Joe Harriott

Joseph Arthurlin Harriott (15 July 1928 – 2 January 1973) was a Jamaican jazz musician and composer, whose principal instrument was the alto saxophone.

Initially a bebopper, he became a pioneer of free-form jazz.

He was part of a wave of Caribbean jazz musicians who arrived in Britain during the 1950s, including Dizzy Reece, Harold McNair, Harry Beckett and Wilton Gaynair.

Born in Kingston, Jamaica, Harriott was educated at Alpha Boys School, an orphanage in the city.

At Alpha he learned to play the clarinet, the instrument that was assigned to him shortly before his tenth birthday.

He took up the baritone and tenor saxophone while performing with local dance bands, before settling on the alto saxophone.

During the 1950s, he had two long spells with drummer Tony Kinsey's band, punctuated by membership of Ronnie Scott's short-lived big band, occasional spells leading his own quartet and working in the quartets of drummers Phil Seamen and Allan Ganley.

However, the majority of his 1950s recordings were as a sideman with the musicians previously mentioned, also backing a diverse array of performers, from mainstream vocalist Lita Roza, to traditional trombonist George Chisholm, to the West African sounds of Buddy Pipp's Highlifers.

He had some loose free-form ideas by the mid-1950s, but finally settled upon his conception in 1959, after a protracted spell in hospital with tuberculosis.

At first he struggled to recruit other like-minded musicians to his vision.

Indeed, two of his core band members, Harry South and Hank Shaw, left when these ideas surfaced.

He finally settled on a line-up of Shake Keane (trumpet, flugelhorn), Pat Smythe (piano), Coleridge Goode (bass) and Phil Seamen (drums).

Born in Kingston, Harriott moved to the United Kingdom as a working musician in 1951 and lived in the country for the rest of his life.

Harriott arrived in London in the summer of 1951, aged 23, as a member of Ossie Da Costa's band.

British subjects did not require work permits or immigration visas at that time.

When the band had completed their tour, Harriott decided to stay in London.

He caught the attention of London's jazz scene while sitting in at the Feldman Club on Oxford Street on 26 August 1951.

Like the majority of alto players of his generation, he was deeply influenced by Charlie Parker.

Harriott developed a style that fused Parker with his own Jamaican musical sensibility - most notably the mento and calypso music he grew up with.

Even in his later experiments, Harriott's roots were always audible.

However, it was his mastery of bebop that gained him immediate kudos within the British jazz scene upon his arrival in London.

Harriott began recording under his own name in 1954, releasing a handful of EPs for Columbia, Pye/Nixa and Melodisc throughout the 1950s.

He formed his own quintet in 1958, and their style of hard-swinging bebop was noticed in the United States, leading to the release of the Southern Horizons and Free Form albums on the American Jazzland label.

Harriott also appeared alongside visiting American musicians during this period, including a "guest artist" slot on the Modern Jazz Quartet's 1959 UK tour.

By now firmly established as a bebop soloist, in 1960 Harriott turned to what he termed "abstract" or "free-form" music.

He recorded three albums in this vein: Free Form (Jazzland, 1960), Abstract (Columbia (UK), 1962) and Movement (Columbia (UK), 1963).

Les Condon temporarily replaced Keane on trumpet in 1961, while Seamen left permanently the same year, his place taken by the return of the quintet's previous drummer, Bobby Orr.

Frank Holder toured with Harriott and contributed to recording projects during this period.

Harriott's free-form music is often compared to Ornette Coleman's roughly contemporary breakthrough in the United States, but even cursory listening reveals deep divisions between their conceptions of "free jazz".

Indeed, there were several distinctive models of early free jazz, from Cecil Taylor to Sun Ra.

Harriott's was another of these.

His method demanded more complete group improvisation than displayed in Coleman's music, and often featured no particular soloist.

Instead of the steady pulse of Ornette's drummer and bass player, Harriott's model demanded constant dialogue between musicians, which created an ever-shifting soundscape.

Tempo, key and meter always free to alter in this music, and often did so.

The presence of Bill Evans-inspired pianist Pat Smythe also gave the band a completely different texture to Coleman's, which had dispensed with the need for a pianist early on.

Harriott's own playing style underwent some changes during this period, dispensing with orthodox bebop lines in favour of more angular, cut up phrasing.

What remained however, was his lyricism, searing tone and sense of attack.

Harriott was always keen to communicate his ideas, be it on stage, in interviews or album liner notes.

In 1962, he wrote in the liner notes for his Abstract album, "of the various components comprising jazz today - constant time signatures, a steady four-four tempo, themes and predictable harmonic variations, fixed division of the chorus by bar lines and so on, we aim to retain at least one in each piece. But we may well, if the mood seems to us to demand it, dispense with all the others".

On August 3, 1963, the Joe Harriott Quintet featuring Mike Falana was appearing at the Marquee in Oxford Street.