Joseph Arthurlin Harriott was a Jamaican jazz musician and composer, whose principal instrument was the alto saxophone.
24 Facts About Joe Harriott
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Joe 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.
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Joe Harriott took up the baritone and tenor saxophone while performing with local dance bands, before settling on the alto saxophone.
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Joe Harriott arrived in London in the summer of 1951, aged 23, as a member of Ossie Da Costa's band.
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Joe Harriott caught the attention of London's jazz scene while sitting in at the Feldman Club on Oxford Street on 26 August 1951.
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Joe Harriott developed a style that fused Parker with his own Jamaican musical sensibility - most notably the mento and calypso music he grew up with.
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Joe Harriott appeared alongside visiting American musicians during this period, including a "guest artist" slot on the Modern Jazz Quartet's 1959 UK tour.
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Joe Harriott formed his own quintet in 1958, and their style of hard-swinging bebop was noticed in the United States, leading to the release of the Southern Horizons and Free Form albums on the American Jazzland label.
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Joe Harriott had some loose free-form ideas by the mid-1950s, but finally settled upon his conception in 1959, after a protracted spell in hospital with tuberculosis.
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Joe Harriott finally settled on a line-up of Shake Keane, Pat Smythe, Coleridge Goode and Phil Seamen.
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Frank Holder toured with Joe Harriott and contributed to recording projects during this period.
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Joe Harriott's method demanded more complete group improvisation than displayed in Coleman's music, and often featured no particular soloist.
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Joe Harriott's own playing style underwent some changes during this period, dispensing with orthodox bebop lines in favour of more angular, cut up phrasing.
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Joe Harriott was always keen to communicate his ideas, be it on stage, in interviews or album liner notes.
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Joe Harriott recorded three albums in this vein: Free Form, Abstract and Movement.
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From this point onwards, Joe Harriott worked freelance on a number of projects.
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In 1969, Joe Harriott recorded the album Hum-Dono in collaboration with the Goan guitarist Amancio D'Silva.
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Also in 1969, Joe Harriott made an appearance at Stan Tracey's Duke Ellington tribute concert, which was released as the album We Love You Madly on Columbia.
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Joe Harriott contributed a moving solo on "In a Sentimental Mood" that was captured for posterity by TV cameras, thus leaving the only existing footage of him in performance.
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Joe Harriott made an important contribution to composer Laurie Johnson's 1970 LP, Synthesis.
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Joe Harriott was virtually destitute in his last years, and ravaged by illness.
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Joe Harriott died of cancer on 2 January 1973, and is buried in Bitterne churchyard, in Southampton.
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Joe Harriott suffered mightily from lazy journalistic comparisons with Ornette Coleman, but more recently his originality has been recognised across the globe.
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Joe Harriott's profile has been helped by CD reissues of his most important albums, notably Free Form, Abstract and Movement.