Jazz For A Saturday Night: What Makes A Musician Vanish?

Barber Dan’s Card

This is the last weekend of the month, which normally is a “down” weekend for JFASN. However, earlier today I was at Barber Dan’s shop on S.E. Gladstone Street getting my hair cut, and he and I resumed a conversation we began during my last visit, and I thought it was worth mentioning here:

What the hell ever happened to jazz saxophonist Herb Harris?

Harris, you may recall, has been the subject of two reviews here at JFASN.

The first one, for his own album that was released in 2008, “Some Many Second Chances, Volume 1,” was published here on June 1, 2013, as JFASN #77.

The second one appeared here on October 24, 2015, and was about an album he recorded in 1992 with a group of fellow sax players who called themselves The Tough Young Tenors. The album was called “Alone Together,” and was JFASN #150.

In the time that has passed since I wrote about “Some Many Second Chances,” Harris appears to have fallen off the face of the earth.

A search of allaboutjazz.com found a short bio, and a search of allmusic.com produced nothing more than a track listing for “Some Many Second Chances.”

Admittedly, allmusic.com has been having problems with its site search feature all day today, but in this case I suspect that the problem is with the search subject rather than the search engine.

I was able to find a review of an album Harris recorded with Tim Warfield in 2013, and it appears he was part of Marcus Roberts’ first band, the Marcus Roberts Quintet, in 1989.

Over on YouTube, curtjazz uploaded Harris performing the song “Paranoia,” obviously from an old album. It’s good stuff. You won’t be disappointed if you give it a listen.

A further search of YouTube brings up more of Herb Harris’ music. Most are for the wrong Herb Harris, a white jazz drummer who happens to have the same name as our saxophonist.

If you’ve listened to Herb Harris (the saxophonist) play, you can’t help agree that he is (or was) a superb musician.

Why does someone like that just walk away from it and seemingly fall off the face of the earth?

Thanks for reading this.

Al Evans
Wood Village, Oregon

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