After a run of dazzling and imperiously unpredictable appearances at Ronnie Scott's club during the 1960s, the great Sonny Rollins could do no wrong with British jazz fans. Until, that is, he turned up at the club in autumn 1974 with Rufus Harley, who has died aged 70, in tow. Harley convinced some Rollins devotees that the improv legend's relish for musical wild cards was as deviously determined as ever. Others shook their heads in disbelief, maintaining that even an artist of Rollins's cavalier creativity could take a step too far.
Because Harley was a jazz bagpiper, the first and most controversial of his kind. Freely acknowledging that many jazz fans thought he was crazy. Harley, nevertheless, evolved an authentic jazz technique on an instrument ostensibly unsuited to the idiom's nervy momentum and melodic complexity.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
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