Biography
He was born in Houston, Texas, United States. [1] In 1965, Harper earned a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of North Texas. [1] [3]
Harper has played with some of jazz's greatest drummers; he served with Art Blakey's Messengers for two years (1968–1970); he played very briefly with Elvin Jones (1970), he played with the Thad Jones/ Mel Lewis Orchestra in the 1970s, and was a member of Max Roach's quartet from 1971–1978. [4] In 1979, Harper formed his own group, touring with it and documenting its music on the recording Billy Harper Quintet in Europe , and he was featured as a soloist on a 1983 recording, Such Great Friends, with virtuoso, visionary pianist and record producer Stanley Cowell. After a period of relative inactivity in the 1980s, Harper came back strong with another international tour, which ended with perhaps his most ambitious recording: the three-volume Live on Tour in the Far East (1991). In the new millennium, Harper's recording activity has been subdued and sporadic, though more recently he appeared as a regular member of pianist-jazz historian Randy Weston's ensembles. In 2013, they recorded their first album as a duo, entitled The Roots of the Blues. [5]
A retrospective of Billy Harper's career would include the following among its highlights: The saxophonist performed on Gil Evans' 1973 album Svengali , [6] and contributed two of the most-performed tunes in the band's repertoire: "Priestess" and "Thoroughbred". [1] Harper's own 1973 album Capra Black "remains one of the seminal recordings of jazz's black consciousness movement – a profoundly spiritual effort that channels both the intellectual complexity of the avant garde as well as the emotional potency of gospel". [7] The Italian jazz label Black Saint was launched with Harper's 1975 album, Black Saint. [1] His later releases have mostly been on SteepleChase and Evidence Records.
For most of his career, Harper was known almost exclusively within New York City’s jazz circles, aside from tours with his ensembles in Europe and the Far East. But in mid-2017, he suddenly stepped into international attention thanks to his brief yet crucial appearance in the acclaimed film I Called Him Morgan. Released for streaming and purchase in June, the movie traces the life of trumpet prodigy Lee Morgan and the woman who helped him recover from heroin addiction—only to later become his killer. The film invites the viewer into the director’s seven-year search for understanding, culminating at the moment Morgan returned to the bandstand for the final set at Slug’s Saloon, a jazz club on the Bowery in Lower East Manhattan. Harper, walking beside Morgan at that fateful instant, heard the gunshot that left both men—victim and witness alike—stunned and frozen in disbelief.
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