1995 Dallas Observer Music Awards (Part I)

"The thing I always liked about Western swing is it gave you the chance to do some kind of jazz-type stuff," Swanson says. "But it gave you the license to get kinda raunchy about it, doing it kind of dirty and grungy, do it rockin' as opposed to finessed and refined and smooth. If you listen to the Tiffany Transcriptions, [Wills'] guitarists have their amps cranked and they're just blowin'. It's real grungy, and it's like the rock and roll of its time. That's what I wanted to get back to."

--R.W.

JAZZ
Earl Harvin

Two years ago, Earl Harvin and I sat in the living room of James Clay, raptly listening as the Texas Tenor told tales of days spent with Ornette Coleman, Ray Charles, Cannonball Adderly, and so many other music greats. Surrounding us were photos of Clay sharing the bandstand with the likes of pianist Red Garland at the American Woodmans Hall and fellow tenor saxman Marchel Ivery at the Recovery Room. Memories, like the smoke from Clay's constant cigarette, swirled about the cramped study.

Harvin had performed often with Clay, providing the backbeat to the sax player's wide-open sound, though they had never spoken about James' past; among jazz musicians, their stories are usually communicated within the notes they play, and their bonding is done on the stage as they attempt to follow each other's split-second improvisations. As Clay spoke, his voice harsh with years of cigarette smoke and various illnesses that would eventually claim his life in January of this year, Harvin would chime in with a question or an observation--sometimes playing the role of the student learning at the feet of the master, other times assuming the role of colleague and peer, two equals telling each other how they began.

Clay told us of how he actually began playing the drums as a kid, switching to the saxophone only after someone had stolen his snare drum in elementary school--and, he stressed with great importance in his voice, once he noticed that the older guys in the marching bands who played the horn got the flashy uniforms and all the girls.

"When I was a kid," Harvin told Clay, "I always wanted to play the trumpet. I had some drums around, but it's like, when I was in third grade, they sent out a note to all the parents saying if your kid wants to play, he needs to audition for the elementary school band. And I was like, 'Mom, I want to play the trumpet,' and she looked at the price of what it cost to rent the trumpet instead of the drums--they always have the drums at the school and all you have to do is buy the sticks and the book, whereas you have to rent the trumpet--and she said, 'You ain't playing the trumpet.' It was like, 'We'll buy you the sticks,' and that's how I ended up playing the drums."

Over the course of the two hours spent at Clay's house, Harvin and Clay compared notes on Coleman's avant-jazz; they discussed Clay's early recording sessions for Cannonball Adderly; they debated the merits of a big band; and they discussed the way in which record companies and writers try to classify jazz as be-bop or free-jazz or what not to make it easier to package.

"I think you just try to think of it as music, the sound," Harvin said. "I've always thought of styles just as the label the record company puts on it in order to sell it."

James Clay is dead now, and though his death means little to most people around town, it carries with it great significance throughout the local jazz community. He was one of the all-time greats, a man to be appreciated and admired--a link to Dallas' legendary jazz past, and a key to its future and players like Earl Harvin.

Earl Harvin is certainly part of that future, a New Jersey-born transplant who, like Philly Joe Jones and Max Roach before him, elevates the role of drummer to frontman--not merely someone who keeps the time, but a musician whose playing provides the melody. He has played with the best, and he is also among the best, using his drum kit the way Thelonious Monk used the piano's keys--creating sheer beauty out of discordance, finding all the right notes by using all the wrong ones.

The forthcoming Earl Harvin Trio/Quintet album, due sometime in the next couple of months from Leaning House Records (the local indie that released Marchel Ivery's Marchel's Mode last year), is a startling, long-awaited debut. Harvin and his mighty band--Dave Palmer on piano, Fred Hamilton on bass, and Shelly Carrol on tenor and alto sax--create a gorgeous sound out of fragments of melodies, fleshing out ideas till they become emotions. If Harvin's work with local art-punk band Rubberbullet and with MC 900 Ft Jesus garners him more attention, it's his output with his trio and quartet that showcases his ability--and his purest musical soul--best.

--R.W.

FOLK/ACOUSTIC
Spyche

To those who have known her for several years or only a few moments, Spyche is a most elusive woman. Each night, as she works the door at Trees checking IDs and keeping out suspected interlopers, she comes across as a powerful force to be reckoned with--as though all that separates a pleasant night out and a painful experience is one swift kick from the young woman's beat-to-hell combat boot. Her arms are marked with the occasional tattoo, the origins of which she will not explain; through her lip is a small silver loop; her hair has lately been kept up in small thatches wrapped in rubber bands. She is like some immovable, quiet, sly presence, never one to reveal too much of herself but able to force even the most intimate secret from a stranger.