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One of the top male jazz singers to emerge in the 1990s, Brooklyn-born and Harlem-based
Allan Harris is an award-winning vocalist who has been compared to
Nat King Cole, and whose talents also include guitarist, songwriter, actor, and producer. His albums cover a broad stylistic range, while also drawing strongly from the jazz tradition.
Harris first recorded for his own Love Productions Records label and went on to record two sets for Mons:
It's a Wonderful World, a sextet date with
Ray Brown,
Jeff Hamilton,
Benny Green,
Mark Whitfield, and
Claudio Roditi; and Here Comes Allan Harris and the Metropole Orchestra, an ambitious effort on which he was backed by the Netherlands' massive 54-piece ensemble. In 2001,
Harris paid tribute to longtime
Duke Ellington scribe
Billy Strayhorn with
Love Came: The Songs of Strayhorn.
Harris moved away from jazz standards with 2006's
Cross That River, a concept album about the African-American experience in the American West of the 1860s. In 2007,
Harris released
Long Live the King, a live recording from the Kennedy Center in tribute to
Nat King Cole. Two years later he issued a 2009 holiday-season homage to
Cole, Dedicated to You: Allan Harris Sings a Nat King Cole Christmas. Also arriving that year was Cry of the Thunderbird, a follow-up to
Cross That River. In 2011,
Harris released the R&B-infused
Open Up Your Mind, while 2014's
Convergence, a tribute to
Tony Bennett and
Bill Evans, was recorded with pianist
Takana Miyamoto. One year later,
Harris took home the Down Beat Critic's Poll Award for Rising Star Jazz Vocalist. Also in 2015, he released the studio album Black Bar Jukebox, which featured a mix of standards, originals, and modern pop covers. Arriving in 2016, the follow-up Nobody's Gonna Love You Better: Black Bar Jukebox Redux spanned wide stylistic territory from vocal jazz, R&B, blues, and Brazilian to covers of rock classics by
Jimi Hendrix and
Steely Dan, while also including a retooled track from
Cross That River among its four
Harris originals. ~ Scott Yanow