Archive Dive: Harrison Bankhead / Fred Anderson Collection
As a part of the ongoing work of The Creative Audio Archive at ESS, we present Archive Dive - a regular newsletter featuring unheard recordings and ephemera related to the collections housed in the CAA. Items shared here are In Copyright: Education Use Permitted. By clicking the private links below, you agree that you will not make public, copy, distribute, or otherwise put to use any of the recordings featured here without the written consent of ESS and/or the rights holder(s), except for educational purposes. For more information on the recordings and/or collections included below, please contact james@ess.org or visit: http://www.creativeaudioarchive.org.
Harrison Bankhead and the Fred Anderson Collection
Today's Dive is a special one as we memorialize the life of Harrison Bankhead, the Chicago musical legend who passed away earlier this year. Bankhead was a friend within the ESS community, and his work is archived across a number of collections in the Creative Audio Archive. In the coming weeks we will feature some of these recordings on the ESS Soundcloud and YouTube pages. Today, Andy Pierce, who helped establish the CAA's Fred Anderson Collection, will highlight one of his favorite recordings found within it, and he has also written a reflection on Bankhead's life. Additionally, Jeff Kowalkowski, a close friend and longtime collaborator of Bankhead, has shared a piece of new music with us below that is dedicated to his friend ("For Harrison Bankhead").
ESS is absolutely honored to present all of this to you here -- Thank you so much to Andy and Jeff for your words and music celebrating the life of Harrison Bankhead, and thank you to all of our readers! This Wednesday 6/7 at 6pm there will an event celebrating Harrison's life at Constellation.
With that said, here's Andy.
- James Wetzel
Harrison Bankhead at the Velvet Lounge taken by Jimmie Jones
Remembering Harrison Bankhead
Harrison Bankhead, 68, the revered bassist and Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians member, died in North Chicago, Illinois, on April 5, 2023. His work is represented in the Creative Audio Archive and is remarkably peppered throughout the Fred Anderson collection.
In addition to the live audio and video recordings held here, Harrison can be heard on more than 20 releases as a bassist and cellist, and on two CDs under his own name as a leader.
Friend, drummer, and collaborator Hamid Drake recalls that he and Harrison began playing music together when they were both teenagers. Harrison’s notoriety as a bass player on the Chicago scene began in the early 1980s and he became a regular player at Sunday jam sessions at Fred Anderson’s Velvet Lounge in the mid to late 1980s.
First on guitar, then on bass, Harrison took to music early before attending Sherwood Music School in Chicago. As a young man, he played and toured with Dee Alexander, Fred Anderson, Ernest Dawkins, Malachi Thompson, and Edward Wilkerson Jr. & 8 Bold Souls.
In his midlife, Harrison played his music across the world with his musical brothers and sisters including Fred Anderson, Nicole Mitchell, William Parker, and others. It’s notable that he played straight-ahead and wedding gigs and in highly venerated Avant Garde and creative music settings. His playing was versatile and grooving, with a recognizable sound and vocabulary but free of any hackneyed trappings.
Harrison first endeared himself to New York audiences through his spirited bass playing in a May 22, 2003, duo with Fred Anderson that became known as “The Great Vision Concert” (released by Ayler Records, 2007). This led to many more Arts for Art and Vision Festival sets with Thurman Barker, Dave Burrell, Hamid Drake, Kidd Jordan, Nicole Mitchell, William Parker and others.
Harrison and Fred gigged regularly and recorded many albums together, including "Timeless" (Delmark Records, 2006), a fiery portrait of Fred, Hamid, and Harrison at the Velvet Lounge in 2005. The performance captures the creative peak, infectious atmosphere, and final vibe of Fred’s historic club before he was forced to close and relocate due to an imminent high-rise condominium project.
Harrison became a favorite of the European audiences that attended the “Made in Chicago Festivals” in Poznan, Poland, performing in a multitude of ensembles during the 12 years the festival was presented. In 2007, a recording was made of a trio with Fred Anderson, Harrison, and drummer Dushun Mosley. The concert and recording were both titled “A Night at the Velvet Lounge.” The recording (Estrada Poznańska, 2009) reflects the long musical relationships the three shared and is an organic exchange grounded by the gravity and flights of freedom emanating from Harrison’s bass.
In the same period, he played on five recordings for the French label RogueArt during the 2000s and 2010s, with Ernest Dawkins, Hamid Drake, Roscoe Mitchell, Nicole Mitchell, William Parker, and others. All the while throughout his musical career, Harrison worked for the Waukegan, Illinois, Department of Buildings and Grounds. In retirement, he played with his bands and released new recordings under his own name.
Harrison is survived by a daughter, Shana Bankhead, a son, Harrison Bankhead IV, and a sister, Diane Bankhead. A memorial was held in Waukegan on May 27. A celebration of his life and a concert will take place here in Chicago on Wednesday, June 7, at Constellation, 3111 N. Western Ave.
FROM THE ARCHIVE: FA-026 VHS Tape
Players: Tatsu Aoki, bass; Fred Anderson, tenor saxophone; Harrison Bankhead, bass; Billy Brimfield, trumpet; Hamid Drake, drums; and William Perry, tenor saxophone. Cecile Savage joins for a portion of the second set on bass. Recorded by Rick L. Bermundo and Clarence Bright. Produced by Joe Weber.
An Exemplary Night at the Velvet Lounge, Oct. 17, 1998
CHICAGO -- For all its fame and the importance of the players who called it home, there are surprisingly few candid video recordings of live performances at the Velvet Lounge in Chicago. Maybe that’s because the space and its budgets were tight. And, it’s worth noting the Velvet existed almost entirely in the time before smartphones and easy, affordable digital recordings.
This nearly two-and-a-half-hour video recording made at Fred Anderson’s original Velvet Lounge, 2128 ½ S. Indiana Ave., was transferred from a c. 1998 VHS tape by the Experimental Sound Studio’s Creative Audio Archive for the Fred Anderson Collection. Fred’s friend, loyal helper at the bar and recording engineer, Clarence Bright, is seen adjusting mics. It’s likely we join them during the first tune and that the recording represents most of their entire performance. Fred mentions a third set at the end but doesn’t share who was going to play in it.
FA-026 VHS Tape from the Fred Anderson Collection
I’ve not been able to deduce if this was a special occasion, or simply an ensemble of musicians who saw their calendars align such that they could play together and record it. Joe Weber, a longtime friend and fan of Fred’s, is listed as the producer and is visible at the 1 hour, 55-minute mark. It’s likely Joe hatched the plan to have this ensemble play and record at the Velvet. Joe produced and recorded a lot of jazz and creative music in Chicago. He died in 2017, and the status of his vast collection of videos is unknown.
It is a Saturday night in October 1998, and those in the attentive audience got to see and hear seven excellent musicians, with the elders of the group playing at the peak of their powers. Tempos are fast and frenetic at times and their solos are as powerful as the musical cohesion is seamless between these friends and collaborators. There are no outsized egos. Instead, you hear cooperation, expression, exploration, interplay and support.
William, Hamid and Harrison came up under Fred and played with him since the 1970s. Tatsu came on the scene in the early 1990s and played and recorded with Fred frequently. During the 1990s, Tatsu, Fred, drummer Chad Taylor and Billy Brimfield played together monthly at the Velvet, which is documented in the live recording “Fred Anderson Quartet Volume One” (Asian Improv, 1999). Billy and Fred had been musical partners and bandmates since the late 1960s. Both Billy and Hamid toured Europe with Fred and are on his first album as a leader, “Another Place” (Moers Music, 1978).
This ensemble shares a musical vocabulary, a selection of familiar compositions and supports many lines of “Fred-isms” (as Fred’s friend Sharon Friedman has said) that may leave the first-time listener wondering if this music was composed or improvised. The answer is “yes – both!” Fred shared in interviews over the years that he felt the creative music he devised and played was part of the continuum and not separate from the jazz and bop of his idols Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and others. Following that ethos, the vocabulary these players communicate with here has rhythms, keys and cues that they know and recognize from playing with each other and from a wide experience in playing and improvising in this kind of setting.
The brief breakout during the first set with Tatsu, Harrison and Hamid is soulful and meditative. Fred and William join them gently. It continues and builds for quite some time. At 48:33 min., Fred plays the head of his tune “Dark Day,” and he and the ensemble proceed to extrapolate. A meditation and springboard for improvisation, the composition appears on six of Fred’s albums over three decades.
Fred Anderon, Harrison Bankhead, Billy Brimfield at the Velvet Lounge
Bassist Cecile Savage, steps in (in place of Harrison) and shares some great music in the second set. Listen to the group riff on and play the hell out of Fred’s tune “Saxoon” in an extended and energetic fashion. It starts at 1:11:57 and you can hear Fred playing a portion of the melody at 1:32:25. “Saxoon” – like bassoon – appears on two of Fred’s albums in the 1970s and two in the 2000s.
Three of these great musicians have since passed away: William Perry died in 2006; Fred Anderson died in 2010; Billy Brimfield died in 2012; and Harrison Bankhead died on April 5 of this year. Fred is 69 in this recording and lived to be 81. Today, drummer Hamid Drake is 67 and bassist Tatsu Aoki is 66.
For those who didn’t get to go to the Velvet, it was a right angle-shaped space with a high ceiling located behind a modest, one-story storefront. The stage was much like a shelf parked against the wall at the apex of the right angle. The photographer is shooting from in front of the antique -- and not ironic -- cigarette machine that Fred used as a safe. To his left are the washrooms and the audience area, which is filled cheek to jowl with café tables, chairs, and bench seats. To his right and behind him is an extra-long bar stretching almost entirely to the front doors. From this vantage, you get a clear view of the small, rickety stage comprised of temporary risers covered in carpet.
There are small things I notice in the video, including the Chicago Reader banner hanging on the rear masonry wall – the publication and its writers were very supportive of Fred, the Velvet and the musicians who played here. Also, the walls feature enlarged and laminated Reader “Critic’s Choice” previews, which Clarence would prepare and hang like badges of honor for patrons and day trippers to peruse. A framed photograph of Sonny Rollins is positioned above the ice box, which is between the audio rack and the back of the bar. At one point, superfan and photographer Jimmie Jones from the Quad Cities passes in front of the camera on his way to the bar. All appears right tonight at the Velvet…
I see there’s little to no water damage to the flowery patinaed wallpaper on the plasterboard wall behind the stage, nor is there any damage visible on the ceiling above the stage. Roof damage and water intrusion was a latter-day condition that eventually forced Fred to close the Velvet in 2006, ever so slightly ahead of it being gutted to become a sales office for the condominium tower which would replace it. Soon thereafter, the Velvet building and the surrounding block were removed in toto -- and Fred reopened nearby at 67 E. Cermak Road.
Together now, 25 years after this night, we see friends and heroes in this recording who don’t age, in the place where we came to know them. They are on stage and playing mightily in the groove, ready to inspire or entertain for as long as our successive technologies will carry their likenesses, imprints and sounds forward.
Andy Pierce helped establish the Fred Anderson collection here in the Creative Audio Archive. He hosts “Another Place,” a Jazz and Avant Garde music show, on WDCB Public Radio 90.9 FM and www.WDCB.org, and has volunteered for Fred Anderson Park in Chicago’s South Loop, since its inception in 2010.
Friend & Collaborator Jeff Kowalkowski Remembers Harrison
"Harrison Bankhead was a great inspiration for me. Whenever we played together it was just joyful laughter. He taught me so much about the improvisational spirit that all musicians need to know. He was a beautiful person, and I miss him a lot."
We're pleased to share an original recorded composition written by Jeff below:
Jeff Kowalkowski, Avreeyal Ra, and Harrison Bankhead, with Mark Siska Photographer
About the Creative Audio Archive at ESS:
The Creative Audio Archive (CAA) at Experimental Sound Studio is a Chicago based center for the preservation and investigation of innovative and experimental sonic arts and music. With collections from Sun Ra / El Saturn, Links Hall, Malachi Ritscher, Studio Henry, and Experimental Sound Studio (its parent organization), among others - CAA was formed for the historical preservation of recordings, print, and visual ephemera related to avant-garde and exploratory sound and music.
The CAA's public programming works to fulfill its mission of stewardship, preservation, and accessibility through live events, artist commissions and residencies, and research fellowships.