and one of his own favourites. He thought of the albums they made together as Tadd, Bud and Barry.
Ted Panken (interviewer); Tommy Flanagan, Tommy Flanagan ¶179Ted Panken (interviewer); Tommy Flanagan, Tommy Flanagan ¶180Ted Panken (interviewer); Tommy Flanagan, Tommy Flanagan ¶182
The workbook for Barry’s second workshop video builds a solo on the Lady Bird changes, with a ‘Lady Bird turnback’ and a scale outline of Dameron’s tune.
Cleary lists Dameron’s Lady Bird among tunes built on major ii-V and ii-V-I progressions that can be outlined with the seventh scale of the V chord, as Barry teaches, plus the major scale for the I chord.
Tom Cleary (University of Vermont), Root systems ¶4Tom Cleary (University of Vermont), Root systems ¶5Tom Cleary (University of Vermont), Root systems ¶6
A forum member points to the original arrangement of the head of Lady Bird as a good study of the move Barry calls the sixth on the fifth.
Halfway through transcribing Barry’s first chorus on Hot House from Plays Tadd Dameron, a forum member has not yet found a phrase clearly derived from the rules of Barry’s method, and warns against starting from theory.
De Lima saw Barry’s trio play with the tap dancer Jimmy Slyde in Toronto in 2007, with a programme full of tunes by Parker, Gillespie, Powell, Monk and Dameron.
Recordings that name them
Barry’s performances and records in the archive that credit or name them.
- Barry Harris Trio Plays Tadd Dameron2021, 42 min YouTube
- Barry Harris Trio - Live at Clasijazz (Full concert)Almería, 2014, 1.7 h YouTube
- Barry Harris Spanish TVMadrid, 1988, 47 min YouTube
Method ideas nearby
Ideas of the method taught in the classes where they come up, with how many mentions fall in each.