Gene Harris (September 1, 1933 – January 16, 2000) was an American jazz pianist known for his warm sound and blues and gospel infused style that is known as soul jazz. He has a discography of over 80 recordings. The singer Niki Harris is his daughter.
Born Eugene Haire in Benson Harbor, Michigan, Harris taught himself boogie-woogie piano when he was nine years old, inspired by the hard-driving sound of the great pioneers of the the style, Albert Ammons and Pete Johnson. In the US 82nd Airborne Division's band from 1951 to 1954, he heard a wider range of styles and expanded his technique, and after demobilisation was offered regular touring work. In 1956, he formed his own band, the Three Sounds, with the bassist Andy Simpkins and the drummer Bill Dowdy, specialising in a repertoire rarely far from the blues, and working a circuit of venues around Michigan and Washington.
They moved to New York in 1958 and broadened their scope to take in a more general mainstream-to-bop jazz feel, playing standards and Broadway tunes - but their roots in the blues fitted a period in which jazz was under pressure from rock 'n' roll, and the ensemble offered commercial as well as musical attractions to the Blue Note record label during the 1960s. Harris also lent his piano muscle to recordings by Stanley Turrentine, James Clay, Milt Jackson and Benny Carter among others.
Dowdy and Simkins quit in the late 1960s, but Harris continued to run larger bands under the same name, and the raunchiness and openness of his music almost inevitably led him toward the funky jazz-rock style that was one of the few lucrative avenues for jazz musicians at that time. But he was a musical sophisticate for all his get-down rawness, and in 1977 - announcing his semi-retirement and moving to Boise, Idaho - he returned to more straight-ahead jazz playing.
In 1980, he performed as part of a regular quartet at the Hacienda, Las Vegas, but a transformation in his life occurred in the middle of that decade, with a resurgence of interest in the earlier acoustic forms of jazz resulting in a deal with Concord Records. Ray Brown convinced him to go back on tour in the early 1980s. He played with the Ray Brown Trio until 1992 and then led his own groups. He was extremely popular in Europe. One of his most enjoyed numbers was his "Battle Hymn of the Republic," a live version of which is on his Live at Otter Crest album.
In subsequent decades he worked with Ernestine Anderson, Benny Carter, Scott Hamilton, Stanley Turrentine and others, was leader of the all-star Philip Morris Super Band which toured extensively, recorded several albums, and appeared at New York's Apollo backing B.B. King. A solid accompanist, for many years Harris was at his exuberant best playing in the blues idiom. Retirement or no, 22 albums followed. Some of them featured all but interchangeable Harris characteristics, but some were sparkling performances, notably a devastating version of Take The A Train (on the 1993 live recording, A Little Piece of Heaven).
In 1996 a group of business leaders, educators and musicians lead by Gene Harris made a commitment to improve the quality of life for the Boise community by forming the Gene Harris Endowment. The endowment provided scholarships for jazz music students at Boise State University. In 1998, they continued their commitment by forming the Gene Harris Jazz Festival. Gene brought together the best jazz artists to perform in public concerts at night and work with aspiring young musicians during the day.
Harris's resurgence led not only to these lively small-band sessions - partnership with the bass virtuoso Ray Brown was a notable highlight - but to the emergence of an all-star Count Basie-like big band, the Gene Harris Superband, which toured extensively and was nominated for a Grammy in 1988 for its tribute to Basie himself. Before his untimely death in Boise, Idaho, while awaiting a kidney transplant on January 16, 2000, he had begun to broaden his repertoire, playing swinging, muscular mainstream bop piano, although the blues were happily never far away. He was 66 years old. Since his death, posthumous releases of previously unreleased performances have been steady but sparse.
(Edited from Wikipedia, Gene Harris Jazz Festival, VH1, Blue Note & the Guardian)