Eddie Harris

Eddie Harris – The Electrifying Eddie Harris (1968)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 35:21 minutes | 1,42 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Rhino Atlantic

The Electrifying Eddie Harris is an album by American jazz saxophonist Eddie Harris recorded in 1967 and released on the Atlantic label.

Eddie Harris was an American jazz musician, best known for playing tenor saxophone and for introducing the electrically amplified saxophone. He was also fluent on the electric piano and organ. His best-known compositions are “Freedom Jazz Dance”, recorded and popularized by Miles Davis in 1966, and “Listen Here.”

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Eddie Harris – Silver Cycles (1963/2013)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 39:00 minutes | 1,37 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Rhino Atlantic

Silver Cycles is an album by American jazz saxophonist Eddie Harris recorded in 1968 and released on the Atlantic label. The album features heavy Latin jazz and postbop themes, accompanied by electronic processing

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Eddie Harris – Plug Me In (1999)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 27:07 minutes | 1,10 GB | Genre: Jazz, Soul
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Rhino Atlantic

Long underrated in the pantheon of jazz greats, Eddie Harris was an eclectic and imaginative saxophonist whose career was marked by a hearty appetite for experimentation. For quite some time, he was far more popular with audiences than with critics, many of whom denigrated him for his more commercially successful ventures. Harris’ tastes ranged across the spectrum of black music, not all of which was deemed acceptable by jazz purists. He had the chops to handle technically demanding bop, and the restraint to play in the cool-toned West Coast style, but he also delved into crossover-friendly jazz-pop, rock- and funk-influenced fusion, outside improvisations, bizarre electronic effects, new crossbreedings of traditional instruments, blues crooning, and even comedy. Much of this fell outside the bounds of what critics considered legitimate, serious jazz, and so they dismissed him out of hand as too mainstream or too gimmicky. To be fair, Harris’ large catalog is certainly uneven; not everything he tried worked. Yet with the passage of time, the excellence of his best work has become abundantly clear. Harris’ accomplishments are many: he was the first jazz artist to release a gold-selling record, thanks to 1961’s hit adaptation of the “Exodus” movie theme; he was universally acknowledged as the best player of the electric Varitone sax, as heard on his hit 1967 album The Electrifying Eddie Harris; he was an underrated composer whose “Freedom Jazz Dance” was turned into a standard by Miles Davis; he even invented his own instruments by switching brass and reed mouthpieces.

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Eddie Harris – Mean Greens (1966/2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 39:30 minutes | 1,57 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Rhino Atlantic

It’s easily one of Harris’ best efforts. During his career, the tenor saxophonist’s albums met with a lot of suspicion that almost ran equal with their popularity. Albeit unfair, it was only human that ‘serious’ jazz buffs raised their eyebrows when the instant star Eddie Harris followed up his best-selling 1961 single Exodus To Jazz with a series of like-minded, smooth jazz albums on the VeeJay label. Who could blame Eddie? After playing for years in relative obscurity in his hometown Chicago, Harris finally made his (money) mark. Besides, even if the VeeJay (and subsequent Columbia-) albums leaned heavily on standards and popular concepts such as bossa nova and movie soundtracks, they were high caliber affairs and the style and tone of Harris was unmistakably individual. ‘Sell’ was appropriate, ‘out’ wasn’t.

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Eddie Harris – I Need Some Money (1974/2011)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 45:12 minutes | 1,46 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Rhino Atlantic

I Need Some Money is an album by American jazz saxophonist Eddie Harris recorded in 1974 and released on the Atlantic label.

The Allmusic review stated “Eddie Harris finally steps out as a singer in the first of a series of humorous hard-luck songs that would be the flagships of his next few LPs… In any case, the thing he still does best here is ride a groove, the best of which is the extremely danceable… There are indications, though, that Harris’ repertoire of funk sax licks is beginning to run a bit thin”.

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Eddie Harris – For Birds and Bags (Remastered) (1969/2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 40:18 minutes | 829 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © SRS Digital

For Bird and Bags is an album by American jazz saxophonist Eddie Harris recorded for the Vee-Jay label but released on Exodus when Vee-Jay was struggling financially. The album was also released on the Buddah label as Sculpture in 1969

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Eddie Harris – The Versatile Eddie Harris (1981/2011)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 43:29 minutes | 1,51 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Rhino Atlantic

Eddie Harris (eng. Eddie Harris; October 20, 1934, Chicago – November 5, 1996, Los Angeles) – American jazz saxophonist, tenor saxophonist, pianist, vibraphonist, trumpeter, trombonist, vocalist and composer. He is best known for playing the tenor saxophone and electronic saxophone. Harris was also fluent in electric piano and organ. His best-known compositions are “Freedom Jazz Dance”, recorded and popularized by Miles Davis in 1966, and “Listen Here”.
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Eddie Harris – The Tender Storm (1966/2005/2012)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 37:28 minutes | 1,38 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Rhino Atlantic

The Tender Storm is an album by American jazz saxophonist Eddie Harris recorded in 1966 and released on the Atlantic label.

The Allmusic review states “In a sense, this LP was really the calm before the storm, the album where Eddie Harris unveiled some new wrinkles in his act that would explode on the very next album Electrifying, while hewing tightly to a standard acoustic quartet format. Here he starts to use the Varitone amplified saxophone, albeit very discreetly, as he sticks mostly to the doubled octave effects for a suave tone that allows for some slippery swinging”.
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Eddie Harris – How Can You Live Like That? (1976/2005/2011)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 41:56 minutes | 1,33 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Rhino Atlantic

How Can You Live Like That? is an album by American jazz saxophonist Eddie Harris recorded in 1976 and released on the Atlantic label.

The Allmusic review stated “Eddie Harris comes up with another LP full of abrupt changes of gear… Some of this music sounds a bit routine for Harris but the range of idioms is extraordinary and it was apparently recorded in just one day”
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Eddie Harris – Live at Fabrik Hamburg 1988 (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:37:03 minutes | 1,11 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Jazzline

Previously unreleased live recording of the iconic of soul jazz musician Eddie Harris in an outstanding concert.

The Montreux recording of the song “Compared to What” together with Les McCann, made Eddie Harris suddenly a famous jazz musician, located somewhere between jazz, funk and soul, McCann and Eddie Harris had created something like a new style.

The hit became the anthem of the civil rights movement. Almost twenty years later, in January of 1988, at the concert of the Eddie Harris Quartet at the “Fabrik” of Hamburg-Altona, a fair amount can be felt of the fire that once “set the Casino on Lake Geneva ablaze”. The seething enthusiasm of Montreux continues in the NDR recordings of January 1988 in Hamburg, where Eddie Harris and his band played a great concert. An artist to be rediscovered!

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