Harry
South (7 September 1929 – 12 March 1990) was an English jazz pianist, composer,
and arranger, who moved into work for film and television.Enormously respected among his
fellow musicians, South’s contribution to British jazz is exceptional although
frequently undersung.
Harry
Percy South was born in Fulham, London. He played piano from an early age and
also studied composing and arranging. He came to prominence in the mid 1950s
and was called on by leaders such as Tubby Hayes and Ronnie Scott to write and
play for their various groups. His first regular writing and playing was with
the underrated Basil Kirchin band in the early 1950s. He then joined Tony
Crombie's band as arranger and pianist. He played piano on all Tubby Hayes'
recordings from 1956 to 1957 and Hayes used many of his compositions for his
quintet in this period.
Tubby
Hayes, speaking in 1957 when he (Hayes) had started to write, said of Harry
South: "Sure, you can learn a lot listening to other people on records....
but Harry taught me more than I ever got from records". In 1957 he joined
trumpeter Dizzy Reece and from 1958 to 1960 joined forces with the ill starred but
highly original Joe Harriott.
After
returning from a 9-month tour of Calcutta, India, with the Ashley Kozak
Quartet, he spent four years with the Dick Morrissey Quartet where he both
wrote and arranged material for their subsequent four albums.He formed the Harry South Big
Band in 1966 with Dick Morrissey, Phil Seamen, Keith Christie, Ronnie Scott and
Ian Carr, and recorded an album, Presenting the Harry South Big Band, for
Mercury Records in 1966.
He was
at home in a wide range of music, he composed for Humphrey Lyttelton's
mainstream and big band, he also wrote for Buddy Rich, Sarah Vaughan, and Jimmy
Witherspoon and had a spell as musical director to Annie Ross. He worked with
Georgie Fame as musical director recording the album Sound Venture, when Fame's
group accompanied Count Basie on a tour of Britain and Holland. At that time he was also composing and
arranging for Humphrey Lyttelton, Buddy Rich, Sarah Vaughan, and Jimmy
Witherspoon. He worked as musical director for Annie Ross.
He
branched out into session work, writing themes for television and music
libraries, including the themes for The Sweeney, The Chinese Detective, the BBC
comedy series Give Us a Break starring Robert Lindsay and Paul McGann, and the
1984 TV miniseries Charlie starring David Warner. He wrote the scores for the
Pete Walker films The Big Switch (1968), School for Sex (1969), and Four
Dimensions of Greta (1972).He
is credited with the arrangements used for Emerson, Lake & Palmer's Works
Vol. 1 (1977). In 1981, he again arranged for Annie Ross and Georgie Fame in a
collaboration on what was to be Hoagy Carmichael's last recording, In Hoagland.
His
later success in writing for films, theatre and TV took him away from jazz for
long periods. He appeared on record, made with the National Youth Jazz
Orchestra barely two months before his death on 12 March 1990 in Lambeth,
London, at the age of 60.
In 2001,
the National Youth Jazz Orchestra released an album in his honour entitled
Portraits: The Music of Harry South. In 2017 Rhythm and Blues Records released
a four CD set titled Harry South: The Songbook, with over sixty of his compositions
played by various groups, some of which he played in. Included are early tracks
with Tubby Hayes and nearly 40 sides by The Harry South Big Band, dating from
1960 to 1975. A further 4 CD set (taken from tapes of BBC broadcasts in the
1960s) followed two years later.
(Edited from Wikipedia & Henry Bebop)