Eddie Harris - Live At Newport (Atlantic)

Poor Eddie Who?. In the years since his death, the musician has all but vanished within the hall of mirrors that was the several personae he buffed to a high polish over the course of a long, habitually frustrated career. For a subsequent generation of saxophone players, Harris has perhaps been most influential as the author of several instructional texts. Paid tribute by the Beastie Boys ("So Wat'cha Want", Check Your Head), many listeners still know his as a freak crossover hit-maker for "Theme from 'Exodus'", "Listen Here", and "Compared To What?". As Ray Stevens was a zany oracle to many Red State Americans in he 1970's, so was Eddie Harris to African-American audiences of the decade. For those who also bought Parliament / Funkadelic and Millie Jackson LPs, Harris was know primarily as the mastermind of records such as That Is Why You're Overweight, I Need Some Money and the "live" album The Reason Why I'm Talking Shit, which consists of (virtually) nothing but on-stage, off-color patter by the bandleader. (The latter remains as revealing a document of the "jazz life" as, say, Babs Gonsalez's various outsider crooner albums, or Art Pepper's autobiography Straight Life.) Established critics have tended to fixate on the overtly comedic aspects of Harris work, as well as his pioneering use electronics, and dismiss him as a medicine show trader in gimmicks and shoddily-cast frivolities. The situation is not likely to be improved given the fact that Harris' mature work for the Atlantic label has been safeguarded to chop-shop labels. Important documents such as The In Sound, The Electrifying Eddie Harris, Free Speech and Excursions have drifted in and out of print in the digital era, sometimes with inferior remastering, sometimes with tracks abridged or removed altogether in order that two original albums can be crammed together on one 80 minute disc.

Live At Newport (from 1970) is one album to be treated to rough handling, yet, even in its current format, it offers one of the best introductions to Eddie Harris in all his audacity: as an experimenter whose passions are proximate to those of contemporary musicians as diverse as The Bad Plus, John Butcher, David Murray and Otomo Yoshihide. "Children's Song" opens with Harris yodeling through a delay switch -- spoofing Leon Thomas? -- and taking a solo that is nothing more than the amplified sound of his saxophone pads clicking open and shut. Sure, it is something listeners to free improvisation have heard countless times, but, I'd wager, probably never in this particular context. "Carry On Brother" is one of Harris' very best funk pieces, a showcase not only for his estimable skill at crafting deceptively simple solos but for drummer and former AEC-associate Robert Crowder as well. "Don't You Know The Future's In Space" is an almost unclassifiable opus in three movements. The first is fast, pseudo-modal jazz, full of harmonic indirection. After some fine work by Jodie Christian on electric piano and a drum solo, tempo is dis-established and the band references Bitches Brew, with Harris sounding rather Miles-ish on trumpet. Finally, the band hits -- bull's-eye! -- a funky groove, and here Harris exploits the potential of his Varitone shamelessly, making his tenor saxophone sound like a baritone attached to a fuzz box and a wah-wah pedal. Rude and colorful stuff. Harris was never one to waste notes, though, as "South Side" demonstrates,. "South Side" also offers evidence that he knew his Coltrane backwards -- mostly backwards -- and forwards. "Walk Soft" has a brief, characteristically loping theme that is so catchy the saxophonist can dispense with it immediately, and his solo emerges directly from the melody. Here is Eddie Harris as James Brown, telling the band how and where to start, but also three steps ahead of them at every turn.

Predictable comparisons that aim for street cred aside, however, the truth is that Harris had deep and awkwardly tangled roots in the Chicago jazz community of his time: the Chicago of Sun Ra, Von Freeman, the Chess Brothers, and the AACM. No dubious distinction, Harris helped invent "soul jazz" by modernizing -- read: "streamlining" -- many of the features of hard bop, perhaps most crucially, by realigning it metrical patterns in accordance with polyrhythms. An attempt to separate the riffs of pieces such as "Freedom Jazz Dance" and "Olifant Gesang" from their very individual syncopations is ultimately an exercise in frustration, but it is valuable insofar as it reveals reveals an elusive and Escher-like intelligence on the part of the composer. It is just that Harris' medium is not Euclidean geometry, but an African-American musical vernacular. So, although not true funk, Harris' music, no matter how hard it drives, often opens up into the same spaciousness. As for his tenor saxophone tone, I suppose one could side with those who have remarked that it is somewhat scrawny, but I like to think of it as being a classically, idiosyncratically broad-shouldered Chicago tenor sound, only more light and darting in its athleticism. Scottie Pippen, not Dick Butkus. Eddie Who? was also the most gifted Varitone player in jazz; and don't laugh, either, as Harris' accomplishments on the electronic saxophone are every bit the equal of Miles Davis' on his plugged-in trumpet. In fact, his contributions as an instrument builder are still awaiting proper recognition. The saxophone-style mouthpieces Harris designed for trumpet and trombone were intended to be a boon to brass players; at the conclusion of this record, you can hear Harris give an explanation of just how to the Newport audience. Yet this generosity of spirit seems slightly at odds with Eddie Harris the professional musician. As Iain Lang wrote of Fats Waller, a figure whom he resembles in a number of other respects (though not gastronomically), so it could be said of Harris: "on the stage, [he] played brilliantly, yet never too brilliantly... He accepted that there was no paying audience for the best he had to give." Eddie Harris did almost always kept something in reserve. And, as Waller's are, some of Harris' most memorable performances are very public struggles with the formulas mass produced by his own popular success. So The Little Tramp -- clever but hungry and ill-starred – pitches himself against the modern assembly line all over again, and the attrition that results from waging this losing battle leads to a rather sad, cynical detente.

By the time of this 1970 Newport performance, Eddie Harris had already paid his dues in full, but I'm not sure he ever lost that feeling of being an apprentice. By which I mean to say that I think Eddie Harris never really broke out of the circuit he imposed on himself as a working entertainer. Stand-up comedian, pop star, jazz improviser, funk godfather, Vegas act, educator, ringer... Until his death in the late 1990's, Harris moved among these roles just as he toured from city to city for three decades. Always the same cities, but, by virtue of the fact that they are visited at different times, not the same places. I wonder what the passage of time looks like from the perspective of one who just passes through. The glimpses are progressively more disheartening with each return. You arrive, you rest for a moment in comfort, you feel connected to this place. Yet, simultaneously, you understand that you have no real claim to intimacy with where you are. This place is just another distance seen in close-up, familiar, maybe, but not as familiar the sound of your conscience's voice. You know you really make no difference to this place. Although you need it, it has no use for you, only your absence; there will be someone else occupying this dressing room tomorrow. And suddenly you realize that all is callousness, and there is nothing you can do to alter, to restore, to develop what you see has happened here, and you accept it for what it is, until it has been utterly dismantled and your acceptance cannot settle anywhere anymore. And then where do you find yourself?