Music
Barry Harris
1929–2021 · jazz pianist, composer, educator
Detroit bebop pianist whose family home was a jam-session school for a generation of the city's jazz musicians, and who became one of jazz's great teachers.
- Born
Detroit, Michigan- Died
North Bergen, New Jersey
aged 91- Birth name
- Barry Doyle Harris
- Detroit years
- 1929–1960
- Field
- Music
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Barry Harris was born in Detroit, the fourth of five children. His mother was a church pianist who asked him whether he wanted to play church music or jazz, and he chose jazz. As a young man he played dances at his high school and in local clubs and ballrooms, and he counted future Motown founder Berry Gordy among his friends. The Harris family home became a favorite jam-session spot for young Detroit players such as Roland Hanna, Sonny Red and Donald Byrd, and Harris became an informal teacher to many of them, passing on the language of Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk. Through the 1950s he stayed in Detroit, recording there and working with visiting stars including Miles Davis, Sonny Stitt and Thad Jones. In 1960 he left to tour with Cannonball Adderley and settled in New York, where for six decades he taught workshops that shaped jazz musicians around the world.
Highlights
- Mentor to Detroit players including Donald Byrd and Curtis Fuller
- Worked in Detroit with Miles Davis, Sonny Stitt and Thad Jones
- Toured with the Cannonball Adderley Quintet (1960)
- NEA Jazz Master (1989)
- Renowned teacher of the “Barry Harris method”