A POX on Donald Harrisson

[P.D.]

Don't know if this is the correct forum, but in light of the ongoing Wynton trials and tribulation, and the current revival of " interest " in the Burns documentary...

This from an interview of Donald Harrison by Derek Ansell in the current Jazz Journal....

DH... Terence Blanchard and I started a band together. We were co - leaders together and at the time I wrote a song called New York Second Line that became very, very popular. I didn't realise that it would be so influential. It was funny because, at the time, Wynton and I used to fuss about New Orleans music because he didn't like Loius Armstrong.

DA.... Really?

DH... Oh, yes. And I told him he was so wrong and he just didn't know. And you know, Wynton is very, very opinionated and he would say New Orleans music is ignorant, and Louis Armstrong was ignorant, and I said Wynton you just don't know.

So I wrote this song, New York Second Line and the second line is what they call traditional music of New Orleans, where I married the rhythms on New York with the rhythms of New Orleans and put some abstract harmony on top of it. And he must have changed when he heard it because he told me I might be right about something and he started playing New Orleans music and a lot of musicians started playing it and they said they liked what I'd done

later in the article... discussing Wyntons change to champion and defender of Older music...

DH... He has changed, He really has. I came to the conclusion when I was really young that you experience all kinds of influential music, but he couldn't understand that........

.......... It's the same with music.. If I go through certain experiences I can put that in the music. But you can listen to someone else has done and gain from that also. Although it's not the same person who had the experience. Art Blakey used to say, once you present an idea it belongs to the world, just give credit to the creator.

I think Wynton is beginning to understand now that experience has a lot to do with how you play music.

There is no date given for the Interview, but it was presumably fairly recently when Harrison played London .

It would be interesting to correlate the recording of New York Second Line ( october 1983 ) with Wynton's turn to the older music ( I had always thought that being from New Orleans that Wynton was aware of, and in favour of it, from his beginnings).

Perhaps Hardbop can refute Harrisons statement

Was Harrison the Frankenstein to the Wynton monster

[Joe G]

I remember a TV interview with Wynton where he acknowledged the fact that he couldn't deal with Armstrong early on. His image was of Pops as the minstrel, and Miles also said he couldn't stand all that grinning Louis used to do. So it was as much of an "uncle Tom" issue as a musical one. Most of us change as we age, sometimes pretty dramatically; Wynton's no different.

[shrugs]

We do change. However, the fact that a trumpet player couldn't see through to the core of Pops is truly odd. Especially since the man was possibly the most famous person to come out of his hometown.

[Guest Mnytime]

While Miles didn't care for the smiling and such of Satchmo he still understood that Satchmo was the man on the trumpet.

[Alexander]

In an interview with Ben Sidran, Wynton admitted that he had never listened to Art Blakey when he first joined his band. Seems to me that Wynton did a lot of learning on the job. It fits, because Wynton definitely has the zelousness of a convert.

[Joe G]

Wynton definitely has the zelousness of a convert.

Good point. And yes, Miles said in his autobiography that he "loved Satchmo".