Remembering "Eddie Who?"
by Taylor Atkins
In early November, jazz lost one of its great talents and great minds,
when tenor saxophonist/inventor/comedian/singer/author/keyboardist/philosopher
Eddie Harris died. A product of the brilliant Chicago music scene in the
middle of the century, Eddie followed in the large footprints of Johnny
Griffin, Gene Ammons, and Bennie Green, and grew up with people like bassist
Richard Davis and Sun Ra Arkestra reedist John Gilmore. He enjoyed a number
of pop hits in the 1960s--which was rare back then (and even more so now)--with
his version of "Exodus," his latin funk composition "Listen
Here," and "Compared to What" with Les McCann. His music
was incredibly diverse: he modestly maintained that he had never played
anything but jazz, but a listen to the Rhino compilation Artist's Choice:
The Eddie Harris Anthology will prove that Eddie Harris' "jazz"
encompassed a number of musical flavors. In spite of his commercial and
artistic successes, Eddie realized that he was not among the best-known
or most respected of jazz musicians. But his sense of humor compelled him
to mock his lack of fame rather than bemoan it: he used to perform on stage
with a t-shirt that said "EDDIE WHO?"
While my wife and I were in Japan doing an extended tour of the jazz
scene there, we had the pleasure of meeting and spending a day with Eddie
and his wife Sally. I met them initially at the annual Swing Journal awards
ceremony in January 1995, then caught Eddie with John Scofield's quartet
at the Tokyo Blue Note. In our conversation with them we discovered that
they had spent a week in Tokyo, yet no one had offered to show them anything.
So we volunteered. Never having spent much time with "celebrities,"
we weren't quite sure what to expect, but Eddie and Sally were two of the
most gracious and enjoyable people we've met. We saw some interesting sites
that day, but the conversations we had were much more engrossing. In tribute
to Eddie Harris, I would like to share some of our memories of this unsung
giant of jazz.
Eddie and Sally have been all over the world, and they took one powerful
lesson from their experiences: don't eat the food. We assumed they might
like to try something different, and were racking our brains to think of
some Japanese cuisine that they would find palatable, but when they saw
McDonald's the search was over. Eddie insisted that he always could trust
the Golden Arches wherever he went.
Yet the Harrises were anything but parochial. A lot of musicians are
so focused on their art that they are relatively uninformed about anything
outside of music. But Eddie was a voracious reader and analytical thinker.
He shared a number of his theories with us that day, on topics ranging from
history to religion to art to food. He was one of those people who felt
compelled to work out an explanation for any phenomenon, to dissect and
solve any problem. His mind was active and his interests were broad. His
music reflected this erudition.
Eddie felt that one of the reasons he did not receive the same kind of
recognition as some other major jazz artists was that he just did not fit
the stereotype of the jazz musician. He never did drugs; he stayed married
to the same woman for years; he had a happy and "normal" family
life. He told me that some musicians resented him for not getting high with
them. "They'd say, 'You think you're better than us, don't you?' I
said, 'You go on and do what you want to do; it's none of my business. But
I'm not going to do it,'" Eddie said. Moreover, he was very much a
free thinker, someone who was willing to challenge some of the jazz culture's
most cherished heroes and myths. For instance, he was not enthralled with
some of John Coltrane's more abstract work, and said so. Eddie felt that
the choices he made and the opinions he held hurt his chances to enter the
jazz pantheon.
Yet Eddie turned what might have been a source of bitterness into a joke.
"Eddie Who?" loved to test the audiences to see how far they would
go to imitate their heroes. On a tour of Europe once, he wondered if he
wore some ridiculous getup on stage, would it create a fad? He tried it,
wearing some strange hat he bought at a thrift store, and sure enough, future
audiences picked up the fashion. Eddie had a sense of humor that was never
dormant, and Sally could keep right up with him. They were constantly teasing
one another and cracking each other up. There was one sore point, however;
I asked Eddie about his standup comedy album, which is rife with expletives,
and Sally rolled her eyes. She was obviously not amused with this particular
excursion.
We tend to think our artists should be a little "off," that
if they don't have some serious personality defect, emotional scar, or eccentricity
then they're not that great. With that in mind, it was a joy to meet a creative
artist who was also a well-balanced person. We feel blessed to have gotten
to know the Harrises, and urge everyone to check out Eddie Harris' music.