Wilbur Harden

Wilbur Harden (* 31 December 1924 in Birmingham , Alabama ; † June 1969 ) was an American jazz - trumpet and flugelhorn player .

Live and act

Wilbur Harden played rhythm and blues with Roy Brown and Ivory Joe Hunter in 1950 , then served in the US Navy. In the mid-1950s he played in Detroit in the band of Yusef Lateef and recorded several LPs with him on the jazz label Savoy Records . In 1957 he appeared on the New York hard bop scene after leaving Lateef's band. In 1958 Harden recorded pioneering hard bop pieces with John Coltrane in three recording sessions at Rudy Van Gelder , including Wells Fargo , Count Down , Tanganyika Strut , Gold Coast and more. The Count Down session of March 11th , the Gold Coast session of June 13th and the Dial Africa session of June 24th, 1958 are important works by the great tenor saxophonist in a transitional period: They are much more carefully produced than those published almost inflationarily Prestige recordings from 1957 to 1958 and thus form an important link to the LPs recorded a little later by Atlantic Records . In these sessions Wilbur Harden plays in a soft and supple style that is strongly reminiscent of Miles Davis , but is also heavily influenced by the blues . Back then, Harden was also compared to Kenny Dorham , Art Farmer or Donald Byrd . Harden can also be heard as a sideman on the Prestige recordings from July 11, 1958, which were later released on the LPs Standard Coltrane , Bahia and Stardust .

Harden played an LP in 1958 under his own direction with Tommy Flanagan ; In 1960 he worked on the LP Imagines of Curtis Fuller . Afterwards an illness forced him to end his active music career. Since then Wilbur Harden has been one of the “great lost musicians” of modern jazz .

Discography

As a leader

• The King And I ( Savoy Records , 1958)

With John Coltrane

• Gold Coast (Savoy, 1958)
• Tanganyika Strut (Savoy, 1958), u. a. with Howard Williams
• Stardust ( Prestige , 1958)
• Mainstream 1958 (Savoy, 1958)
• Dial Africa (Savoy, 1958)
• Standard Coltrane (Prestige, 1958)
• Bahia (Prestige, 1958)

With Curtis Fuller

• Images Of Curtis Fuller (Savoy, 1960)

With Yusef Lateef

• Jazz And The Sounds Of Nature (Savoy)
• Gong!
• Prayer To The East (Savoy)
• The Sounds Of Yusef (Prestige)
• Other Sounds ( New Jazz )

literature

• Gerd Filtgen, Michael Auserbauer: John Coltrane - His life, his music, his records . Oreos Verl. ( Collection Jazz ), 2nd edition, Schaftlach 1989
• Richard Cook , Brian Morton : The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD . 6th edition. Penguin, London 2002, ISBN 0-14-051521-6 .
• H. Alan Stein: Liner Notes on Tanganyika Strut and Mainstream 1958 . Savoy