Harold Vick

Among jazz’s great unsung saxophonists, Harold Vick could be put into a category with famous brands Booker Ervin, David “Fathead” Newman, Wilton Felder, and Adam Clay — hard-toned, aggressive, funky tenorists who have placed an focus on the blues even while they embodied state-of-the-art bop-derived modernism. Although he led fairly few recording schedules, Vick happened in high respect by other market leaders, specifically such ’60s-period soul-jazz organists as Sibling Jack port McDuff, Jimmy McGriff, Shirley Scott, and Big John Patton. Vick also performed and documented with many mentioned R&B and jazz vocalists, including Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Ashford & Simpson, Angela Bofill, Abbey Lincoln, and Lena Horne. Vick was created in the same little North Carolina city — Rocky Support — as pianist Thelonious Monk (his elder by twenty years). Vick began playing music at age 13 when his uncle Prince Robinson (an extremely considered tenor saxophonist who used Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, McKinney’s Natural cotton Pickers, as well as others through the ’20s and ’30s) offered him a clarinet. At 16 Vick used the tenor and immediately after started playing in R&B rings. In the ’50s Vick relocated to Washington, D.C., and analyzed mindset at Howard University or college. He continued to try out, mainly with R&B rings. His use such organists as McDuff and McGriff started attracting attention. From the middle-’60s, Vick was leading his personal groups, offering such players as trumpeter Blue Mitchell and guitarist Give Green. In 1963, he documented his 1st album like a innovator, Steppin’ Out!, for the Blue Notice label. Between 1966 and 1974 he led times for the RCA, Muse, and Strata East brands. In 1972 he documented with Jack port DeJohnette’s music group Compost, among the drummer’s 1st attempts at leading a music group. By the middle-’70s Vick experienced essentially stopped documenting as a innovator. His career like a sideman flourished, nevertheless. He continued dealing with organists Scott and McGriff, performers Franklin and Charles, Dizzy Gillepie’s big music group, and with R&B serves both in the studio room and on the highway. Quickly before his loss of life in 1987, Vick documented a set of Billie Vacation tributes with vocalist Abbey Lincoln for the enja label. In 1998 Sonny Rollins paid tribute to Vick by composing and documenting a tune entitled “Did THE TRUTH IS Harold Vick?”