Swing by yourself; hold the time

Barry told horn players that each of them must swing on their own. You cannot depend on the drummer or the bass player to swing for you: if you had to play completely alone, you would still have to swing, and he holds himself to the same standard at the piano. He gave singers the same message: everybody has to swing for themselves.

Swing by yourself0:00Swing by yourself, not by the drummer0:00Vocal workshop: swing it yourself2:18

Barry said swinging by yourself is the secret, and that it came home to him when he heard Erroll Garner sit in at a jam session at Birdland. He sometimes sits at the piano by himself and just plays, so students feel ahead of time how it is supposed to go, without the bass player or the drummer. Not feeling it that way, he said, is where we goof a lot.

Interview: Detroit, Bud Powell and the shuffle13:0613:39

Don’t force it. Working with a band, Barry warned against thinking you have to make the swing happen: you don’t have to exaggerate it that much to make it swing.

Feeling the ‘and’38:17

Keeping the tempo is everybody’s job, even while playing the melody. Bands often blame the drummer when the time drags, but usually everyone has slowed down together. Once you have set a tempo, hold it. Barry admitted that is hard and has to be worked at.

Swing by yourself1:10Swing by yourself, not by the drummer1:10

In a filmed profile at the Jazz Cultural Theater, Barry stops players who messed up the time coming out of a section and has them do it again: you have to watch the time and be in time.

NBC News profile at the Jazz Cultural Theatre0:351:08

Barry liked one player’s sound but told him to be sure he was right on it and not to hesitate too much. He noted the player was laying back a little and said that was all right, but his advice was to be right on the time.

Confirmation10:12

Barry said music, even classical music, has to sound as if you could do anything with reckless abandon, while still staying in time. That boldness surprises listeners and grabs them: play a run that way and someone in the audience will gasp.

Let the body do it1:452:182:51

A former student once asked Barry how he could play a very slow blues so beautifully at that tempo. His whole answer was that fast is slow, and he did not explain it. The student’s own reading, after living with it: tempo is relative, so what feels fast to one player feels slow to another depending on how you choose to feel it, and an extreme tempo takes patience to feel properly.

These 3 Words From Barry Harris Changed How I Played Music!0:000:321:07

Speaking at Barry’s funeral, a musician recalled a tribute concert at St. Peter’s Church where a singer sang tunes in a key he had never played in. He got through it and his mentor George Coleman, who was playing with him, gave him a thumbs up, but Barry, sitting up front, told him he hadn’t seen him tap his foot. Barry was watching whether a player kept time with his body, not just whether he got through.

Barry Harris Funeral43:4044:15

Barry said that when he was young he never saw anyone pat their foot on two and four; people patted on one and three. Two and four, he said, belong up in your heart, and they are where you clap, so patting on them as well makes no sense. He told bass players to stop doing it, and recalled watching a very famous musician patting on two and four and knowing he was not right.

Believe: a talk to musicians50:1950:54Eyes of the Masters: the first progression3:033:42

In a different class, on a blues, Barry insisted this music is in four, not cut time: tap one, two, three, four, not just one and three. The only time he pats one and three, he said, is when the tempo is too fast to pat all four. He also told the pianist to keep it light, because it was not a heavy blues.

Passport: teaching a blues by ear11:0611:40

Barry said many players, even some older ones, have never felt the real feeling of this music. He thought it came from dancing: people went to dances to hear music, not to nightclubs, and as a teenager in the mid-1940s he sat in with Charlie Parker at dances. He still sits at the piano and plays along with records for the feeling they give, for example a 1957 session with Bud Powell, Donald Byrd, Phil Woods, Paul Chambers and Art Taylor.

The last train to Monk: an interview11:3612:1312:49

Jazz, Barry said, came out of ballrooms and dance halls. In Detroit, when the band played fast the dancers cut the time in half, and when it played slowly they doubled it; whatever the tempo, they never stopped dancing. He thought taking jazz away from dancing may have been the biggest mistake, because dancing brought in ordinary listeners, not just people who played, and they knew and recognised the songs.

Interview: Detroit and after9:179:5110:25

To show how his generation learned to swing, Barry recommended a record of Mel Powell playing stride on Sweet Georgia Brown with a drummer and no bass player. Asked how they got the time feel without a bass, he said the drummers played four with the bass-drum pedal and the guitar player kept time. That, he said, is how they learned to swing.

Interview: Detroit, Bud Powell and the shuffle7:578:3010:4511:20

Barry said there is something about the rhythm of the shuffle that he can’t put into words, and that drummers should be thinking shuffle even when they play regular time. In Detroit he took rhythm and blues gigs to make money, and the city was loaded with drummers who had the shuffle down, such as Pistol and Benny Benjamin, who went with Motown. One of his first gigs was with Ruth Brown and Willis ‘Gator’ Jackson, and he said you learn from that kind of work too.

Interview: Detroit, Bud Powell and the shuffle20:2821:0121:34Interview: Detroit and after12:42