Harry Carney

• Born: April 1, 1910
• Birthplace: Boston, Massachusetts
• Died: October 8, 1974
• Place of death: New York, New York

Jazz musician

Carney was the first significant baritone saxophone player in jazz. His forty-seven-year tenure made him the longest-serving member of the Duke Ellington Orchestra. Carney was professionally active from the late 1920’s until his death in 1974, with a creative peak during the 1930’s and 1940’s. Throughout his career, he remained true to the swing style.

Early Life

Harry Howell Carney was born in 1910 in Boston, Massachusetts. He started taking piano lessons at the age of six and began his professional career at age thirteen when he joined—at the suggestion of clarinetist James “Buster” Tolliver—the Knights of Pythias boys band. The bandmaster gave him lessons on the clarinet. A year later, Carney received instruction on the alto saxophone from New England Conservatory teacher Jerome Pasquall. During that time, he took on engagements in local bands led by Bobby Sawyer and Walter Johnson.

In June of 1926, Duke Ellington hired Carney for concerts on Ellington’s summer tour through New England with his band, the Washingtonians. After the tour, Carney returned to school and spent Christmas break with Ellington in New York, where he participated on Ellington’s second recording session for the Vocalion label. Among Carney’s Boston friends were Johnny Hodges—his next-door neighbor—and Charlie Holmes, with whom he returned to New York in early 1927. During this stay, Carney participated in two Ellington recording sessions, one for Vocalion and one for Brunswick. In these sessions, he played clarinet and alto saxophone in the reed section but did not have a solo.

The trip persuaded Carney to move permanently to New York in March of 1927. He first worked briefly at the Savoy Ballroom with Fess Williams and His Royal Flush Orchestra and then at the Bamboo Inn with the banjoist Henry Saparo. Ellington hired Carney again for his 1927 New England tour, during which Carney added the baritone saxophone to his repertoire. After the band returned to New York, Carney remained with Ellington for the next forty-seven years.

Life’s Work

Influenced by the bass saxophonist Adrian Rollini, Carney made the baritone saxophone his preferred instrument. For many years, he was the only significant jazz soloist on the instrument. Ellington recognized Carney’s exceptional skill and encouraged him to play key voices in the arrangements, such as the first chorus in “East St. Louis Toodle-Oo” (1927). Carney’s earliest recorded solos on baritone, which exhibit the influence of tenor saxophonist Coleman Hawkins in terms of the phrasing, appear in “Stevedore Stomp” (1929), “Double Check Stomp” (1930), “Old Man Blues” (1930), and “Jazz Cocktail” (1932). Because of Carney’s growing reputation, Benny Goodman invited him to play in the “Twenty Years of Jazz” concert at Carnegie Hall on January 16, 1938. Carney was featured as the soloist in “Blue Reverie.” In August of the same year, he was the soloist on the Ellington recording of “Buffet Flat.”

During the 1940’s, Carney continued to demonstrate remarkable dexterity on the baritone. Some of the finest examples of his work are “Perdido” (1942) and “Prelude to a Kiss” (1945). Carney continued to solo on the baritone during the 1950’s and 1960’s. He gave noteworthy performances on “V.I.P.’s Boogie” (1951); “The Mooche” (1952); a duet with the younger baritone saxophonist Gerry Mulligan in “Prima Bara Dubla” at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1958; and the solo in “A Chromatic Love Affair” at “The Greatest Jazz Concert in the World” at the Hollywood Bowl on July 1, 1967.

Despite his renown on baritone saxophone, the clarinet was Carney’s first instrument. His earliest clarinet solo—on Ellington’s “Bugle Call Rag” (January, 1928)—is strongly indebted to Carney’s role models on the instrument, Buster Bailey and Don Murray. In his later clarinet solos, Carney developed the distinctive warm tone heard in “Awful Sad” (October, 1928), “Creole Love Call” (1932 and 1944), “I Don’t Know What Kind of Blues I Got” (1941), and “Mood Indigo” (1943). After 1946, when Ellington assigned the clarinet solos to Russell Procope, Carney rarely performed solos on clarinet. He occasionally played the bass clarinet in the ensemble, such as in “Saddest Tale” (1934) and “Perfume Suite” (1944). He also was one of the first soloists on bass clarinet (1945’s “I Let a Song Go Out of My Heart”).

The second reed instrument Carney studied, the alto saxophone, was the one on which he would solo least during his career. On one of his few solos on the instrument, in “What Can a Poor Fellow Do?” (1927), the influence by Carney’s band colleagues Johnny Hodges and Charlie Holmes, as well as Sidney Bechet, can be heard. After 1928, Ellington allotted all alto saxophone solos to Hodges and the second alto parts to Carney (such as in “Black and Tan Fantasy”, 1929-1932).

Carney died in New York in 1974, less than five months after Ellington’s death. Carney had been associated with the Ellington orchestra for more than four decades.

Significance

Carney was the first baritone saxophonist of significance in jazz. In his solos he exhibited a deep, muscular, and rich tone. In the ensemble, his baritone saxophone was the backbone of the reed section, providing the Ellington orchestra with its unmistakable full and rich sound. In later years, he perfected the circular breathing technique on the instrument, allowing him to play sustained, long notes. Carney decisively influenced the next generation of baritone saxophonists, notably Gerry Mulligan, Serge Chaloff, and Pepper Adams. On the clarinet, Carney explores the whole range of the instrument, while maintaining a warm tone with subtle vibrato. As composer he participated on Ellington’s “Rockin’ in Rhythm.”

Besides his work with the Ellington orchestra, Carney recorded both under his own name and as a freelance studio musician. As leader he recorded Harry Carney’s Big Eight (1946), Harry Carney with Strings (1954), and Rock Me Gently: Harry Carney and the Duke’s Men (1960). He also worked extensively as a studio musician.

Carney was voted the best baritone saxophonist in the reader polls of jazz magazines Metronome and DownBeat from 1944 to 1948 (also 1952 in the latter). He was a member of the Metronome All-Stars in 1945 and 1946 and the Esquire All-Americans in 1946.

Bibliography

Ellington, Edward Kennedy. Music Is My Mistress. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1973. Published a year before Ellington’s death, this book is more of a rambling memoir than a formal autobiography and includes biographical sketches of the bandleader’s friends and associates.

Gammond, Peter, ed. Duke Ellington: His Life and Music. New York: Da Capo Press, 1977. Collection of more than a dozen thoughtful essays about Ellington. Very good source for sketches of his many sidemen, including Carney.

Lawrence, A. H. Duke Ellington and His World: A Biography. New York: Routledge, 2001. Drawing on interviews with former band members, family, and friends, Lawrence presents a portrait of Ellington’s personal life and describes how he made his music.

Tucker, Mark, ed. The Duke Ellington Reader. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. Useful collection of articles about the leader of the band in which Carney played for nearly fifty years.