Celebrating the Singers

Thank you for participating in our Jazz Appreciation Month Listener Poll…today we celebrate the vocalists. Be sure to tune in to hear all of your favorite singers, including Allan Harris.

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Jazz is known for its smooth, velvety vocals. Or the energizing scat sounds from greats like Ella Fitzgerald. In recognition of National Women’s History month, we recently profiled many famous jazz vocalists, including Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan and Dianne Reeves. Today we put the spotlight on a crooner who oozes the sounds of jazz, Allan Harris. The Miami Herald has said his voice has “the warmth of Tony Bennett, the bite and rhythmic sense of Sinatra and the sly elegance of Nat King Cole.”

Allan Harris grew up not only in a musical family, but in musical kitchen as well. He had two aunts: one was an opera and jazz singer who gave him voice lessons. She knew Louis Armstrong who, family lore has it, scared a very young Harris with his deep and gravelly voice when they first met. His mother, Johanna Chemina Ingrim-Harris, was a concert pianist, and a proud member of the first graduating class of New York City’s famed High School  of the Performing Arts.

The other aunt owned a famous restaurant behind the Apollo Theatre called Kate’s Home Cooking, where entertainers often went after shows for such legendary favorites as smothered chicken and bread pudding. As a child, Harris regularly went to Sunday matinee performances at the Apollo Theatre and then to his aunt’s popular soul food restaurant. He listened, observed and ate to his heart’s content. He absorbed the sights, sounds, smells and tastes of the Harlem jazz scene through his pores.

When Harris was 13 years old, he heard the electric sounds of rocker Jimi Hendrix wafting from a local barbershop and he was hooked – later calling that moment “a turning point in my consciousness.” So as his beautiful baritone voice developed, so too did his skills on the guitar. Harris’ career blossomed and eventually took him around the world. He became a respected vocalist, guitarist, bandleader and composer. One of his most acclaimed works was a 2006 album called “Cross that River,” where he tells the musical story of an African American cowboy named Blue traveling westward in the 19^th century. The album became a musical which debuted at the York Musical Theatre Festival, was included in the Kennedy Center’s Performing Arts series in 2008 and became an important addition to the curriculum of New York and North Carolina schools.

His newest album, “Black Bar Jukebox” was inspired by the sounds he heard emanating from jukeboxes in African American barbershops, clubs, restaurants and gathering places in the mid-late 20^th century, Jimi Hendrix included. An eclectic and original mixture of 13 tracks, four feature his original compositions and there’s also a cover of John Mayer’s “Daughters.”

Harris has received many awards during his distinguished career, including “Outstanding Jazz Vocalist”(three times) from New York Nightlife, and the Backstage Bistro Award for “Ongoing Achievements in Jazz.” He was the featured soloist and producer of Sotheby’s three-year jazz series. He is also committed to his audience, making sure very person who buys a ticket to his performances will have an enlightened experience. As he told Ted Pauken at Downbeat magazine, “From the time I get onstage until I leave, there’s a choreographed plan to take you on this journey, and that’s what I do.”