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- Active: '30s, '40s, '50s, '60s, '70s
- Genres: Jazz
- Instrument: Trombone
Biography
This Richard Harris shifted his name down to Dicky Harris early in his career, thus avoiding confusion with the British actor who gets tortured in the film A Man Called Horse. The veteran trombonist still gets mixed up with pedal steel guitarist Dickie Harris, however, leading to the unlikely conclusion that there was once a musician who played in both the James Brown band and Ernest Tubb & the Texas Troubadours. Harris did play with the soul godfather, it is true, remaining a favorite sidekick of that band's superstar trombonist Fred Wesley. Brown had brought a real pro into his band, as Harris already had more than two decades of professional experience behind him.Family ties plunged Harris into a musical bath as a child. Uncle William Harris was a trumpeter, and family friend and music teacher W.W. Handy was a nephew of the famed W.C. Handy, although some mistook him for the man himself, hiding behind a typo. Pianist Frank Hines provided an early professional gig as the trombonist was turning 21, followed by a stint with Erskine Hawkins which ended when a two-year stretch with the Army Air Force Band took priority. In the second half of the '40s the trombonist performed with J.C. Heard, Joe Thomas, and Lucky Millinder. During the '50s, he often served as a foil for the hard-driving tenor saxophones of Arnett Cobb and Illinois Jacquet, and was also in a lovely, if short-lived, brass liaison with trumpeter Buck Clayton.
Harris worked more and more on a freelance basis after 1958, often contracting himself to long-running Broadway shows. His tenure with Brown began in 1964, and it could be argued that his riffs on "Out of Sight" represent some of the most widely-heard trombone playing in the history of the instrument. The soul side of his discography also includes recordings with Don Covay, Sam Cooke, and Ruth Brown. Although credited as the trombonist on an Elmore James' side, the instrument itself is inaudible. In the '80s, Harris was still going strong, touring Japan in the company of other jazz veterans. ~ Eugene Chadbourne, All Music Guide
