Home » Jazz Articles » Interview » Billy Harper: A Life of Persistence and Improvisation
Billy Harper: A Life of Persistence and Improvisation
Over the last few years, a lot of that energy is expressed on stage with the Cookers, a star-studded septet that has been burning up the scene, gaining fans and critical acclaim. Harper is blowing his best among comrades
Billy Hart
drumsb.1940
Eddie Henderson
trumpetb.1940
George Cables
pianob.1944
Cecil McBee
bassb.1935
Donald Harrison
saxophone, altob.1960
David Weiss
trumpetb.1964
Gil Evans
composer / conductor1912 - 1988
Max Roach
drums1925 - 2007
Lee Morgan
trumpet1938 - 1972
Charles Tolliver
trumpetb.1942
Randy Weston
piano1926 - 2018
Thad Jones
trumpet1923 - 1986
Mel Lewis
drums1929 - 1990
Art Blakey
drums1919 - 1990
It's a career where Harper, a born musician who started singing while in diapers, has shown remarkable persistence. A self-taught saxophonist in the beginning, he honed his chops so well that he eventually entered the prestigious music program at North Texas State University. But it was during a time of segregation and there were tough things to deal with. Harper persevered. He won out.
"I got into jazz completely, which meant improvisation, which was the way I learned to live," says Harper, a congenial sort who's thoughtful and forthright. "Improvising all the time. It was not just music. It was the way. That is my life. It might be a funny thing to say, but I feel like I am the music. I don't mean I'm the only music, but I am music. That's how much it is a part of me, or I'm a part of it. I really feel like the music. I think that other musicians who are playing represent the music. They are the music also... Whenever writers say sometimes, 'jazz is dead.' I think that's a conspiracy or something. As long as it's in the musicians, the music is there. It's where I live."
Harper, 71, who released his first album Capra Black in 1973 (Strata East), also leads his own quartet and is working on the release of a DVD that will feature his sextet performing with 60 voices. Using voices is a natural progression for someone who came up in the Houston area singing in the church and thought he would be a singer or an actor before the saxophone pulled on his coat.
The Cookers have four albums out and this year's Time and Time Again (Motema) is outstanding. The band is tight, the writing strong (three songs by Harper) and the soloists bright and expressive—as they have all been throughout their careers.
"It's great. Everybody's played together at one time or another," Harper says. "Everybody has their own group. Among those guys, they've either played with
Freddie Hubbard
trumpet1938 - 2008
Stan Getz
saxophone, tenor1927 - 1991
"That's probably one of the reasons the group works so well," he said of the dynamic group feel of the band. "We also know the history in the same way. Many of the young guys don't know the history of getting a sound and a purpose. Power. When I say that, I mean I played with Art Blakey. Eddie played with Art Blakey too. I played with
Elvin Jones
drums1927 - 2004
Herbie Hancock
pianob.1940
Harper has been a major voice on the saxophone for decades, but the singing thing—that was first.
"When I was crawling, my uncle said I was trying to sing something from
Ella Fitzgerald
vocals1917 - 1996
Walking home from school, Harper used to pause in front of an instrument shop and gaze into the window. He didn't know what the gold-tinged horns were, but they captured his imagination. One, the trumpet, only had three valves. The one that held more mystique was the curved one with many more accoutrements. "I wanted to play that. What I wanted for Christmas from that time on was a saxophone," laughs Harper. "And a horse... No, I didn't get the horse."
When he got his hands on the sax, Harper taught himself. He would listen to records with an uncle who was a fan. Again, there was a vocal aspect. "He loved to put the words in solos and things like that," says Harper. "I learned a lot of that jazz stuff and concepts from starting with him at a very young age. I learned to hear really well at that age. I was playing stuff by
Sonny Rollins
saxophoneb.1930
Horace Silver
piano1928 - 2014
John Coltrane
saxophone1926 - 1967
Kenny Dorham
trumpet1924 - 1972
As he progressed, Harper was playing the blues and working and making money at the age of 16. Jamming in high school made him better and better. But he knew it was a long road. "There was a terror down there by the name of Don Wilkerson," he recalls. "He did a record called 'Texas Tornado' or something [Texas Twister, Riverside, 1960]. Everybody was afraid to sit in with him. But I was only in high school I heard him and my goodness. A whirlwind."
"But the time I got to college I met
James Clay
saxophone, tenor1935 - 1995
Don Cherry
trumpet1936 - 1995
Wes Montgomery
guitar1923 - 1968
Ray Charles
piano and vocals1930 - 2004
Billy Higgins
drums1936 - 2001
Red Mitchell
bass1927 - 1992
After high school, a friend told him about the outstanding music program at North Texas State University and Harper was game to give it a try.
"But when I got there, things were still segregated. There were 10,000 students and 100 blacks at the time. So the living quarters, dorms, were not open to black guys. The ladies had started integrating the dorms. While I was there, we went through all the demonstrations, sitting in and all that stuff. They finally moved us into apartments on the campus," says Harper.
And there were times of trouble.
"There was a Confederate fraternity. Whew. I remember. A lot of times, friends of mine would get beat up when they'd come from Dallas late at night. We went through that stuff," he recalls. But such was his focus, his persistence, that he did not let the distractions interfere with his studies. "I was totally into the music. So the other stuff was happening. It was going to happen. So let's get to it [the music]. Although I remember one night sleeping and a big bright light was all around the apartment. I came out to the door and there was a cross burning across the street... Yeah. I didn't forget that place. It had good and bad."
He says the musicians at the school were cool. Many were from the north and some of them had already played in big bands like
Woody Herman
band / ensemble / orchestra1913 - 1987
Stan Kenton
piano1911 - 1979
He got there in 1966 and found the going rough at first.
"When I first got to New York, it seemed like something really bad happened, then something really good. The first thing that happened is I borrowed $100 from a friend to get to New York. I just had $100, and I stayed in a hotel the first night. That took almost all the money. I had a little money left over and I put it in my [sax] case. I'm looking for another place that's cheaper. I happened to accidentally drive by Third Avenue and Eighth Street and saw that
Thelonious Monk
piano1917 - 1982
McCoy Tyner
piano1938 - 2020
Cedar Walton
piano1934 - 2013
Harper laughs pleasantly as he thinks back. "And I didn't know anybody. That's the way I started... It went like that for a while. It certainly made me stronger and more focused. I had to get away from those material things. I didn't know it was, in a way, an advantage. Because I felt so terrible all my stuff was gone. I was really tied to that stuff, so it was good to get untied."
One of the first good things was meeting
Gil Evans
composer / conductor1912 - 1988
Before the Gil Evans gig, however, there was some baptism by fire. "It wasn't easy," he says with humor, not complaining. "It was a struggle. Most of the guys that were playing at the clubs didn't necessarily want new people there, trying to take over their jobs. I had a hard time."
The young Harper went into Slug's nightclub one night to meet Elvin Jones. "I was just a little square guy. I said, 'Mr. Jones, I'm Billy Harper from Texas and I'd like to sit in with you.' He said, 'Noooo.' [chuckles] Like he was going to jump on me or something. [chuckles] OK, OK. I came from Texas, man. People were kind if you could play. Friendly. He was all this nasty stuff. I later realized he was drunk much of the time, when he couldn't get the drugs... We became buddies later. So I came the second night and he said the same thing. But I knew I could play. After North Texas State bands and playing with Clay, I knew I could play. There wasn't even a doubt. I was bold enough to ask the same thing the next night."
Harper went in the next two nights and was also turned down, but not as vehemently. He heard about a rehearsal the drummer was holding and showed up. He helped Jones carry the drums in and out of the hall. But the next night at Slug's, he was put off. Persistent? The following night, Harper walked in and didn't bother to ask. He sat down. At the third set, he was called to the stage.
"When I got up to play though, Elvin jumped off the drums and
Philly Joe Jones
drums1923 - 1985
Hank Mobley
saxophone, tenor1930 - 1986
"I didn't know what to do. I just kept playing. That's all I knew. I started to play, so I'm going to play. I closed my eyes and was into my own thing and just kept playing, just like I was performing. The way I would play if they were playing with me. Pretty soon the people started clapping. Philly had to come in. So the band came in and they were screaming. It was like everybody planned a trick for me or something. But the audience didn't know. That's the way I met Elvin and Philly. When I finished playing, Philly said, 'Man, you can play, but you play so long.' [chuckles] And he's the one who caused the whole thing."
It was an incident that other musicians started hearing about, which helped get Harper's name around. Another was a stroke of good fortune when he became part of an NBC television special called "The Big Apple."
"It was about a few people's first experience in New York. I was one. Because Kenny Dorham told them about me, so they got me as the jazz musician. There was the boxer, Jerry Quarry. He had a section. There was a business person, an opera singer, a model and a jazz musician. I was the one. So I was on television. They were filming how I would try to sit in. Life with me. I thought it was a big thing at the time. I had been trying to survive and sometimes I had to eat sandwiches with cheese, no meat."
They were filing segments of his life around the city and wanted some footage from the Village Vanguard. "But the Vanguard wouldn't even let them in to film. It would have been good for the Vanguard to have that. So they said, 'OK. why don't you put your own band together? We'll let you film it.' So, I was smart enough to think: OK, I'll do that. I got Elvin on drums, Freddie Hubbard on trumpet, McCoy Tyner on piano,
Reggie Workman
bassb.1937
There was a call from Blakey. Work with Evans. And soon he was working with the first-rate Thad Jones/Mel Lewis band.
"Things tied together real nice. And
Max Roach
drums1925 - 2007
Thad Jones
trumpet1923 - 1986
Mel Lewis
drums1929 - 1990
Donald Byrd
trumpet1932 - 2013
The Texan was now playing with many of the people he'd listened to on records in Houston. His own recording career developed and he led his own bands. All of the sitting in, taking some lumps, improving, and climbing up the ladder paid off. It shows in his playing. And it something not always found in younger players, who don't see opportunities to mentor with big bands, or with jazz veterans.
"Now you have a lot of the young guys playing. They play well, but that connection to the soul of the music that the Cookers have is not there," says Harper. "They're more academic. Or experimental. That's what if feels like to me."
Harper also taught at Rutgers University in New Jersey for a time and these days does some teaching at the New School in New York City. But performing is what he prefers. In addition to the Cookers, he leads a group consisting of
Freddie Hendrix
trumpetb.1976
Francesca Tanksley
pianob.1957
Aaron Scott
drumsClarence Seay
bass, acousticHe also works in a duo with
Randy Weston
piano1926 - 2018
"We did it in New York at St. Peters Church, December, 31, 2012. It came out great," he says. It's not the first project with voices. A few years back, he did one with a Polish choir [Billy Harper In Concert: Live from Poland Arkadia, 2007]. "That was the first idea. I've done it Pittsburgh, New York and will probably do this abroad too. The only way to be able to do it is to use the choir from that location. Somebody called me from Portugal. So if we do that, then we'll use their choir... I also have a small vocal group and we scat. So the scatting group does the first thing. Then my group. Then the 60 voices. More voices are added to the scatters and we do my stuff with the 60 voices. The scatters do some bebop stuff also, other than just my stuff. Something by Monk, something by Freddie Hubbard, then mostly my stuff."
So persistence has paid off. Lovers of Harper's sound—warm, welcoming and dashing all at once—are glad.
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Interview
R.J. DeLuke
Jason Byrne, Red Cat Publicity
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