EDDIE HARRIS

Soul Jazz / Funk Jazz / RnB / Jazz Related Soundtracks • United States
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Eddie Harris (October 20, 1934 - November 5, 1996), was an American jazz tenor saxophonist. Although he was one of the most popular jazz musicians of his day (and the first to receive a gold record), his inclusion in his repertoire of types of music other than jazz and his incorporation of comedy into his act led many jazz critics to consider him insufficiently committed to jazz. His experimentation with other types of music sometimes had questionable results, but many still regard him as one of the great jazz musicians.

His first album for Vee Jay, Exodus to Jazz included his own jazz arrangement of Ernest Gold's theme from the movie Exodus. A shortened version of this track, which featured his masterful playing in the upper register of the tenor saxophone, was heavily played on radio and became the first jazz record ever to be certified gold.

Many jazz critics,
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EDDIE HARRIS Discography

EDDIE HARRIS albums / top albums

EDDIE HARRIS Exodus to Jazz (akaThe Soul Of Eddie Harris) album cover 4.50 | 3 ratings
Exodus to Jazz (akaThe Soul Of Eddie Harris)
Soul Jazz 1961
EDDIE HARRIS Jazz for Breakfast at Tiffany's album cover 0.00 | 0 ratings
Jazz for Breakfast at Tiffany's
Soul Jazz 1961
EDDIE HARRIS Mighty Like A Rose (aka Trip!) album cover 0.00 | 0 ratings
Mighty Like A Rose (aka Trip!)
Soul Jazz 1961
EDDIE HARRIS A Study In Jazz album cover 0.00 | 0 ratings
A Study In Jazz
Soul Jazz 1962
EDDIE HARRIS Goes to the Movies album cover 0.00 | 0 ratings
Goes to the Movies
Soul Jazz 1962
EDDIE HARRIS Bossa Nova album cover 4.50 | 1 ratings
Bossa Nova
Soul Jazz 1963
EDDIE HARRIS Half And Half album cover 0.00 | 0 ratings
Half And Half
Soul Jazz 1963
EDDIE HARRIS Cool Sax, Warm Heart album cover 0.00 | 0 ratings
Cool Sax, Warm Heart
Soul Jazz 1964
EDDIE HARRIS The In Sound album cover 4.50 | 1 ratings
The In Sound
Soul Jazz 1965
EDDIE HARRIS Cool Sax From Hollywood To Broadway album cover 0.00 | 0 ratings
Cool Sax From Hollywood To Broadway
Soul Jazz 1965
EDDIE HARRIS Mean Greens album cover 3.50 | 1 ratings
Mean Greens
Soul Jazz 1966
EDDIE HARRIS For Bird And Bags (aka Sculpture) album cover 0.00 | 0 ratings
For Bird And Bags (aka Sculpture)
Soul Jazz 1966
EDDIE HARRIS The Tender Storm album cover 0.00 | 0 ratings
The Tender Storm
Soul Jazz 1967
EDDIE HARRIS Here Comes The Judge album cover 0.00 | 0 ratings
Here Comes The Judge
Soul Jazz 1968
EDDIE HARRIS The Explosive album cover 0.00 | 0 ratings
The Explosive
Soul Jazz 1968
EDDIE HARRIS The Electrifying Eddie Harris album cover 4.05 | 2 ratings
The Electrifying Eddie Harris
Soul Jazz 1968
EDDIE HARRIS Plug Me In album cover 4.00 | 1 ratings
Plug Me In
Soul Jazz 1968
EDDIE HARRIS Pourquoi L'Amérique album cover 0.00 | 0 ratings
Pourquoi L'Amérique
Jazz Related Soundtracks 1968
EDDIE HARRIS Silver Cycles album cover 4.00 | 2 ratings
Silver Cycles
Soul Jazz 1969
EDDIE HARRIS Come On Down! album cover 4.00 | 1 ratings
Come On Down!
RnB 1970
EDDIE HARRIS Smokin album cover 0.00 | 0 ratings
Smokin
Soul Jazz 1970
EDDIE HARRIS Free Speech album cover 0.00 | 0 ratings
Free Speech
Soul Jazz 1970
EDDIE HARRIS Eddie Harris & Les McCann ‎: Second Movement album cover 4.25 | 2 ratings
Eddie Harris & Les McCann ‎: Second Movement
Soul Jazz 1971
EDDIE HARRIS Sings The Blues album cover 0.00 | 0 ratings
Sings The Blues
Soul Jazz 1972
EDDIE HARRIS Love...From A Horn album cover 0.00 | 0 ratings
Love...From A Horn
Soul Jazz 1972
EDDIE HARRIS Instant Death album cover 4.00 | 1 ratings
Instant Death
Soul Jazz 1972
EDDIE HARRIS Excursions album cover 4.73 | 4 ratings
Excursions
Soul Jazz 1973
EDDIE HARRIS E.H. In The U.K. album cover 2.67 | 4 ratings
E.H. In The U.K.
RnB 1974
EDDIE HARRIS Is It In album cover 4.00 | 2 ratings
Is It In
Funk Jazz 1974
EDDIE HARRIS I Need Some Money album cover 3.50 | 2 ratings
I Need Some Money
Funk Jazz 1975
EDDIE HARRIS That Is Why You're Overweight album cover 3.50 | 1 ratings
That Is Why You're Overweight
Soul Jazz 1975
EDDIE HARRIS Bad Luck Is All I Have album cover 0.00 | 0 ratings
Bad Luck Is All I Have
Funk Jazz 1975
EDDIE HARRIS How Can You Live Like That? album cover 0.00 | 0 ratings
How Can You Live Like That?
Soul Jazz 1977
EDDIE HARRIS I'm Tired Of Driving album cover 0.00 | 0 ratings
I'm Tired Of Driving
Soul Jazz 1978
EDDIE HARRIS Playin' With Myself album cover 0.00 | 0 ratings
Playin' With Myself
Soul Jazz 1979
EDDIE HARRIS Sounds Incredible album cover 0.00 | 0 ratings
Sounds Incredible
Soul Jazz 1980
EDDIE HARRIS The Versatile Eddie Harris album cover 0.00 | 0 ratings
The Versatile Eddie Harris
Soul Jazz 1981
EDDIE HARRIS Steps Up album cover 0.00 | 0 ratings
Steps Up
Soul Jazz 1981
EDDIE HARRIS Exploration album cover 0.00 | 0 ratings
Exploration
Soul Jazz 1983
EDDIE HARRIS The Real Electrifying Eddie Harris album cover 0.00 | 0 ratings
The Real Electrifying Eddie Harris
Soul Jazz 1983
EDDIE HARRIS Eddie Harris / Ellis Marsalis ‎: Homecoming album cover 0.00 | 0 ratings
Eddie Harris / Ellis Marsalis ‎: Homecoming
Soul Jazz 1985
EDDIE HARRIS Eddie Who? album cover 0.00 | 0 ratings
Eddie Who?
Soul Jazz 1986
EDDIE HARRIS People Get Funny... album cover 0.00 | 0 ratings
People Get Funny...
Soul Jazz 1987
EDDIE HARRIS There Was A Time - Echo Of Harlem album cover 0.00 | 0 ratings
There Was A Time - Echo Of Harlem
Soul Jazz 1990
EDDIE HARRIS Listen Here album cover 0.00 | 0 ratings
Listen Here
Soul Jazz 1993
EDDIE HARRIS Yeah You Right album cover 0.00 | 0 ratings
Yeah You Right
Soul Jazz 1993
EDDIE HARRIS For You, For Me, For Everyone album cover 0.00 | 0 ratings
For You, For Me, For Everyone
Soul Jazz 1993
EDDIE HARRIS Freedom Jazz Dance album cover 0.00 | 0 ratings
Freedom Jazz Dance
Soul Jazz 1994
EDDIE HARRIS Dancing By A Rainbow album cover 0.00 | 0 ratings
Dancing By A Rainbow
Soul Jazz 1995

EDDIE HARRIS EPs & splits

EDDIE HARRIS live albums

EDDIE HARRIS High Voltage album cover 4.50 | 1 ratings
High Voltage
Soul Jazz 1969
EDDIE HARRIS Live At Newport album cover 0.00 | 0 ratings
Live At Newport
Soul Jazz 1971
EDDIE HARRIS The Reason Why I'm Talking S--T album cover 0.00 | 0 ratings
The Reason Why I'm Talking S--T
Soul Jazz 1976
EDDIE HARRIS Live in Berlin album cover 0.00 | 0 ratings
Live in Berlin
Soul Jazz 1989
EDDIE HARRIS Live At The Moonwalker album cover 0.00 | 0 ratings
Live At The Moonwalker
Soul Jazz 1990
EDDIE HARRIS A Tale of Two Cities (Chicago and San Francisco) album cover 0.00 | 0 ratings
A Tale of Two Cities (Chicago and San Francisco)
Soul Jazz 1990
EDDIE HARRIS The Last Concert album cover 0.00 | 0 ratings
The Last Concert
Soul Jazz 1997
EDDIE HARRIS Live at Fabrik Hamburg 1988 album cover 0.00 | 0 ratings
Live at Fabrik Hamburg 1988
Soul Jazz 2022

EDDIE HARRIS demos, promos, fans club and other releases (no bootlegs)

EDDIE HARRIS re-issues & compilations

EDDIE HARRIS The Electrifying Eddie Harris / Plug Me In album cover 0.00 | 0 ratings
The Electrifying Eddie Harris / Plug Me In
Soul Jazz 1967
EDDIE HARRIS The Best Of Eddie Harris album cover 4.00 | 1 ratings
The Best Of Eddie Harris
Soul Jazz 1970
EDDIE HARRIS The in Sound/Mean Greens album cover 0.00 | 0 ratings
The in Sound/Mean Greens
Soul Jazz 1993
EDDIE HARRIS Artist's Choice: The Eddie Harris Anthology album cover 0.00 | 0 ratings
Artist's Choice: The Eddie Harris Anthology
Soul Jazz 1993
EDDIE HARRIS Exodus to Jazz / Mighty Like a Rose album cover 0.00 | 0 ratings
Exodus to Jazz / Mighty Like a Rose
Soul Jazz 1997
EDDIE HARRIS E.H. In The U.K./Is It In album cover 0.00 | 0 ratings
E.H. In The U.K./Is It In
Soul Jazz 1999
EDDIE HARRIS Eddie Harris Long Play Collection album cover 0.00 | 0 ratings
Eddie Harris Long Play Collection
Soul Jazz 2017

EDDIE HARRIS singles (0)

EDDIE HARRIS movies (DVD, Blu-Ray or VHS)

EDDIE HARRIS Reviews

EDDIE HARRIS Silver Cycles

Album · 1969 · Soul Jazz
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js
Eddie Harris built a solid reputation early in his career as someone who could turn out catchy soul jazz numbers that did well on Black radio stations. As he headed into the late 60s, Eddie, like so many others in the music world, felt a desire to branch out and experiment more. This desire to try new things came to fruition on Harris’s 1969 album, “Silver Cycles”. On this LP, Eddie established a new norm that would go on to mark much of the rest of his career as a tireless eclectic experimenter who was adept at many musical genres.

“Silver Cycles” opens with two excellent funky soul jazz workouts that I would imagine his record company insisted on placing first so that his long time fans would find what they were expecting. On third track, “Smoke Signals”, Eddie signals a definite left hand turn as this mysterious number paints an exotic atmosphere with wordless vocals and echoed saxophone lines. All through out this album Harris makes use of an Echoplex and also sometimes replaces his acoustic sax with the odd sounding electric sax. Side one closes out with, “Coltrane’s View”, which resembles “Naima”, and a sublime big band power ballade called “I’m Gonna Leave You by Yourself”. This last track is worth the cost of the entire album and one of the best songs of Harris’ lengthy career.

Side two is the more experimental side and features a lot of Eddie playing the saxophone by himself and building overlapping lines with his echo machine. His various rhythm sections (there are many guests on here) provide psychedelic fusion over drive on “Little Bit”, and insanely up tempo avant-garde bebop on “Infrapolations”, which bears some resemblance to “Giant Steps”. Musically “Silver Cycles” compares well to other experimental fusion records of the era from folks like Miles and Herbie, so why isn’t this album a well-known fusion classic? A couple things work against this album, the two colors only album cover looks cheap like a bargain bin album, and yes, Eddie’s albums tended to hit the bargain bin often and he seems to always have a cheap looking album cover. Another problem is the production, this album just sounds kind of flat in a way, but from a purely musical perspective, “Silver Cycles” is a gem in the late 60s world of psychedelic fusion.

EDDIE HARRIS Come On Down!

Album · 1970 · RnB
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js
Its hard to know what to expect from an Eddie Harris album as he is been known to play everything from pop to avant-garde. On some albums he will present his unique take on a certain genre only to cast that style aside for his next album. Such is the case on “Come on Down” where Harris and his crew explore the world of hippie style long winded soul/rock jams, and also throw in some very Harris styled exotic numbers as well.

The album opens with “Don’t You Know Your Future is in Space”, an excellent progressive big band/jet age pop extravaganza that combines George Martin with Don Ellis and Enio Morricone. Harris fans who are looking for that oddball exotica hit will be pleased with this one. “Live Right Now” features the band playing a classic 60s jam based on just one repeating riff played to death. Classic rock/RnB jam bands like the Allmans, Jimi Hendrix, Ten Years After and the Buddy Miles Express knew this style well and Eddie Harris makes this one burn with his intense constant double time rhythm solos. It doesn’t hurt that all star RnB bassist Duck Dunn is on board as well as Cornell Dupree on guitar. Side one closes out with a soft ballad that features some vocals by Eddie sung through his electric saxophone, which gives his voice a very strange reverb and “space-age” type effect. The great modern bop stylist Joe Diorio provides the guest guitar accompaniment on this one.

Side two opens with an old school RnB pop tune that finally settles into a jam section toward the end and the final two songs of the album return to the relentless rock jam style that makes up most of this LP. The album closer, “Why Don’t You Quit”, features that other popular hippie jam device, the 3 to 5 chord sequence that repeats forever. This form was given birth by songs like “Hey Joe” and “All Along the Watchtower” and was given a death blow by the overblown “Free Bird”. Anyway, towards the end of this jam Eddie plugs his electric sax into an echoplex and sounds like Jimi Hendrix, you go Eddie Harris.

Fans of Eddie Harris will not be disappointed in “Come on Down”, you get to hear his burning hot one time take on the flower power get down generation, plus a couple of his usual quirky one-of-kind classics. By the way, strange album cover, looks like it might be a joke on record companies who were reluctant to put African-American faces on their album covers, even the star performer.

EDDIE HARRIS The Electrifying Eddie Harris

Album · 1968 · Soul Jazz
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Eddie Harris put out a lot of albums during his lengthy career, some better than others, “The Electrifying Eddie Harris” is one of his best. Long time fans may at first mistake this album for a greatest hits package because so many of Harris’ best loved tunes are on here. The mix of music on here is typical for a late 60s Harris album; you get a couple hot proto-funk numbers, an experimental avant-garde workout as well as some pretty lounge music too. “Theme in Search of a Movie”, (by Charles Stepney) is one of the nicest melodies Harris has ever recorded, its twisting modulations backed by light shimmering strings and a subtle Latin beat have made it a classic favorite with the exotica crowd. “Listen Here” and “Sham Time” are the funk numbers and feature those short punchy call and response riffs that Harris is the absolute master of. In a career full of great funk jazz numbers, these two are some of Harris’ best.

On “Spanish Bull” Harris gets with the modern free crowd with a North African flavored modal jam in the style of Coltrane and Pharoh Sanders. The album closes with “I Don’t Want No One But You”, classic blues based soul jazz, the kind of music Harris built his early career on. Eddie Harris fans will want to get this one, it rates alongside “Is It In” as a career highlight.

EDDIE HARRIS E.H. In The U.K.

Album · 1974 · RnB
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The restless and exploratory Eddie Harris was always willing to try out something new and different, and such was the case when he decided to go to England in the mid-70s to record “E.H. in the U.K.” with some of the top names in British rock at that time including Albert Lee, Jeff Beck, Alan White, Stevie Winwood, Raymond “Boz” Burrell, Ian Paice and many more. Unfortunately, despite such an all-star cast, the results on here are mixed. Some cuts are OK, but most of the songs sound like the rock musicians are being a bit shy and holding back and the straight forward RnB/rock instrumentals Eddie provided don’t ever get a chance to take off.

The best cuts include “Wait a Little Longer” and “I’ve tried Everything” which sound like classic Harris instrumentals, but with more of a rock feel in the rhythm. Tony Kaye’s slightly out of tune Moog lends an interesting exotic flavor to the melody on “I Waited for You”. On “He’s Island Man” the band fumbles with a reggae rhythm to no avail. It sounds like drummer Ian Paice more or less has the island beat down, but bassist Raymond “Boz” Burrel is playing the bass line in a syncopated RnB style which totally turns the beat around. This one is a small disaster and was possibly included on the album due to Harris’ laissez-faire attitude and sense of humor.

On album closer “Conversations of Everything and Nothing”, the anticipated mid 70s style free jazz-rock jam attempts to go down, but it takes a long time for the musicians to settle and get anything going. The song opens with endless electronic noodling from Harris and most of the members of Yes, Chris Squire stubbornly attempts to start a groove but Alan White ignores him and goes into an extended drum solo while the others frantically noodle away and so on. Eventually they settle on a beat and Squire lays down a hard bass line while Eddie Harris channels Miles Davis’ rock style on the trumpet. Harris’ playing is so ‘Miles like’ that you have to wonder, given his sense of humor, if this isn’t a bit of a tongue -in-cheek spoof.

This isn’t a great album, but for those who like odd collectables, its hard to pass up Eddie Harris 'Running the Voodoo Down’ with the members of Yes, who would have thunk it.

EDDIE HARRIS I Need Some Money

Album · 1975 · Funk Jazz
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js
“I Need Some Money” was Eddie Harris’ follow up to his successful “Is it In” and finds him following a similar formula. Both albums feature an odd type of quasi-futuristic electro lounge funk created with cheap retro drum machines, cheezzy home organ and electric piano sounds and Eddie Harris’ ultra funky licks on the saxophone and various early electronic gizmos. Both records are great, but as is typical when you try the same formula twice, Eddie’s light does not burn quite as bright on “I Need Some Money”.

Four songs on this album follow the same great blueprint; the cheap drum machine opens things up and then Calvin Barnes adds the real trap set followed by Ronald Muldrow’s cheezzy guitorgan, then the bass, percussion and Eddie Harris’ always very catchy rhythmic melodies. On “Get on Down” Harris adds to the already exotic mix with bizarre vocal improvs that channel Satchmo’s rapid fire nonsense syllables and Leon Thomas’ African yodel. Needless to say, the weird music collectors will find much to like here.

Eddie always likes to include a little avant-garde with almost every album and on this album the track, “Carnival”, opens with a humanly impossible polyrhythm on the struggling drum machine to which the musicians add real percussion topped with Harris’ strange atonal early proto woodwind synthesizer. This eventually builds into an African carnival before the musicians start laughing, its hard to tell when they are just being tongue-in-cheek on here. Eddie was also known for being a funny guy on stage as well. The one weak cut is a very long blues song/suite that goes through many sections before finally ending. Overall this album is highly recommended for those who are looking for the odd-ball early electro rare groove, most of the cuts on here feature some of the best and oddest funk beats you can find.

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