John Coltrane.
You would have to be a fool to compare yourself to a giant like that, but jazz composer and tenor saxophonist Billy Harper has been earning that almost sacred comparison for some 40 years.
“I particularly want to be there,” Harper told the American, when asked if he was trying to keep alive the tradition of Coltrane at his most soulful and melodic.
For the first time, St. Louis audiences will have an opportunity to hear for themselves this Saturday night. The Billy Harper Quintet will perform here for the first time in two sets (8:30 p.m. and 10:30 p.m.) Saturday, April 26 at The Luna Bar, 13 Maryland Avenue in the Central West End.
Harper’s debut St. Louis appearance is being presented by The Nu-Art Series. Promoter George Sams said, “Billy is in that difficult place where he is not young enough to be a prodigy and not old enough to be a master.”
This disconnect helps to explain why this innovative and creative musician remains something of a well-kept secret. Harper understands all that.
“The people who are in control of the industry at a particular time stopped recognizing growth from musicians,” Harper said.
He described what had been a continuum (“even if we didn’t understand it was a continuum”), where players emerged from bands to become recognized leaders. He sketched growth from Duke Ellington through Max Roach to Clifford Brown. “But those of us who came after Clifford Brown or Art Blakey were not recognized,” Harper said.
Harper is not whining. He is working too hard to do that. He has worked with Roach, Blakey, Gil Evans, Thad Jones and Mel Lewis. As a leader, he has kept substantially the same band together since the early 1908s, with Francesca Tanksley on piano, Louie “Mbiki” Spears or Clarence Seay on bass, Newman Taylor Baker or Horacee Arnold on drums, and Eddie Henderson or St. Lousian Keyon Harrold on trumpet.
His St. Louis lineup will feature a different drummer, Aaron Scott, and a different St. Lousian on trumpet, Marlin D. Bonds. Local jazz artists Ptah Williams (piano) and Darrill Mixon (bass) will fill in to keep down travel expenses.
They will hit the bandstand with a composer and leader who has remained creative without becoming atonal or unlistenable, as many of Coltrane’s musical children did. Harper’s compositions tend to be easy on the ears, and his solos tend to remain within the chord changes.
“You don’t have to go all the way out to express a certain feeling of freedom,” Harper said. “Freedom can be found in so many ways.”
Related to his remaining inside chord structure and melody is Harper’s staying close to music’s basis in worship. Harper writes hymns and unabashedly spiritual tunes, and he keeps the spirit of his playing close to what his grandmother Pearl “Peachey” Simpson taught him in the church back in Houston.
“Jazz, soul and blues come from the same feeling as is felt in the church, though the topics are different,” Harper said. “That’s where the term ‘soul’ came from.”
Though Harper has never performed here, he did visit in 1961 with Lester Bowie, his classmate at North Texas State University. Bowie would go on to marry Fontana Bass and become an innovative trumpet player and bandleader, but they were just kids then.
“That was before he was playing his out stuff,” Harper said of Bowie, one of St. Louis’ great jazz sons. “He sounded more like Miles then.”
And Harper sounds more like Coltrane – mid-period Coltrane, when he was just starting to stretch the boundaries of what was possible – now.
And that is a very, very, very precious thing. Don’t miss it!
Admission to see The Billy Harper Quintet is $25, with a $5 discount if you dine next-door at Bar Italia. Call The Nu-Art Series at 314-535-6500.
