You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - First Take Friday: Barry Harris

Episode Date: December 10, 2021

In memory of legendary pianist and educator Barry Harris, sit with Adam and Peter as they listen to the first track, All The Things You Are off of the Barry Harris Trio 1959 album Breakin' It Up.Listen to the tune hereShare a memory of Barry Harris or have a question for us? Leave us a SpeakPipeSupport the pod by spreading the word with the link youllhearit.com Learn more about Open Studio Pro: openstudiojazz.com/proInterested in more music advice? Go here to browse our catalog of jazz lessons and courses available for purchase. And be sure to check out our All Access Pass - every course from Open Studio on every instrument.Let us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel.Follow us on Twitter | Instagram

Mattamanus. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to The You'll Hear a podcast. Music advice and inspiration and today honoring a true legend. We certainly are, Peter. Today is First Take Friday, a day in which we usually listen to a new track by a new artist or newer artist. And we've been doing Grammy nominated artist this year. So we catch up on our Grammy. Getting our Grammy game on. Our Grammy game, yeah. But we just learned, as we're recording this, Wednesday, December 8th, we just learned that this morning, the amazing Barry Harris has passed away. And so we thought, let's ditch what we were going to do and just listen to some Barry Harris and enjoy. Exactly. I mean, what a way, no better way to celebrate the amazing career and life of this giant of jazz piano, a huge giant of jazz education, probably the greatest,

jazz educator ever. Easily. Easily. Easily. And then, you know, one of the foremost prognosticators and teachers and just connection to the lineage of bebop, you know, specifically. But then just one of the most beautiful pianist, you know. Amazing pianists.

To ever put his hands on the key. So we're going to miss you, Sir, Barry Harris, but we celebrate your life. That's right. You know, with your music and you're certainly going to be talked about. And most importantly, live. listened to for a very long time. Yeah, you mentioned education, man. I had the unbelievable opportunity to sit in on a couple of his live masterclasses when I was a student in New York City. And I'll tell you what, guy should have been getting a paycheck from

GE because he was given out so many light bulbs for people those days. I mean, he just has this way, had this way of connecting great musical ideas, ways to think about music and music theory that are so applicable for an improviser, so practical for unlocking things that seem complex and making them simple and easy to understand and then easy to improvise with. And isn't that what great improvisation teachers should be able to do? It is not to make things more complicated, but to give you clarification. Listen, we have no problems as jazz pianist making things complicated. That's right. That's kind of what we do. We start from that place. That's where we start from from an over-complification of things.

And the master Barrett Harris would always go right to the simplest way of doing things in a way that would make everything much, much, much clearer for the student. And so, yeah, just lots of love and appreciation. And like you said, man, the music itself, that's where the real lessons are. But I, no, I totally agree. I mean, the music, but also, as we say, the ability to gift to anyone who will listen this unlocking of different concepts is so powerful because it's just like, you know,

if you give somebody the key to an Airbnb or a vacation home, hey, go use my cool beachside home, that's great. But what Barry Harris did is like, here's a key, this actually works potentially in thousands of different situations. Once you understand how this key works, and I'm going to show you that, and I'm going to demonstrate it for you with love, you know. So now you have a key that can unlock something wherever you go,

every beach front home in every different country. And so there's a certain, you know, grace and generosity with which Barry Harris, you know, it's almost as an educator, it's almost like you have the potential, just like great teachers, you know, at different levels, have this ability to affect the world in a way that's like a thousand X

what even a great performer could do. Totally. You know, and a lot of times, now, of course, he was doing both. So it's even more so. A lot of times, you know, people get caught up on this, you know,

those that can do, those that can't teach. And I would just say to any idiot who's ever said that, Exhibit A, Mr. Barry Harris. Yeah, one of the great players and certainly the greatest teacher. So with all that said, let's listen to some Barry Harris. So, you know, this is first take Friday.

So we want to still say true to the theme of the feature here. So we're going to listen to the very first track from Barry Harris's very first album as a leader. This is from his album, I'm breaking it up on the Argo label. This is William Austin on the bass and Frank Gant on the drums. The very first track, 1958.

He was 29 years old. And the very first track is all the things you are. Let's have a listen. And now this is my first time hearing this record. So it's truly a first take Friday. Yeah, I don't know it very well at all. I've heard it maybe once or twice. It's kind of browsing through his catalog once I got Spotify is what we all

But yeah, I know, I more know that live that we were talking about from the very next record. Yeah, live at the Jackson's workshop. Yeah, that was around the same time. Just a couple years later. But how beautiful is that? And the language is already there, even though this is first language. So, or his first record? Sure.

Like, I mean, it's, you know, he was really, he was still in his 20s when he made this. Yeah. And it's very much like, yeah, I mean, his style is just so set already. Yeah. Right. And then his understanding of the, not only obviously, understanding of the bebop vernacular, but like the implementation over it, over a classic tune like this. Totally.

Yeah. It's so complete already. I loved that the use of that dominant chord on the, on the A flat every time. Like he just went right to it straight away every time. And yeah, his, his voice is already there. I did a video for Open Studio about some Barry Harris language, actually from, from the very next record there, the live at the jazz workshop.

I did it on Star Eyes. And I call that video Barry Harris' piano poetry. And he really is a poet in that what poets are so great at is not just, here's this fancy word, right? It's like they can take seemingly ordinary language and make it elevate it to a place that's beyond what, you know, a mortal English

speaker or writer can do. And I feel like that's what Barry's gift really is here is, again, taking things like, I mean, he's not playing like the same kind of language Eric Dolfi's playing. Right, right. You know what I mean? It's a very inside-the-pocket kind of language. And the way that he places it and phrases it and just works it through is so beautiful. It is he's like a poet, you know?

I know, it's like you hear him using very, you know, for lack of a better word, standard rhythmic phrases, you know, and ways of starting phrases and getting into them and developing them. There's nothing that's like, whoa, what was that he did? But the overall effect is, whoa, what is, you know, like the beauty of it, like, like, like a poet. You know, it's like whether you're using the same words that we would use, they don't necessarily have to use any fancy words that we don't know, but it's the execution of them.

And I think that was really something, you know, and the few times I got to see Barry Harris perform live, that was what always just took me the grace and elegance of what he was playing. You know, definitely would get very, you know, he would delve as he went through a solo. Like it was, there was always a story there. It was never just like playing bebop, you know. It was like that bebob vernacular was there,

but there was always some story that was going. So it was like you really would be. awarded by turning your ear in by listening. And then there's a lot of really cool pianistic things happening there all the time. Oh, yeah. Technical things that are really fun and really serving the music and serving what, you know, what his stories are. Yeah, one of those technical things we were just talking about a couple of posts from Jason Moran,

amazing pianist in his own right, on Barry's passing and shared a clip. I saw him share a clip of Barry in a master class talking about piano technique and saying, you don't need to use all the big muscles in your fingers to make a sound. Like, who's the better pianist? The pianist that can play five notes with five movements, or the pianist that can play five notes with one movement. And you can't see that listener, but I just kind of swooped my hand la Barry. He used to, when I played his master class, he had me, I smoked at the time,

smoked cigarettes, and he had me take my pack of cigarettes and put it in my hand so that I could move my fingers. and you would say play with this. And you can hear that, like you said, some of the like the doggy, like that's just, that's just a turn of the wrist, you know, and he's not moving anything. And that gets him that very smooth sound.

Yeah. And it sounds, he makes it sound so easy and so graceful. But there's a, there's a lot of kind of, you know, control and finesse. And mostly just, you know, vision that he had for what he wanted to sound like.

And then the, you know, the discipline to develop the technique to go after and to be able to execute, you know, at a very high level. Yeah, I was just thinking, you know, you mentioned Jason Moran. He, I just will read a tweet because I think it so elegantly describes. It's just such beautiful. Talk about poetry. It's pretty good.

Barry's eyes, we were lucky to have these eyes hone in on the piano. He made a sound so glorious, curious, and probing. Each characteristic phrase connected like a double helix. coated in the armor of bebop, Barry Harris spread the gospel to us all. Champion of the intros, rest. I was going to say that, but... I know.

I'm like, Jason, I mean, how did he do that, like, without... That would have taken... I couldn't have ever written it, but it would have taken me a week of, like, working on it to come up, and he wrote this. Because he's a brilliant, brilliant person.

But, yeah, I love this coded in the armor of bebop. Very has spread the gospel to us all. Because that was a big part. I mean, he was, he wasn't just, content to like sit back and place them get stuff and wait for people to ask him, how did you do that? You know, you spread in the gospel. And he was always probing. He was always curious.

We just had our open house a couple weeks ago, Peter. And we had our friend Chris Parks, who has his own YouTube channel called Things I Learned from Barry Harris, which is a great channel. And Chris has studied with Barry for decades. And he, we're talking about Barry's chromatic scale, which is so genius. And this is something Chris Parks said,

I think Barry, like kind of, of came up with this idea on how to approach the chromatic scale in like the late 90s, early 2000s when he was in his 70s. You know, still thinking about like, how can we talk about the chromatic scale? Like, which is actually, it's a very cool concept. But, man, it's like we all should be so curious and so open and willing to learn things and explore things well into our twilight years, you know. Absolutely.

Amazing stuff. So he was so productive. You know, that's another thing. I love artists that, and often there's a overlap between just extraordinary artists and beloved artists and super productive artists. Totally. By productive, I don't just mean just creating a bunch of crap, of course, but in terms of like, you know, coming up with new concepts that are helpful to people. I mean, he was very helpful, very giving, you know what I mean? Yeah, absolutely.

And so, like, these concepts that start to get spread around and then other people take that same guy. gospel and then spread that around. So, like, you're producing a lot of information that that young musicians need to hear, you know. I mean, just think of Barry Harris. I mean, I remember the jazz workshops back in the 80s when they had the, I think it was the cultural center or the jazz cultural center where he used to teach at it's like a bunch. I mean, Greg Hutchinson and a bunch of young players came up there, you know, I mean, similar, I think, to what Billy Higgins was doing in L.A.

With the younger musicians, I mean, when you're getting this correct, not only correct, but inspired and correct information to the youngans. I mean, that's beyond a public service. That's like a humanity service. So great. Yeah. So, so great. So, thank you, Barry Harris for Barry Harris.

And rest in peace, rest in power. And thank you for the continuing gifts. Should we float on out with some more Barry Harris? Yeah, let's float on out with that bluesy what we started with. That sounded great. Here we go. You'll hear it.