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Rufus Harley, 70, Dies; Adapted Bagpipes to Jazz
- U.S. musician Rufus Harley (1936-2006) was the first jazz performer to use the Great Highland Bagpipes as his primary instrument.
- The American jazz saxophonist Albert Ayler (1936–1970) used great highland bagpipe on two albums: New Grass (1968) and Music is the Healing Force of the Universe (1969).
- Peter Bennink, a Dutch saxophonist and the brother of drummer Han Bennink, also uses bagpipes in a jazz context.
Rufus Harley, who was billed as “the world’s first jazz bagpiper” and emitted his haunting sounds alongside some of the greats of jazz, died on Aug. 1 in Philadelphia, his hometown. He was 70.
The cause was prostate cancer, his son Messiah Patton Harley said.
Although Mr. Harley fully acknowledged that “everybody thought I was crazy” when he turned to bagpipes in the early 1960’s, he became a frequent sideman on records and in concerts with saxophonists like Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane, Dexter Gordon and Sonny Stitt, with the trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and with the flutist Herbie Mann.
“He adapted the bagpipes to jazz, blues, funk and other typically African-American styles, while also acknowledging the instrument’s Scottish roots,” said David Badagnani, an instructor at the Center for the Study of World Musics at Kent State University.
Mr. Harley, who was 6-foot-2, was of African-American and Cherokee descent; he sometimes performed in Scottish kilts, sometimes in a dashiki and a Nigerian kufi, or skull cap.
In 1967 a New York Times review of a concert given by Mr. Mann, with Mr. Harley by his side, said that the bagpipe’s tones “sounded far more Middle Eastern than Scottish,” and that when combined with the flute, “the two wind instruments blended into an eerily swinging ensemble.”
Rufus Harley Jr. was born on May 20, 1936, outside of Raleigh, N.C. His family moved to a poor neighborhood in North Philadelphia when he was 2. He is survived by 16 children and 15 grandchildren. He and his wife, Barbara Jean Jones, separated many years ago.
1936 - 2006Last night WRTI-FM's Bob Perkins announced the death of an Philly original. Rufus Harley is credited as the first jazz musician to pick the Scottish bagpipes as his instrument.
You might have heard his distinctive drone on CDs by The Roots (Do You Want More?!!!??!) and Laurie Anderson (Big Science). If you ever saw a picture of him, it would stick. He cut a distinctive swath.
So did his music.
I talked to his son, Messiah Harley, the trumpeter, this morning. He said his father had prostate cancer, but never let on to anyone that he was hurting.
“He was a soldier," the son said. “I have no other way to explain it. He never let his sickness stop him from playing, and from making people happy. He was always concerned about the people."
Messiah Harley said he drove his father to Germantown Hospital Monday evening--a few hours after his last show. Doctors transferred him to Einstein, his son said, when it was apparent he was so sick.
“All he was talking about was, 'Messiah, come and get me. I have a gig to get to in Baltimore.' He tried to sit up and his heart stopped." Funeral arrangements are pending, his son said.
Shaun Mullen at Kiko's House wrote this last night about Harley, who was 70:
Jazz bagpipes would seem to be an acquired taste, but I fell into Harley's funky style immediately and he became a lifelong favorite whom I caught several times at Ortleib's Brewhaus in Philadelphia.
A 2001 profile in the City Paper described what moved the Germantown resident to pick up the pipes:
In November 1963, the winter of America's discontent, a young Philadelphia musician named Rufus Harley watched John F. Kennedy's funeral on television. While a nation mourned, the sound of the bagpipes from the funeral procession sent Harley's spirits soaring.
He attempted to replicate the sound on his sax; unsatisfied, he scoured the area for a set of bagpipes. He called around to every music store in the region, but couldn't score them. It wasn't until he made his first-ever trip to New York City that he found his pipes. In a small pawnshop he spent $120, that month's entire mortgage money, and altered the course of jazz forever.
He was born in North Carolina in 1936, of African-American and Cherokee heritage. He moved to Philadelphia as a small boy. In high school he played up several wind instruments. He recorded several albums on the Atlantic label, Scotch & Soul the first to command critical notice. You haven't lived until you've heard Harley's cover of the Byrds' “Eight Miles High." An evocative description of his work here.
Once asked how to play the jazz bagpipes, Harley answered:
You play off the air that's in there.
As a teenager, Mr. Harley sold newspapers to buy a saxophone so he could play in his high school band. At 16 he dropped out of school and worked at odd jobs to help support his family. But he never lost interest in music. For 10 years he took lessons on the saxophone, oboe, trumpet and flute and played in local jazz clubs.
The turning point came in November 1963, as Mr. Harley watched the funeral procession for President John F. Kennedy on television and was taken by the wailing sound of the Black Watch bagpipe band. He tried, unsuccessfully, to reproduce the sound on his saxophone.
“My dad was playing a lot of tenor sax then,” his son Messiah said, “but because Coltrane and Rollins were smoking the sax, that’s why he turned to the bagpipes.”
A friend who knew of Mr. Harley’s interest spotted a used bagpipe in a pawnshop and, after a quick phone call, covered its $120 price. After months of practice, Mr. Harley was working in local clubs, and his unusual talent gained wider attention.
From 1965 to 1970, Mr. Harley was the lead artist on four albums on the Atlantic label. He began making appearances on television shows, including “To Tell the Truth,” “What’s My Line?” “I’ve Got a Secret, ” Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show” and Bill Cosby’s “Cosby Show.” He accompanied the singer Laurie Anderson on her 1982 album “Big Science.” And in 1995 he worked with the hip-hop band the Roots on its album “Do You Want More?!!!??!”
All the while, Mr. Harley insisted that the bagpipe had African roots and that his chosen instrument had helped him “discover my identity by making me aware of my cultural heritage.”
In fact, Mr. Badagnani at Kent State noted, “there are double-pipe instruments in the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities in Cairo that resemble a bagpipe.”
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