Joe Harriott - Swings High [1967]

mp3 320



The Jamaica-born alto saxophonist Joe Harriott is one the greatest legends of British modern jazz's first wave. There weren't many, but Harriott's searing sound would have stood out anywhere - and did, even on New York's 52nd Street in Charlie Parker's day.

The Parker connection is particularly pertinent to this set, which has the tinny recording qualities of a 1940s Dial or Savoy Bird classic, with the same fierce attack - as if the player were about to burst out of your speakers.

Harriott had already made his pioneering free-form recordings years before this 1967 date, and it represented an odd throwback to the standard- and song-based repertoire the saxophonist's hard-bop group was playing a decade before. An alert and sympathetic band - including pianist Pat Smythe, bassist Coleridge Goode and a scalding Phil Seamen on drums - holds the line, while an obscure trumpet player, Stu Hamer, delivers some taut and telling bop solos.

The compositions are striking, too, in a deviously extended way. But Harriott himself is absolutely enthralling: delicate as teardrops on A Time for Love, almost as wilful and raw-nerved as Parker on Blues in C, razor-sharp and urgent on the uptempo Shepherd's Serenade. A real gem.