Al Harewood!

Thanks to Mike Melito for sharing this rare footage of the great Al Harewood in action with Stan Getz circa. 1963:

Al Harewood is an important drummer who is generally overlooked and every drummer should check him out. 

During my studies at McGill University during the mid 90s Stanley Turrentine's album Up at Mintons was required listening, assigned to all the drummers who were studying with teacher Chris McCann at the time.

When I once asked Harold Mabern about Al Harewood he replied: "This cat was into SWINGING!"

Here's a nice piece on Al Harewood from Ethan Iverson's blog Do the Math on the occasion of Harewood's passing in 2014: https://ethaniverson.com/2014/03/14/rip-al-harewood/

As you can see from the selected discography in Iverson's column, Harewood's deep swing was in high demand.

I spoke with Al Harewood at length over the phone once, for several hours, back the late 90s. I had an assignment for Kevin Dean's Performance Practice class at McGill and I was required to interview a living jazz musician. So I called up the musician's union in New York and asked for Harewood's phone number and gave him a call. He was a bit confused as to why some kid from Montreal was interested in his career (!) however he was very generous with his time and patiently answered my questions at length. I recorded the whole thing on cassette but unfortunately 25+ years and several moves later I fear that they may have been lost.

Anyways, if you're serious about SWINGING then check out Al Harewood!