On the eve of his keenly anticipated Ronnie Scott’s concert, jazz master Donald Harrison talks about his love affair with London, learning from Art Blakey, and applying quantum theory to jazz. “I’m always pinching myself,” says the New Orleans saxophone magus whose storied musical odyssey has taken him from bebop to hip-hop and all points in between.
On 4th November, Ronnie Scott’s plays host to a master musician from New Orleans – “Big Chief” Donald Harrison. The much-feted 64-year-old alto saxophonist and composer has a one-night stop-off in London as part of a short European sojourn that will also see him and his US band play dates in Paris and Barcelona. But it’s London that Harrison has a special relationship with. Although his first headline set at Ronnie’s occurred two years ago, he’s been visiting Soho’s iconic jazz club since the 1980s.
“London is the home base for me in Europe because I spent so much time there with Art Blakey,” he says, recalling his time as a twenty-something musical apprentice learning his trade in the legendary master drummer’s long-running band, The Jazz Messengers. “We’d start a tour by playing two weeks at Ronnie Scott’s, then go into Europe for two months, and then return to Ronnie Scott’s for the last two weeks,” he says. “So basically each tour, we spent a month in London. I became very acquainted with the city, fell in love with the people, and loved everything about it.” He adds: “I feel a kinship with the people of London. It’s my town and I’m always looking forward to coming back.”
Harrison returns to Ronnie Scott’s fronting a quartet comprising pianist Dan Kaufman, bassist Noriatsu “Nori” Naraoka, and drummer Joe Dyson. “All of us are students of music,” affirms Harrison, “and we try to take the knowledge and the understanding of all the past generations and move that forward to these times.”
The saxophonist says his young musical cohorts are well-versed in all aspects of jazz history, a pre-requisite for playing in his band. “Dan is a person who understands Herbie Hancock, McCoy Tyner, and Bud Powell as well as Jelly Roll Morton and Duke Ellington,” he says of his pianist. “If you don’t study the history of the music, you can’t play what we call Nouveau Swing or even Quantum Improvisation from the right perspective.”
Harrison is equally enthusiastic about his Japanese-born award-winning bassist Nori Naraoka, who is a virtuoso of both the acoustic and electric versions of the instrument. “What really makes me proud of him is he’s the first bassist I’ve ever met who in my estimation is the most complete bass player in terms of studying the history of the music and paying attention. He understands what bebop is and has done his homework.”
The saxophonist also waxes lyrical when asked to describe his drummer Joe Dyson. “He really has a great capacity for understanding the history of the music and then putting different things together,” says Harrison. “He has all of these patterns going on the ride cymbal in the most natural way, mixing up jazz, soul, salsa ride, and reggae. He found something new by mixing all of those styles together on the drums in a natural way, where it’s seamless and makes sense.”
In recent years, Harrison has been making records that explored what he calls Quantum Improvisation, a theory he came up with in tandem with physicist Dr Stephon Alexander, which resulted in the saxophonist recording multiple versions of the same song in different styles. His download-only singles ‘The Magic Touch’ and ‘The Art Of Passion’ find Harrison reworking a tune in different guises, ranging from hard bop barnstormers and sensuous smooth jazz grooves to sinewy funk and even trap hip-hop. Explains Harrison: “Studying quantum theory helped me to work this new idea of multi-genre singles, because all music uses the same twelve notes, uses the same harmony, uses the same rhythm, but you just changed it for the universe they’re in.”
Rewinding to his formative years, Harrison reveals he had no desire to play the saxophone as a child. “It was my father’s decision,” he discloses. “He purchased it for me when I was in elementary school. He was passing a music store in New Orleans and saw an alto saxophone in the window. I played it for a little while because it was novel and then put it in the closet.”
The sax remained in the closet untouched until Harrison was a teenager. After being smitten by Grover Washington Jr’s catchy R&B instrumental hit, ‘Mister Magic,’ a proto-smooth jazz touchstone produced by Bob James, fifteen-year-old Donald went to the closet and pulled out the dusty sax. “I taught myself ‘Mr. Magic’ and my father, hearing it, gave me some Charlie Parker records to listen to.”
An architect of bebop, a complex, revolutionary mode of jazz that sprang up in the mid-1940s and blew the big band swing era away, Charlie Parker – or “Bird,” as he’s known to his disciples – was renowned for his melodic and harmonic fluency. Harrison quickly became hooked. “I fell in love with Charlie Parker, and I’ve been what they call chasing the Bird ever since,” he laughs. Harrison also fell under the spell of other musicians, like Sidney Bechet, John Coltrane, and Wayne Shorter, but especially Miles Davis. “I’m heavily influenced by Miles,” he confesses. “Miles changed the perception of the trumpet. It was always a vibrato instrument before he came along but he found a sweet spot that was caressing and soothed the listener. I think I’m the first saxophone player who tried to replicate the sound of Miles Davis on the saxophone.”
Growing up in New Orleans, the birthplace of jazz, Harrison was steeped in music from an early age. Immersed in the Big Easy’s “second line” tradition of jazz parades and funeral marches, he was also introduced via his father, Big Chief Donald Harrison Sr, to the secretive tribal culture of the Mardi Gras Indians who gathered at Congo Square, an iconic New Orleans location and a place of cultural significance for African Americans. “Congo Square was the only place in North America where people of African descent could participate in their homeland culture,” explains Harrison, who succeeded his father as the Big Chief of Congo Square. “I call it an offshoot of African music in America. So that’s the reason why New Orleans jazz is the way it is. Almost every generation of our music has that as the root contributor to its sound.”
As a young man, Harrison left New Orleans, travelling 1500 miles northeast to Boston, where he studied at the prestigious Berklee College Of Music. It brought him into the orbit of the legendary drummer, Roy Haynes, who became a mentor to the young saxophonist. Haynes was impressed by the teenage upstart from the Big Easy. “He could hear that I loved Bird in my playing and told me, ‘Bird has been born again,’” recalls Harrison.
Haynes, a versatile musician who had played with everyone from Louis Armstrong to avant-garde magus Eric Dolphy, took Harrison under his wing. “One of the things that I truly love about him is that he was open-minded,” recalls Harrison. “He said, ‘Music comes from everywhere.’ He would tell me even the way somebody walked and the way crowds moved was music.” He adds: “One of the main lessons I learned from him was the idea that music is connected to the universe and everything you see and feel.”
Harrison also impressed bebop saxophonist Sonny Stitt, who described him as “the finest young alto player I’ve heard.” “He was really encouraging, says Harrison. “He’s one of the guys I studied. I tell all of my students to start with Sonny Stitt before Bird. He’s one of the greatest ever. Anytime a person of his caliber says something like that about me, it just gives me more inspiration to keep playing and tells me that maybe I’m on the right path.”
After leaving Berklee, in-demand Harrison was faced with a dilemma. Should he join avant-garde pianist Cecil Taylor’s group or sign up for a stint in Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers? “I decided to go with Art Blakey,” explains Harrison, “but Cecil was also a person who was grooming me for his idea of what music should be. I stayed friends with him until he left us. He was a big influence. Besides helping me to understand what he was doing, he helped me to find myself.”
Nicknamed the “Hard Bop Academy” because of all the great young musicians that had graduated from its ranks, The Jazz Messengers was a veritable jazz institution. Led by drummer and life-lesson guru Art Blakey – whose mantra was “Jazz washes away the dust of everyday life” – the long-running group that had begun in the mid-1950s, introducing the world to such formidable young lions as Lee Morgan, Benny Golson, Bobby Timmons, Wayne Shorter, Freddie Hubbard, Wynton Marsalis and many other luminaries who went to make an indelible mark in jazz history.
“There’s so many things that Art Blakey (pictured left) gave me and all of the people who played with him,” gushes Harrison. “Just being on the bandstand with him, you learned what swinging is about. If you don’t learn how to swing from Art Blakey, then you can’t learn it.”
Harrison has nothing but good words for Blakey, who died in 1990 and led the Messengers for nearly 40 years. “He’s one of my musical fathers,” he states, adding that the sage-like Blakey taught his young charges more than just music. “He taught us how to be human beings because he gave to all of us and asked for nothing in return.”
Blakey set an inspiring example to Harrison, who like the drummer was driven by a mission to pass his knowledge down to younger generations of musicians following in his wake. Those he has taught and mentored range from his nephew, the noted trumpeter Christian Scott, to guitarist Mark Whitfield, bassist Christian McBride, singer/songwriter/pianist Jonathan Batiste, and surprisingly, even the gangsta rapper, The Notorious B.I.G., whom Harrison knew when he was known by his real name Christopher Wallace. “I taught him how to rap jazz and bring positive ideas to hip hop,” he says. “I’m always pinching myself because I’m saying you can’t plan to teach a young guy about music and help him grow as an MC where he becomes the king of East Coast rap.”
Harrison also recalls with fondness how Blakey didn’t dissuade him from moving from bebop into smooth jazz and pop-tinged instrumental music. “I told him, ‘Jazz people are gonna kill me for doing this so maybe I shouldn’t do it but he said, ‘No, you have to do it because you have to follow your musical path so you can be the best that you can be as a musician. If you have the talent to do it, you have to do it.’”
Harrison admits he was surprised by the drummer’s enthusiastic openmindedness. “You would think that Art Blakey, one of the pinnacle musicians in bebop and acoustic jazz, would tell you not to do it, but he was the one who told me I had to do it,” he laughs. He recalls that Blakey was not a dyed-in-the-wool blinkered bebopper stuck in the past but had an eye fixed firmly on the future. “Sometimes, we used to go to discos together,” he laughs. “And he would ask us to play synthesizer at a gig. People don’t really understand Art Blakey like the people on the inside,” he says, painting a portrait of the bandleader and master drummer that would amaze many jazz fans.
After leaving Blakey, Harrison joined forces with fellow ex-Messenger, trumpeter Terence Blanchard to co-lead on several collaborative recordings, initially for Concord and later for Columbia Records. “Terence and I had a great time,” enthuses Harrison. “We both had a different concept but we were able to respect each other’s ideas and explore together with great rhythm sections that were cutting edge at the time.”
Their debut album, 1983’s New York Second Line infused East Coast hard bop with a pronounced New Orleans flavour. “I don’t think Terence liked it initially,” laughs Harrison, “but we were supportive of each other. So when I brought the tune ‘New York Second Line’ he sort of smirked as if to say ‘This is silly,’ but then he played it, and later fell in love with the concept of adding New Orleans music to modern jazz in New York. It became a thing in New York where a lot of musicians started playing the second line beat.”
An outlier in their shared discography came in the shape of Remembered Live At Sweet Basil, a 1986 tribute to progressive jazz titans Eric Dolphy and Booker Little. The project saw them join forces with jazz veterans who had played with Dolphy and Little back in the early ‘60s: pianist Mal Waldron, bassist Richard Davis, and drummer Ed Blackwell, all bonafide jazz giants. “It took a while to formulate in my mind what was going on,” laughs Harrison. “I understood at the time how to play with them but now I really have an understanding further than I had at that point. I still remember the lessons I got from playing with those guys … I wish I could play with them now.”
New Orleans drummer Ed Blackwell, who rose to fame playing with Ornette Coleman in the early ‘60s, in particular, fascinated young Harrison, deepening his knowledge of rhythm. “I’m still growing from the experience of playing with Ed Blackwell, who helped me to understand his drum concept while playing it and teaching it to me on the drum set,” he says. “He had a way of playing meters against meters. I’ve never heard anyone besides him talk about how to play a lot of meters simultaneously. He explained and got me to understand it. I know in African music and New Orleans music you have multiple meters, but he took it to the next level and it sounded so natural.”
Learning from the masters he worked, Harrison was able to distill elements that he had gleaned from them into his own sound. He blossomed as a solo artist in 1997 when he joined the rejuvenated Impulse! label where he debuted with Nouveau Swing, a groundbreaking album that became the talk of the jazz world. It was a fusion of different jazz styles, past and present, delivered with a fierce contemporary focus.
“That was that was Art Blakey’s idea coming to fruition,” Harrison explains. “When I was playing soul music, I had the revelation that I could mix modern dance music and soul music with acoustic jazz. Out of that came Nouveau Swing.” He adds: “If I hadn’t played smooth jazz, I would have never come up with Nouveau Swing. It’s a remarkable testament to Art Blakey’s wisdom that I stepped on out there and found something new.”
Harrison lives by his idol Charlie Parker’s dictum: “If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn.” He believes that every experience, good or bad, in life and music, provides musicians with the tone colours they paint with. Above all else, you must invest time and effort to achieve anything of worth or merit. He calls it due diligence. “One of the first lessons I tell my students is, if you think of music as a bank account, remember, you can’t take out anything you didn’t put in,” he shares. “So do the work. Just get up every day and do something with the music where you’re growing, and then people are gonna see the results of your work. It’ll be undeniable.”
In the last forty years, Harrison has worked diligently, honing his sound, nurturing numerous young proteges, and evolving into a revered master musician. In 2022, he received one of jazz’s biggest honours when he became a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Jazz Master. Previous recipients of the award included Dizzy Gillespie, Count Basie, and Harrison’s beloved mentor, Art Blakey. “It’s joyous and something I wasn’t even thinking about getting because I never thought I’d be acknowledged like that in my lifetime,” confesses Harrison. “It really shows me that people were watching, because a lot of times it feels like you’re on an island by yourself. I’m trying to live up to the standard of the previous generations who have been given that award.”
But Harrison is no stranger to official recognition. In 2019, he was made a chief by the Queen of the Democratic Republic of Congo, an honour that he felt re-connected him with his African forbears. “I felt it was a full circle moment in my life because as a person of African descent in America, our connections to our families were taken away. It’s wonderful that they feel that I’m connected to them and they can see that the torch over the place my ancestors came from is still alive in me, no matter what happened. It’s amazing to be a chief on two continents.”
Those who don’t follow jazz might recognise Harrison from his cameo role in Treme, the acclaimed HBO drama series set in New Orleans which ran for four seasons between 2010 and 2013. He played a fictional musician but in a humorous twist, was able to keep his real name. “It was (writer and program creator) David Simon’s joke that he would have me in scenes and the other people would be explaining musical ideas I came up with,” laughs Harrison. “It was fun for me to work with great actors and learn how to put a scene to life.”
Reflecting on his long and storied career, Donald Harrison takes great pride in what he’s achieved but the overarching feeling he projects is humility. He’s a cog in the wheel, a link in the ever-evolving chain that combines his New Orleans cultural heritage with the jazz continuum. “I’m trying to take the lessons that I learned from Art Blakey and all the great gentlemen and ladies I played with did and just pass it on,” he says. “They were portals to other universes.”
Donald Harrison Jr will appear on stage at Ronnie Scott’s on Monday, November 4th at 8.30 pm
https://www.ronniescotts.co.uk/find-a-show/big-chief-donald-harrison
https://donaldharrison.com/big-chief-donald-harrison
