Double Play: Harry Carney and Johnny Hodges Interviewed by Don DeMichael [1962]

 © Copyright ® Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

By 1962, when the following article by Don DeMichael appeared in Downbeat  (7 June 1962, 20-21, 44), saxophonists Harry Carney (1910-1974) and Johnny Hodges (1907-1970) had been key figures with Ellington for three and a half decades. Carney officially joined Ellington's band in 1927 (though he may have played in it occasionally the preceding year in New England), while Hodges became a full-time member in 1928.

As DeMichael's piece revealed. Carney and Hodges shared more than their long experience together in the Ellington reed section. Both hailed from Massachusetts (Carney from Boston, Hodges from Cambridge), came under the influence of Sidney Bechet early on, and spoke of their experience as Ellingtonians with a mixture of cool professionalism, obvious pride, and unabashed awe for their leader's abilities.

“It's hard to keep track of some jazzmen. One week they're with so-and-so's band, the next week with a different group. It seems they change jobs as easily as they change clothes —and sometimes as often. But when a man joins the Ellington band, he usually stays.

Take the two senior members of the band. Harry Carney has been with the band since he was 17, and that was 36 years ago. Johnny Hodges, except from 1951-55, has been an Ellingtonian since 1928. So strong has been the association of men and band that Hodges' flowing, sensuous alto and Carney's full-blooded baritone are as much a part of the "Ellington sound" as are plunger-muted brass and Duke's piano.

But the Hodges-Carney relationship extends beyond their careers in the Ellington band. Both are from the Boston, Mass., area, and though Hodges is four years older than Carney, they were boyhood chums.

"Johnny and I lived a few doors apart," Carney said recently. "We used to get together and listen to records. And, of course, I've always been a great admirer of Johnny. I was trying to play alto in the same vein, and I stuck as close to him as he would allow me. It did me an awful lot of good."

Carney, a large man, sat quietly on the edge of a hotel-room bed. Hodges, a small man, sprawled on the bed, watching the flickering picture of a silent television set. He chuckled occasionally. It was difficult to tell if he was amused by the TV show or by Carney's reminiscences of far-away days.

Carney continued: "Hodges was in New York before I came there. He was instrumental in getting me my first job in New York. That was in 1927.

"He was with Chick Webb at the Savoy Ballroom. They were having what they called a Masquerade Ball Night, an all-day, all-night affair. Instead of the regular two bands playing, there were four bands. Johnny got me a job in one of the relief bands. In the band was a fellow, Henry Saytoe [Henri Saparo], who had a job coming up in a couple of weeks at the Bamboo Inn, a Chinese-American restaurant. I got permission from my folks to stay, and I took that job. I was 17."

Hodges chuckled again.

While Carney was at the Bamboo Inn, Ellington often came in on his nights off to dine and listen to the band. After Carney had been at the restaurant for about three months, the place burned down.

But he evidently had made an impression on Ellington.

"One day I bumped into Duke on the street," Carney said. "He inquired as to what I was doing. I told him I was jobbing around, gigging. That's when he made me the offer to join him. He was taking a band up to New England, which was my stomping ground. I'd been away from home long enough to be homesick, and it didn't take much for him to influence me to go back."

Still an altoist, Carney added baritone saxophone to his doubles during his first week with the band.

"There were quite a few good baritone players in those days," he said. "Sonny Adams, Willie Grant, Joe Garland, Foots Thomas with the Missourians. As a matter of fact, all the bands used baritone if the band was above a certain number of pieces. The average nine- or 10-piece band would have baritone or someone who doubled baritone. I continued with alto, though, to about '32 or maybe later than that."

Hodges, who speaks much the same way he plays, stirred when asked how he joined the band.

"I'd been with Chick Webb," he said, "You see, Duke started Chick, gave Chick his first band. Duke was working at the Kentucky Club, six pieces. Another club opened up on 50th St. and Seventh Ave. I don't remember the name of it. But it wanted a band just like Duke's. So he asked me to have a band, and I didn't want any part of having a band. He asked Chick. (Chick would stand on a corner and sing whole arrangements.} We got together with six pieces and tried to make it sound like Duke. We did pretty good until we had a fire. During that time fire was common in clubs. We went up to the Savoy for two weeks. Stayed about six months.

"I left and started gigging with a fellow named Luckey Roberts. The bread was good. Thought it would last forever. So I kept gigging and gigging and

gigging-

"Meanwhile, Otto Hardwicke [who was playing alto with Ellington] had

an accident went through the windshield of a taxicab. Had his face all cut up, and I had to go to work for him. Duke offered me a job. I still wouldn't take the job, kept putting it off and putting it off. Everybody was trying to talk me into taking it. So I finally took it. And here I am."

Hodges would have it that nothing much happened between then and now. He fails to mention that in those years he became one of the important alto saxophonists, that his manner of playing influenced countless musicians. He will mention in an off-hand manner the small band he led from 1951-55 ("a little experience of my own, a few knocks, a few headaches").

But Hodges comments freely when the topic of discussion turns to Sidney Bechet (pronounced "Bash-shay" by those who knew the late soprano saxophonist well).

"I went to hear him at a theater in Boston," Hodges said. "My sister knew him very well. Made myself known, and had a little soprano under my arm. He asked me to play. I caught the show two, three times to catch as much as I could. And then I started buying records. Him and Louis Armstrong. The Clarence Williams Blue Five.

"The best thing that ever happened to me was when I went to New York and was playing at a little cabaret on 135th St. He came after me. He had a club of his own called Club Bechet on 145th St. He came after me and offered

me a job. He would tell me to learn this and learn that. The old man won't be here long,' he'd say. I didn't know what he was talking about then, but he would go away and get lost, and I was supposed to play his part. At the same time, I was learning, getting an education.

"They used to have midnight shows at the Lafayette Theater every Friday. All the clubs used to put on their shows for free. Fantastic. We put on our show, and that's how I got to be known, through him. We played I Found a New Baby in duet form. So I was a big guy from then on, playing a duet with Bechet.

"That was way before Carney. I was 17. I used to come to New York and stay a week and run back. I'd take a job in a dancing school that would pay about $40 a week and only draw $8 or $10, just enough to go home. Day before payday, I'd go home, and we'd sit down and compare notes. Me, him [Carney], and Charlie Holmes [a saxophonist prominent in the late '20s and '30s, especially during his stay with the Luis Russell Band when it was fronted by Louis Armstrong]. Go back next week and do the same thing."

Carney, too, came under Bechet's influence.

"It was through Johnny that I became Bechet-conscious," he said. "That was before I left Boston. After I got with Duke, I heard so many fabulous stories about Bechet. Finally I met him and found he was a wonderful guy, very humorous, dry."

But it was Hodges who absorbed Bechet into his playing. For example, Hodges' alto solo on his small-band recording of Dream Blues, made in 1939 and reissued last year on an Epic LP, if played at 45 rpm instead of 33 rpm sounds like Bechet's soprano.

"I had quite a few of his riffs," Hodges said, smiling. "Quite a few of his pets. My pets too. Used to nurse him."

Hodges turned to Carney, the conversation about Ellington small-unit recordings seemingly having reminded him of something.

"You know those test records they used to give us?" he asked Carney. "I got all those. Jeep's Blues. You remember when you, me, and Cootie were getting it together?"

Carney nodded.

"I got all those," Hodges said. "They'd do four or five takes and keep one or two. And one or two of what they didn't use would be better than what they put out."

The mention of trumpeter Cootie Williams, who was a mainstay of the Ellington band from 1929 to 1940 when he left to go with Benny Goodman, brought to mind the Ellington band of the late '30s and early '40s, considered by many to be the golden era of the band.

But Carney would have none of this the-1940-band-was-the-best-band.

"A lot of people come up and start talking about the 1940 band and say, 'Gee, that was the band.' For the most part, they've stopped going where the band's playing. Then they come out one night and say, 'Oh, this band is nothing like the band of 1940.' And they actually haven't heard enough or absorbed enough of the current band's playing to say that. In 1940 there was something that did something to them, and that's all they remember."

Carney's point was well taken. Ellington, through both his music and the band, has evolved. For example, the band's library has several arrangements of Ellington tunes that have become standard.

"Take It Don't Mean a Thing" Hodges said. "I used to play the verse. You never heard the verse, didcha? That's the original. Then Ivie Anderson came in, and there was another arrangement. Then they had one for Ben Webster. And one for the brass section. Had one for Ray Nance. Then another one for Ray Nance, a different one."

"Rosemary Clooney did one," Carney added.

"We got all those," Hodges said. "We got a million of 'em. And they're all in the book."

"The book is jammed," Carney said. "We just carry them all over the country."

"And don't even mention the arrangements for Caravan," Hodges sputtered.

Nor is the library numbered, which, to say the least, makes finding a seldom-played arrangement difficult.

"He's very unpredictable," Carney said, referring to Ellington. "If someone comes up and asks for something, he'll have everyone digging through the book looking for it. Sometimes we find it, sometimes we don't."

In addition to carrying a large library filled with yesterday, the band carries a spirit and tradition that began the day before yesterday. Spirit and tradition are strong.

One of these traditions, an Ellington sound, is the plunger-growl trumpet, a tradition that started with Bubber Miley, was inherited by Cootie Williams, and continues, to a great extent, in the playing of Ray Nance.

"If Duke finds an individual who can do it," Carney commented, "he gives him the work to do. It must be gratifying to a player to know he plays enough to satisfy the Duke in this particular style.

"I can say the same thing about Russell Procope playing clarinet. When he plays clarinet, he plays Barney [Bigard] so well."

Commenting on the spirit of the band, Carney said, "There're a lot of nights when . .. everybody can't feel well all the time. But if the band gets something going, the spirit just comes up."

The tradition of the band members adding to, making suggestions about, arrangements is well known. It also is indicative of the band's spirit.

"For instance," Carney began, "when you go into a recording studio, you might have an arrangement all made, yet it'll probably be changed. Guys come up with ideas of injecting something. That still goes on."

"Everybody pitches in  — all the time," Hodges interjected. "Somebody might have ideas to make it a little better."

"In other words," Carney said, "everybody is still conscious of making a good record."

Spirit. Tradition. Both are contagious. Both are magnets, drawing new blood into the band but blood that is Ellington blood. For the band has always been made up of musicians best described as "Ellington people." When they leave the band, if they ever do, that special sheen of Ellington usually remains.

It is made up, in part, of suavity, urbanity, self-confidence. It is something no other band imparts to its members. It is a unique attractive-force.

Perhaps Carney said it best: "You still hear musicians say the height of their ambition is to play in the Ellington band."”

Winner of the 2025 Jazz Journalist Association Special Citation for Historic Writings, Steven Cerra is a professional Jazz drummer and the author of anthologies on Gerry Mulligan, Bill Evans, Stan Kenton, Dave Brubeck, Shelly Manne, Jazz West Coast Readers Vols. 1-3, Profiles in Jazz, Vol.1, Jazz Drummers A Reader Vols. 1-2, Jazz Saxophonists A Reader, Vol. 1, 2 & 3, Jazz Piano A Reader, Vols. 1, 2 & 3, Jazz Trumpet A Reader Vols. 1 and 2 and A Companion Celebrating The 100th Anniversary of the Jean Goldkette Orchestras, 1926-2026. He also hosts the jazzprofiles.blogspot and cerra.substack blogs.

An Evening with Harry Carney by Bill Coss

 © Introduction. Copyright ® Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“When the Club Kentucky contract expired in April 1927, Ellington prepared for another summer tour of New England arranged by Charles Shribman. By this time he had added three new players to the band. Harry Carney, just seventeen, played clarinet and alto sax. Ellington called him "a very well-behaved, well-organized young man, [who] was immediately nicknamed 'Youth' by Sonny Greer." Carney increasingly would turn to his preferred instrument, the low-pitched baritone sax, which became the musical anchor for the Ellington orchestra. "His massive tone," recalled Mercer Ellington, "not only gave the saxophone section a depth and roundness no other had, but it gave the whole ensemble a rich, sonorous foundation that proved inimitable." Ellington would often assign Carney the seventh tone, rather than the expected root note, of a chord, and these unusual low notes contributed to the uniqueness of the Ellington sound. In time Carney would become the leading player of the baritone saxophone and make it recognized as an instrument capable of sustaining solos. The quiet, handsome Carney would stay with the orchestra until Ellington died, the longest tenure of any Ellington musician.”

• John Edward Hasse, Beyond Category: The Life and Genius of Duke Ellington [1993]

“Harry Carney

BARITONE SAXOPHONE, CLARINET

Born April 1910; died 8 October 1974

Carney was an anonymous young band player in Boston when Duke Ellington hired him for a local job in 1926. After that, their association lasted for a further 48 years, and Carney most likely spent more time in Duke's company than any other person. Although he regularly doubled on clarinet in lie early years of the Ellington band, it was the baritone sax which was his preferred instrument - his sonorous and surprisingly mobile way with the horn set the pattern for every baritone man who followed, at least until the 50s, and as the anchor man in the reed section he became perhaps the key instrumentalist in the orchestra. While he enjoyed plenty of solo space, Ellington offered him fewer star vehicles than he did some of his soloists, as if acknowledging that so much of the music revolved around Carney's sound anyway.”

• Richard Cook’s Jazz Encyclopedia

The following appeared in the  May 25,1961 annual reed issue of Downbeat.

© Copyright ® Bill Coss, copyright protected, all rights reserved, the author claims no right of copyright usage.

Harry Carney has a good-humored unpretentiousness that reminds you of your favorite next-door neighbor. He and his wife have secured a life rich in the better things and alive with interest, carving it out of 36 years of hectic professional musicianship. 

I wasn't prepared for their serenity, when I visited them recently. And the serenity did not prepare me for the avid interest they have in everything around them. By any criteria, the Carneys are among the youngest people in jazz. 

That amuses Harry because, after 33 years as a Duke Ellington sideman, he is running into a second generation of listeners. “Kids come up to me and say, ‘Mother and Dad said to say hello to you'. Almost always they add, ‘We thought you’d be an old man.’ ” 

If you browse along Carney’s bookshelves, you find a catholic selection: The Power of Positive Thinking, The Prayers of Peter Marshall, Hot Discography, The Invisible Man, Mein Kampf, Marjorie Morningstar, The Picture of Dorian Grey, Star Money, Appointment in Samara, The Little Prince — all interspersed with the many Down Beat plaques he has won. 

But Harry's main relaxation is music. He has most of the Ellington records, a few others, and an extensive classical collection. “I like to listen to the legitimate reed players, so that I don't get too far away from first base,” he said. He has the same trouble most of us have in finding a favorite record: “I’ve been meaning to catalog what I’ve got, but I never get around to it.” 

Lack of time is a major problem. The Ellington band practically never sits still. Yet Harry says that this is the reason he’s stayed with the band so long. 

“There was always something going on,” he said. “The music never sits still, either. Duke is always experimenting. Even today. I'll call him up and his wife will answer the phone. You can hear Duke banging the piano in the background. He’s still rushing into rehearsals with new music. He’s always anxious to hear what he’s written. and so are we.” 

Talking about Duke's playing brought up the subject of a proposed solo concert by Ellington. “It would be most interesting.” Harry said. “I’ve heard him do that kind of thing for hours after a job or when he’s supposed to be resting in his hotel suite.” 

That, in turn, turned on the reminiscences. “You know, I began on piano when I was six. I never was any good. I took the lessons and had to practice like a demon, but my brother, who never studied, could sit right down and play.” 

Several years ago, Harry said the real reason he began playing reed instruments was that he noticed how the girls flocked around a clarinetist in a Boston club. He discovered that by joining the Knights of Pythias band, he could get a clarinet for free. 

About the time he met Johnny Hodges (in the seventh grade), he switched to alto. “I found it easier to get a better sound,” he recalled. “Johnny and I used to listen to records together. I copied Sidney Bechet, Joe Smith of the Fletcher Henderson Band, and Coleman Hawkins. He was my ideal. He still is.” 

In 1927, Carney moved to New York. “Those were the days, even when I wasn’t working. I'd go to Mexico’s on 131st St. and listen all night. They'd have all-piano nights. You’d get Duke and Art Tatum and Seminole, lots of others, all in one night. I remember they even had tuba nights. You could hardly move around in the place for all that hardware.” 

Just 17, he had played with a half dozen groups by the time he met Ellington on the street and was hired for a tour through New England. He’s never been out of the Ellington reed section since. On that tour, he tried a baritone saxophone for the first time, liked the sound, and added it to his collection of instruments. He carries baritone, bass clarinet, and clarinet nowadays, but he used to carry alto, soprano, and flute as well. The latter is the only one he regrets giving up, but the lack of a practice mate made it impossible for him to remain proficient on it. 

Carney is often referred to as the father of the baritone—as Coleman Hawkins is of tenor. But he claims to have been influenced by Joe Garland, Toby Hardwicke, and, again. Hawkins. Strangely enough, what influenced his sound most was the sound that Adrian Rollini got from the bass saxophone. 

There the reminiscences stopped. Carney much preferred to talk about other people: “I remember when Pepper Adams’ mother used to bring him to dances

the band played in Rochester. He used to stand in front of the band for hours. You know, that’s one of the things I miss. I don't have much time to listen to musicians outside of the band. That's especially so now, because there are so few places where kids can play. I do hear a bit, though, and I'm pleased with most of it. 1 don’t care what era it comes from. I heard Thelonious Monk and Edmond Hall the last time we were in Boston. Music is only good or bad. That’s all I worry about.” 

We listened then to Carney’s Verve record (it has been reissued under the title Mood for Boy and Girl). He said he’d like to record again, “with a whole baritone section. But you can’t find enough rehearsal time, and I wouldn’t want to do it if it wasn’t going to be right.” 

The rightness of things is very important to him, which certainly explains his pre-eminence. But the insistence is tempered by a realistic philosophy. “There are so many things you can do,” he said, “and so many you just can’t do, no matter how hard you try. I remember one time when I was really bothered by a mouthpiece problem. You can get into an amazing panic over that, if you're a reed man. Finally, I sat myself down, talked to myself, and went back to the mouthpiece I had been using. It worked out.” 

These days Harry is most pleased with his comfortable apartment, when he can get there (“my wife doesn’t travel with me any more; the road is tough enough on a man”), his glistening Imperial (“the guys in the band are always kidding Duke because he doesn’t like to fly, but he can go to sleep in my car at the speed I drive”), and, of course, with the Ellington band. He’ll be with it, he says, as long as he’s “qualified.” He couldn’t get away from it (“I live with it more than I do with my own family”). 

Has it been worth it? “I still look forward to going to work each night.” 

Mrs. Carney agreed. A man can’t ask for much more than a good job, an interesting life, acclaim and respect, his own business (he owns a music publishing firm. Release Music), and a good hobby (she showed some excellent color shots Harry had taken of Gerry Mulligan and Zoot Sims). She interrupted herself to get me some cough drops. “That’s the way she is,” Harry complained in mock aggravation. “Every time I sneeze, she’s got the medicine out.” 

A man can’t ask for much more. Carney has it. He deserves it. It pleases your sense of justice. Harry Carney is a titled human—a Gentleman of Jazz.”

"Harry Carney: Forty-one Years at Home" - Martin Williams

© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“Harry Carney was just seventeen years old when he first came with me in '27. He owned a car and all his own instruments, and already had six thousand dollars in the bank. He started playing with us while on his summer vacation, which, of course, was the time of year when he made all of his money. Through systematic saving, he should be in very good shape now.

A very well-behaved, well-organized young man, he was immediately nicknamed "Youth" by Sonny Greer. He invited us to his home in Boston, where, he claims, Freddy Guy and Duke Ellington conned his beautiful mother, Mrs. Jenny Carney—a lovely lady, and a good cook known for her warm hospitality—into letting him come with us instead of going back to school. He's a little fatter now, but he still looks like his nickname.

Harry has always had a driving passion for driving, but he never lets anybody else but Harry Carney drive his car. As far back as I can remember, he has been driving it, and sometimes, when we're doing one-nighters, the distances between dates have been pretty long. This fact has only seemed to compound his passion, and I love to drive with Harry. He is not the world's greatest speed king, but he observes a very sound system of rules, of dos and don'ts. In other words, he is very careful, not for his own safety, but because, I think, he just doesn't want anything to happen to that car. Up until right now, I don't know of anyone else who has ever driven one of Harry Carney's cars.”

- Duke Ellington, Music is My Mistress

“Though the seventeen-year-old Harry Carney had only a sliver of Braud's musical experience, he was to become the longest-lasting piece in the puzzle that was the Ellington Effect. He started playing with the band in June of 1927, and according to Carney, Ellington became a "sort of guardian" to him. Not only did he spend the rest of his life in the band, but Carney and Ellington eventually became the closest of companions. At the time, though, he was teased by his older bandmates, one of whom, Sonny Greer, nicknamed him "Youth." Even then he was, in Ellington's words, "a very well-behaved, well-organized young man," and he took his duties seriously enough to change instruments upon joining the band, having concluded that it would "give more variety" to the clarinet-dominated reed section if he started doubling on baritone saxophone.

Soon the big horn became his primary instrument: "My greatest kick with the instrument, which then seemed so much bigger than me, was that I was able to fill it and make some noise with it. I enjoyed the tone of it and I started to give it some serious study, and I've been carrying it around ever since." Influenced by Coleman Hawkins, Fletcher Henderson's Star soloist, and Adrian Rollini, whose bass saxophone graced the small-group records of Bix Beiderbecke, Red Nichols, and Joe Venuti, Carney strived to duplicate Hawkins's facility and Rollini's tone, thereby becoming the first great baritone-sax soloist in jazz. Ellington was fascinated by the massive sound, dark as twice-burnt umber and fine-grained as mahogany, that Carney drew from the cumbersome instrument, and for the next half century it would serve as one of his signature timbres.”

- Terry Teachout, Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington

“Harry Carney was born in Boston in 1910. He was still in his teens when Duke Ellington heard him in New York City and obtained his parents' permission to take him on the road with the band in 1926. By the time he had neared the end of his third decade with the band Carney had been acknowledged by jazz fans all over the world as the first, and for a long time almost the only, great jazz soloist on baritone sax. His rich, virile tone and compellingly individual style gave the Ellington band a unique tonal quality that now has become the sole throwback to the band's original distinctive sounds.”

- Leonard Feather, The New Edition of the Encyclopedia of Jazz

“The baritone saxophone was Carney's preferred instrument, however, and he was the first (for many years the only) important jazz soloist on that instrument. In later years he made use of the technique of CIRCULAR BREATHING, which allowed him to sustain the flow of sound indefinitely. His distinctive, rich tone was an essential element of the Ellington sound, and his deep and precise voice anchored the reed section and added an unmistakable touch to the orchestra's performances.”

- JOSE HOSIASSON, The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz

Originally published by the distinguished Jazz author and critic Martin Williams in 1969, Harry Carney would have five more years “at home” before Duke Ellington’s death in 1974. After Ellington's death, Carney said: "This is the worst day of my life. Without Duke I have nothing to live for." Four months later, Carney also died.

This feature about Harry Carney, one of the great colorists in Jazz, is long overdue. You can locate this essay in Martin’s Jazz in Its Time, a compilation of his writings which first appeared in down beat, International Musician, Metronome, Jazz Times, The Saturday Review and High Fidelity.

"My greatest kick with the instrument, which then seemed much bigger than me, was that I was able to fill it, and make some noise with it. I enjoyed the tone of it and I started to give it some serious study. I've been carrying it around ever since."

Thus, speaking to Stanley Dance, did Harry Howell Carney describe his first encounter with the baritone sax. Carney is, to most musicians and fans, the archetypal jazz baritone saxophonist, but it happens that he was well established on alto sax and clarinet before he took up the instrument. Actually, people seriously ask him if he invented the larger horn, but he was not the "first" jazz baritone manner the last, to be sure.

Carney's onetime Duke Ellington colleague, the late cornetist Rex Stewart, once said that "as a general rule, when an instrumentalist really makes it big, everybody tries to imitate him. However, Carney's concept is unique, so personalized that no one has been able successfully to copy his style or his famous sonority on the baritone saxophone."

Carney has, Stewart continued, "a range . . . that surpasses credibility, He plays the higher octaves not only in tune but with a tenderness that is sometimes mindful of a cello's sound. Then, when called for, he's able to attack the sonorous bottom of the horn with such vigor and vitality that it is small wonder he has been the anchor man in Ellington's orchestra for these many years." He has also learned a trick or two of breath control that enables him to hold the long tones that Ellington favors.

"There may be a poll he hasn't won," Stewart added, "but I don't know which it could be."

Neither of Carney's parents was particularly musical, but his own music education began in his hometown of Boston, with piano lessons in 1916 when he was six years of age. It did not go well in a sense; while Carney dutifully studied his classics, the neighborhood seemed full of self-taught little prodigies who could pick out popular ditties and the blues, and even ad lib on them, all on their own. To add to all this, his younger brother sat down on the piano bench one day and, with no preparation or study whatever simply started to play—at least, so Harry Carney remembers it.

Nevertheless, Harry kept up his scales and practiced his pieces for annual recitals, he went to school, and he sold Boston newspapers in whatever spare time was left.

Carney's was a musical neighborhood. There was Leonard Withers, a young pianist. There was James "Buster" Tolliver, who played reeds and later became a well-known arranger. There was Johnny Hodges, who moved across the river from Cambridge when Carney was a teenager. By that time, Carney himself had switched to clarinet. His first reasons were not exactly musical. He noticed that at dances, Tolliver played piano the first half and clarinet after intermission, and "he always seemed to be surrounded by the girls when he got through playing the clarinet, and by now I had reached an age when I was conscious of the girls, so . . ."

Tolliver explained that Carney could get clarinet lessons at a nominal fee, with the instrument supplied, if he joined the Knights of Pythias Band. Soon, inspired by Buster Bailey and Don Murray, he was, as he puts it, "alarming the whole neighborhood with my practicing," until someone thought he was good and offered him local jobs. "I was so anxious to prove to everybody I could play," he once explained to Dom Cerulli in Down Beat, "that I'd just open the window and play loud. People used to say I slept with that clarinet. The truth is, I was never without it."

Soon he added alto saxophone, and found it easier to get a better sound on the large instrument. He and Hodges began to practice together. Carney was listening to Sidney Bechet's records by now, and Coleman Hawkins' ("Hawk was actually my idol . . . and he still is").

In the spring of 1927, when he was seventeen, Carney persuaded his mother to let him take a trip to New York with another soon-to-be-well-known alto player from Boston, Charlie Holmes. They went to see Hodges, now with the Chick Webb band at the Savoy, and before long Carney had a job or two himself. One of these, with Henry Sapro at a place called the Bamboo Inn, lasted a while. One man who heard him there was a young pianist-band leader, then on the way up, named Duke Ellington.

These were exciting days for the young instrumentalist. "I couldn't believe it," he told Cerulli. "I could see my favorite musicians every afternoon. Just to have a chance to talk with them meant so much to me. I used to eat at a restaurant at 131st Street. But this is how I ate: I'd order, and then run outside for a bit, then I'd come back in and eat a little, then I'd go outside again. I just didn't want to miss anything."

Then one day on the street, Ellington approached him: a New England tour was coming up, and Otto "Toby" Hardwicke wouldn't be making it. Could Carney come along? He could indeed. The trip, which would include Boston, might even help his homesickness.

The job with Ellington was supposed to have been temporary but it became permanent, which means that Carney has been with Ellington for forty-one years now.

There seems to be a minor disagreement among several observers as to whether it was originally Ellington's idea or Carney's that he switch from alto to baritone (perhaps neither of the principals involved will say for sure by now), but Ellington certainly wanted the change and Carney certainly took to it. He acknowledges the influences of Hardwicke and Joe Garland (who played some baritone), but he told Stanley Dance that chiefly he "tried to make the upper register sound like Coleman Hawkins and the lower register like Adrian Rollini," whose bass saxophone he admired.

The first important job the Ellington band had after Carney joined was at the Harlem Cotton Club, and with the club's success and with nightly broadcasts, Ellington's career as a major figure in American music was under way. The subsequent story is one of growth—for Ellington as composer and leader, for his ensembles, and for Harry Carney on the instrument of his final choice. "Fortunately or unfortunately," he explained modestly to Dance, "there's nearly always been a better clarinetist in the band, I left the clarinet up to him."

As anyone who has watched Carney for only a few minutes will conclude, modesty is a key word. "If it is true," Stewart suggested, "that early environment shapes the individual, as I happen to believe, then it becomes clear why Carney developed into such a likable human being, since he is the product of a most harmonious household. I well remember how his parents always extended themselves in making Harry's band-buddies welcome every time we played Boston."

Carney still calls joining Ellington his greatest single achievement. "I was always surprised when fellows left the band," he says. With Ellington, "there was always something going on. I just loved it. He was always experimenting. And I liked his outlook. I liked the way he thought about music. It was right up my alley."

The mutual respect took a somewhat different turn about 1949. Carney, whose hobby up to that time had been photography, indulged his longstanding admiration of cars and bought one. He soon acquired a regular passenger on band hops: his boss. "Duke sleeps occasionally but not as a rule. He's a very good man to have along." Ellington thinks, or he makes notes. "We do very little talking, but if he thinks I'm getting weary, he'll make conversation so that I don't fall asleep."

Being on the road has its good side, "There's one thing about traveling: it always gives you something to look forward to, even if it's no more than going to another town to see people there you know."

Carney remembers those people, and they remember him. Stewart recalled that, "when the mood strikes him, he will get on the phone and spend hours calling all over the country to his friends. He carries several little address books with him, and his friends can expect to hear from Harry some time during the year." And when the orchestra takes an intermission, it is Carney who willingly chats with the people and signs autographs. "I have often watched him snatch his horn from his mouth when he had a two-bar rest to inform someone of the title of the tune the band was playing . . . while other musicians . . . ignore the question."

Carney was once a fan himself, and he obviously remembers how it felt. He also reads the jazz press, American and foreign, with much the same eagerness as he had as a younger man. The young fans often seem more serious in their questions to him than they once did— they ask about reeds and mouthpieces, about breathing. "But I feel jazz has become a part of American culture today. It's a language that is spoken everywhere. And it's not only the music, it's the people who play it."

Carney has been playing it for over four decades as a leading instrumentalist with a leading orchestra, and as is often remarked, he looks almost as young as he did thirty years ago. "I liked the nightlife and the people we'd meet,” he says looking back. "I looked forward to going to work every night. And I still do." (1969)

"In 1954 or '55, Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn kd written a piece for Harry Carney and me. I loved doing it with them. I was around the band a lot and around Duke a lot. We traveled together on those shows [Jazz at the Philharmonic] for four or five years. By that time, we were old friends. I had great feelings and respect for him. I loved his approach to music. Duke always introduced me as the world's second-best baritone player, and Harry and I became great friends. We wound up in Japan at the time, and Harry and I hung out in Tokyo for days. What a gentle, smart man he was."

The piece that Ellington and Strayhorn wrote for Mulligan and Carney was "Prima Bara Dubla." It was performed at the Newport Jazz Festival in July 1958 by the Duke Ellington Orchestra with Mulligan as the guest soloist. In the liner notes for the resulting album, Newport 1958, Irving Townsend pointed out that "The highlight of the concert was when the kings of the baritone sax, Gerry Mulligan and Harry Carney, stood in the limelight …”

Sanford Josephson, Jeru’s Journey: The Life and Music of Gerry Mulligan