Joe Harriott still swings
The sax legend’s incendiary 1968 Swings High album is given the remastering it deserves
Joe Harriott Quintet
Swings High
Joe Harriott (saxophone), Stu Hamer (trumpet), Pat Smythe (piano), Coleridge Goode (bass), Phil Seaman (drums)
Cadillac SGC/MELCD 203
Jamaican alto saxophonist Joe Harriott died in relative obscurity in January 1973 at just 45. Fifty years on, his huge impact on the UK jazz scene in the ’50s and ’60s as a brilliant soloist, composer and innovator is now widely acknowledged. Part of the Windrush generation, Harriott made his name in London as a Parker disciple. He’d go on to develop a groundbreaking European free jazz concept and later, in the mid-’60s, invent indo-jazz fusion, touring the new form across the continent. But getting towards the end of his tumultuous life, Harriott was returned to his bebop roots by record shop owner Doug Dobell who commissioned this now classic 1968 album. Surrounded by regular sidemen for the last time, in a poky, makeshift South London studio, the planets lined up. Matched in intensity by trumpeter Stu Hamer’s crackling horn lines, Harriott’s playing is incendiary, ‘as though he’s about to blow his alto apart’ bassist Coleridge Goode later commented. It’s not the first time Swings High has been reissued, but ingenious remastering by Cadillac using the original Melodisc vinyl captures all the action with gin-clear clarity. ★★★★★