A Night With Barry Harris

Playing with Barry harris. Barry Harris holds his jazz workshops at night- late at night - sometimes at a ramshackle space shared by drug rehab club that once probably fit in on Bleeker Street quite well before the east Village became The East Village. The way Harris runs it, so I read on his web site, is singers first instrumentalists next. When i showed up there was an incredibly long queue of singers waiting their turn to sing, apparently, a song chosen at some time in the past by Harris et al.

Now Barry Harris, famous pianist and jazz man, is old. He is real old. And with a microphone hanging around his neck like a tracheotomy tube he looks a bit like the jazz and African American equivalent of Stephen Hawking. But he holds forth with a dark genius that terrifies the ofays and keeps the brothers on their toes. He loves to pick on whitey though, and they deserve it. They came to him, not the other way around. So did I, though I don't consider myself white exactly. I'm brown.
Everyone sings the same song, with instruments backing them up, but the singers are all pretty bad. Not one has Broadway chops and maybe two had real jazz singing ability.

One woman, clearly a veteran, complained about the musicians. She was oviously sort of a top dog in the singers lineup. But as soon as she blamed her mistakes on the musicians, well, several other singers yelled out what must have been a rule of law: don't blame the musicians!

That over, the musicians part began, with singers departing. Foolishly, I went right to the front, right next to two other flute players. I'd brought my guitar, but as usual there were like fifteen guitar players, which is another subject: the perverse ubiquity of guitar players. I thought maybe I was the only other person who noticed taht until I saw a clip of The Who in concert where Pete Townshend screams into the mike, "The Whole World....plays the Fucking Guitar!"

Well Harris' class was quite an amazing, frightening experience. He's no bullshit, old school and vengeful to musicians who can't play a scale. I was openly terrified when he called on me, visions and memories of my old high school band leader Mr. Heinlein, whom I now think may have been a Nazi, who used to break his baton over the music stand in rage when you didn't get it right. Mr. Heinlein hated me and once humiliated me in front of the entire band because the first saxophone had talked me into barking like a dog in the middle of a tune. "Greenberg! What were you doing?"
"Barking."
"What's that? I didn't hear you."
"Barking."
"Barking?"
"Yes, sir."
"What do you mean by barking?"
he knew what I meant but was going to drag this out.
"Barking, like a dog."
"Barking.....like a dog? Well, why don't you come down front now here and bark for us."
"Now?"
"NOW"
"Woof."
"I didn't hear that. I said BARK!"
"WOOF!"
"Good, Greenber you, are going to bark like a dog in time with each song we play for the remainder of class. Is that clear?"
Woof.

Compared to Himmler, I mean Heinlein Harris was easy because it was obvious I was terrified and over my head. And new. I had tried sneaking back to sit with the fifteen idiot guitarists hoping he woulnd't notice me but he did.
"Greenberg."
"Yes, Mr. Harris."
"What are you doing?"
"Going to sit with the dogs."
"You aint goin nowhere, you sit your ass right there, in front of me, so I can hear how bad you screw up my music."
Harris, like Heinlein, does NOT suffer fools. "No man," He yelled at me later, "You can't be half way. You have to try to be perfect. you can't just try to be half way and hope half ways' good enough."

As for his music, well, we'd just be making that up as we went along. He'd say stuff like "okay, let's start the major third up from e flat, chromatic up to the seven, then down to third above C." And the sax players were right on top of it, these young guys who were super slick sitting on either side of me. It took me a full five minutes to figure it out.

But he didn't cut a break to the ones he didn't have patience for: "I don't like how you sit, man. I don't like how you sound. Sit up. I can't hear you, I gave you the lead alto part, man, play it!! You ain't doing it." This one poor sax player couldn't get arrested. He just hated the guy. But he had obviously been back a few times because there was a familiarity to the hatred: "Man, I don't like you're attitude. I don't like your style. You ain't improving, man."

Maybe I should go back to cooking. Wait, i don't cook.