Home » Jazz Articles » Album Review » Joe Harriott: Swings High

3

Joe Harriott: Swings High

By

View read count
Joe Harriott: Swings High
Like many players who are primarily thought of as "experimental" and/or "free form"—and virtually all of the best of them—the Jamaican-born, later London-based alto saxophonist Joe Harriott was also a master of straight four/four jazz and Great American Songbook balladry. Yet in 2022, Harriott (1928-1973) is almost exclusively remembered either for his adventures in Indo-jazz fusion with the violinist John Mayer and, separately, guitarist Amancio D'Silva, or his own harmolodic-esque, but not Ornette Coleman-beholden, albums such as Free Form (Jazzland, 1960) and Abstract (Columbia, 1962), both, incidentally, remastered and reissued in 2021 on Free Form & Abstract Revisited (ezz-thetics).

Harriott's roots were in bop, however, a style he revisited from time to time. Swings High, first released in 1970 and in 2022 remastered from the original vinyl and reissued by Cadillac, is one such album. Fronting a quintet completed by trumpeter Stu Hamer (the lesser known brother of trumpeter Ian Hamer), pianist Pat Smythe, bassist Coleridge Goode and drummer Phil Seaman, Harriott offers eight tracks which range from bop (the furiously paced original "Tuesday Morning Swing"), through hard bop (trumpeter Dizzy Reece's quirky "The Rake" and "Shepherd's Serenade"), through the blues (the originals "Just Goofin'" and "Blues In C"), through R&B retentions (Harry South's "Strollin' South") and exquisite ballads (Johnny Mandel's "A Time For Love" and Jimmy Van Heusen's "Polka Dots And Moonbeams").

Harriott's passionate, astringent sound stamps his mark on all the material, and the music is lifted by a superb band. Seamen, who set the great Ginger Baker on the high road to jazz (in more than one sense), was undoubtedly the best of Britain's hard bop drummers and Goode, another Jamaican-born player, who passed aged 100 years in 2015, was one of the country's all-time finest bassists. Smythe, an upper class Scot who was a protégé of Harriot's and who passed in 1983, deserves to be better remembered. So, too, Hamer, whose muted trumpet lights up "A Time For Love" but who, sadly, was out for the other ballad, the Harriott feature, "Polka Dots And Moonbeams." (There seems to be no YouTube footage from Swings High, but the clip below provides a great taste of Harriott the balladeer.)

Track Listing

Tuesday Morning Swing; A Time For Love; The Rake; Blues In C; Shepherd’s Serenade; Polka Dots And Moonbeams; Strollin’ South; Just Goofin’ (Count Twelve).

Personnel

Album information

Title: Swings High | Year Released: 2022 | Record Label: Cadillac Records

Tags

Comments


PREVIOUS / NEXT




Support All About Jazz

Get the Jazz Near You newsletter All About Jazz has been a pillar of jazz since 1995, championing it as an art form and, more importantly, supporting the musicians who make it. Our enduring commitment has made "AAJ" one of the most culturally important websites of its kind, read by hundreds of thousands of fans, musicians and industry figures every month.

Go Ad Free!

To maintain our platform while developing new means to foster jazz discovery and connectivity, we need your help. You can become a sustaining member for as little as $20 and in return, we'll immediately hide those pesky ads plus provide access to future articles for a full year. This winning combination vastly improves your AAJ experience and allow us to vigorously build on the pioneering work we first started in 1995. So enjoy an ad-free AAJ experience and help us remain a positive beacon for jazz by making a donation today.

More

Tramonto
John Taylor
Ki
Natsuki Tamura / Satoko Fujii
Duality Pt: 02
Dom Franks' Strayhorn
The Sound of Raspberry
Tatsuya Yoshida / Martín Escalante

Popular

Old Home/New Home
The Brian Martin Big Band
My Ideal
Sam Dillon
Ecliptic
Shifa شفاء - Rachel Musson, Pat Thomas, Mark Sanders
Lado B Brazilian Project 2
Catina DeLuna & Otmaro Ruíz

Get more of a good thing!

Our weekly newsletter highlights our top stories, our special offers, and upcoming jazz events near you.

Install All About Jazz

iOS Instructions:

To install this app, follow these steps:

All About Jazz would like to send you notifications

Notifications include timely alerts to content of interest, such as articles, reviews, new features, and more. These can be configured in Settings.