US media have reported the death following complications due to Covid of pianist Barry Harris who died yesterday at a medical centre in North Bergen, New Jersey at the age of 91 just short of his 92nd birthday. Originally from Detroit, Harris began gigging as a teenager and recorded early on with trombonist Frank Rosolino. He joined the house band of the Blue Bird Inn at 5021 Tireman in his home city and there backed Miles Davis among others. He sat in with Charlie Parker and toured with Max Roach and then went on tour with Cannonball Adderley at the beginning of the 1960s before making his home in New York where he became friendly with the Jazz Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter who was also a friend and supporter famously of Thelonious Monk.

Harris even lived with Monk in the 1970s at the home of the Baroness in New Jersey. In the 80s Harris was a partner in the establishing of the Jazz Cultural Theater in New York on Eighth Avenue in Manhattan. He became an NEA Jazz Master in 1989 and was performing until recently and recorded over a long and distinguished career for among other labels Argo, Riverside, Prestige, Xanadu and Concord. Harris also made jazz history appearing on the Lee Morgan 1964 Blue Note boogaloo-inspired classic, The Sidewinder.