Joe Harriott

Joe Harriott

Joseph Arthurlin "Joe" Harriott (15 July 1928 in Kingston, Jamaica – 2 January 1973 in Southampton, Hampshire) was a Jamaican jazz musician and composer, whose principal instrument was the alto saxophone.

Initially a bebopper, he became a pioneer of free-form jazz. He was educated at Kingston's famed Alpha Boys School, which produced a number of prominent Jamaican musicians. He moved to the UK as a working musician in 1951 and lived in the country for the rest of his life. Harriott was part of a wave of Caribbean jazz musicians who arrived in Britain during the 1950s, including Dizzy Reece, Harold McNair, Harry Beckett and Wilton Gaynair.

Read more about Joe Harriott:  Early Career, Free-form Innovator, Jazz Fusions, Last Years, Legacy, Further Reading

Famous quotes containing the word joe:

    While we were thus engaged in the twilight, we heard faintly, from far down the stream, what sounded like two strokes of a woodchopper’s axe, echoing dully through the grim solitude.... When we told Joe of this, he exclaimed, “By George, I’ll bet that was a moose! They make a noise like that.” These sounds affected us strangely, and by their very resemblance to a familiar one, where they probably had so different an origin, enhanced the impression of solitude and wildness.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)