A1 	Instant Death 	5:45
A2 	A Little Wes 	7:30
A3 	Zambezi Dance		4:09
B1 	Summer's On Its Way 	7:46
B2 	Nightcap 	5:08
B3 	Superfluous 	3:18
B4 	Tampion 	2:47

Bass, Electric Bass – Rufus Reid
Congas, Talking Drum – Henry Gibson
Drums, Kalimba [Kilimba] – Billy James
Electric Guitar – Ronald Muldrow
Electric Piano, Whistle [African Whistle] – Richard Abrams
Electric Saxophone, Trumpet, Cowbell, Shaker, Voice [Horn Vocals], Effects – Eddie Harris

This is one of Eddie Harris's stronger Atlantic albums of the 1970s. Harris jamming on "Instant Death" is one of his most satisfying statements on the reed trumpet, guitarist Ronald Muldrow's "A Little Wes" is memorable and even the briefer pieces are worthwhile. In addition to Harris (who mostly plays his electrified tenor) and Muldrow, the group consists of keyboardist Richard Abrams, bassist Rufus Reid, drummer Billy James and percussionist Henry Gibson. This long out-of-print LP is long overdue to be reissued on CD. ---Scott Yanow, AllMusic Review

Eddie Harris was one of the few jazz musicians ever to achieve the distinction of a million-selling hit single, with his cool jazz version of the theme from the film "Exodus" in 1960. That success did little for his credibility within the jazz community, but paved the way for his subsequent jazz-funk and pop recordings in the 1960s and 1970s.

Harris, who died following a number of serious illnesses, was a multi-instrumentalist with a difference. Best known as a tenor saxophonist, he was also a credible singer, and an accomplished pianist (he once worked as an accompanist for Billie Holiday) and organist. He pioneered the use of electronics with the tenor saxophone when he took up the Varitone signal processor and similar devices in the mid-60s, and later devised and experimented with both a trumpet and flugelhorn played with a reed, and a saxophone played with a trumpet mouthpiece.

He was also one of the first jazz musicians to exploit the commercial possibilities of a jazz-rock-funk fusion, both as leader of his own groups, and in a famous collaboration with soul-jazz organ star Les McCann, which survived their personal incompatibility long enough to make two albums, and score a huge success at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1969.

His pop-crossover recordings included another big hit single, Listen Here, and the commercially successful album The Electrifying Eddie Harris in the late-60s, and a live album recorded in the UK with Steve Winwood and Jeff Beck in the early 70s.

At the same time, he was an often underated straight jazz musician. He inherited the hard-blowing, full-toned, blues-inflected style of the Chicago bop school, and developed both an expressive sound and a polished technique. He wrote several highly regarded instructional books on jazz improvisation and composition, but the best evidence of his genuine empathy with a bop-based style came in his concerts and recordings in an acoustic jazz setting.

Such a setting dominated in his work up until the mid-60s, and he returned to it again in the Eighties, while some of his experiments with electronics and unusual instruments in the intervening decades were also couched in a jazz rather than fusion idiom. He was also a composer, and possessed a refined melodic sense. His best-known composition, "Freedom Jazz Dance", entered the jazz repertory as a standard modern work when it was recorded by the Miles Davis Quintet for their 1967 album Miles Smiles. ---The Scotsman, jazzhouse.org

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1 	People Get Funny When They Get A Little Money	4:35 	
2 	La Carnival	8:02 	
3 	Ski Ball		5:16 	
4 	Three Quarter Miles	6:01 	
5 	Silver Plated	4:26 	
6 	Hal Strange	5:23 	
7	The Time of My Life	3:49 	
8 	Step Down To The Top		2:53

Eddie Harris - Clavinet, Electric Saxophone, Piano (Electric), Primary Artist, Saxophones, Vocals
Carl Burnette - Drums
Larry Gales - Bass (Acoustic), Bass (Electric)

Most of Eddie Harris' recordings on the Dutch Timeless label in the mid-'80s saw some action in the States but not this one, which was only released in Europe. A shame, for this was mostly one of Harris' few recorded excursions into funk during this period -- and it's a good one, stripped down, to the point, and featuring remarkably better material than most of his later Atlantic funk recordings. The full name of the vocal title track is "People Get Funny When They Get a Little Money" -- and it's another of Harris' wry, slightly bitter takes on the foibles of the material world, complete with some vintage acrobatic funk sax. "Three Quarter Miles" is one of Harris' most ingratiating loosey-goosey, triple-meter blues, and "Silver Plated" is a fine tune based roughly on a variation of the "Listen Here" vamp. With the help of overdubbing, Harris lays some electric and tenor saxophone, choral vocals, and humorous funk scatting over his own clarinet comping on the snazzy samba "Carnaval"; sometimes it's a bit stiff, but there is ebullience to spare. When drummer Carl Burnett is laying down a straight-ahead bop groove on "Hal Strange," Harris is locked into his distinctive funk manner, but when he takes off on Burnett's "The Time of My Life," he plays bop style with stunning harmonized electric sax runs -- Supersax on DC current. Pianist William S. Henderson III also contributes a Headhunters-esque piece called "Ski Ball." Harris' fans ought to grab this if it ever turns up in the vinyl bins. ---Richard S. Ginell, AllMusic Review

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1.  Free at Last (Eddie Harris) 3:17
2.  1974 Blues (Eddie Harris) 4:28
3.  Smoke Signals (Eddie Harris) 3:02
4.  Coltrane's View (Jodie Christian)  4:12
5.  I'm Gonna Leave You by Yourself (Eddie Harris) 3:02
6.  Silver Cycles (Eddie Harris/Melvin Jackson) 5:52
7.  Little Bit (Eddie Harris) 5:30
8.  Electric Ballad (Eddie Harris) 2:56
9.  Infrapolations (Eddie Harris) 6:39

Eddie Harris (Tenor Saxophone, Electric Piano, Synthesizer)
Jodie Christian (Piano) - 1,2,4,9
Melvin Jackson (Bass) - 1,2,4,6,9
Richard Smith (Drums) - 1,2,4,9
Seldon Powell (Baritone Saxophone) - 1,2,5,7
Snooky Young (Trumpet) - 2,5,7
Bruno Carr (Drums, Percussion) - 1,5-7
Richard Davis (Double Bass) - 3,5,7
Ernie Royal (Trumpet) - 1,5,7
Billy Hart (Drums) - 3,5,7
Haywood Henry (Baritone Saxophone) - 5,7
Monk Montgomery (Bass Guitar) - 5,7
Joe Newman (Trumpet) - 1,2
Benny Powell (Trombone) - 1,2
Marcelino Valdez (Drums, Percussion) - 1,6
Phil Bodner (Clarinet, Flute, Oboe) - 5,7
Joe Zawinul (Piano) - 5,7
Bernie Glow (Trumpet) - 1
Melvin Lastie (Trumpet) - 2
Eileen Gilbert (Vocals) - 3,5
Melba Moore (Vocals) - 3,5
Valerie Simpson (Vocals) - 3,5
Maretha Stewart (Vocals) - 3,5 

Still riding high from "Listen Here," Harris really started experimenting here with a dazzlingly eclectic LP that must have left his new fans wondering just who the real Eddie Harris was. There is good old Latinized funk in the opening cuts, "Free at Last" and "1974 Blues," but what was one to make of the next one, "Smoke Signals," with its interplanetary Echoplexed electric sax and ethereal wordless female voices? Then it's on to a long-limbed Coltrane tribute on pianist Jodie Christian's "Naima"-like "Coltrane's View," a wailing cry of raw pain with a huge band of horns, strings and voices ("I'm Gonna Leave You by Yourself"), another avant-garde electronic extravaganza ("Silver Cycles") and...well, you get the point; there's a surprise around every bend. The music is by turns swinging, touching, feverish, detached, nightmarish, and peaceful, bursting with new ideas generated from Harris' plunge into electronics. This album has been unjustly overlooked, probably because Harris was selling a lot of records and getting airplay at the time (a cardinal sin for purists), or perhaps for its free, anything-goes '60s spirit. The sound was always curiously distant on LP and on individual tracks reissued on CD; one wonders if this was due to a damaged or third-hand master tape. --- Richard S. Ginell, AllMusic Review

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A1 	When A Man Loves A Woman 	6:10
A2 	My Funny Valentine 	6:50
A3 	The Tender Storm 	5:30
B1 	On A Clear Day (You Can See Forever) 	7:15
B2 	A Nightingale Sang In Berkeley Square 	4:25
B3 	If Ever I Would Leave You 	7:57

Bass – Ron Carter
Drums – Billy Higgins (tracks: B2), Bobby Thomas
Piano – Cedar Walton
Saxophone [Amplified Sax] – Eddie Harris
Tenor Saxophone – Eddie Harris (tracks: A2)

In a sense, this LP was really the calm before the storm, the album where Eddie Harris unveiled some new wrinkles in his act that would explode on the very next album Electrifying, while hewing tightly to a standard acoustic quartet format. Here he starts to use the Varitone amplified saxophone, albeit very discreetly, as he sticks mostly to the doubled octave effects for a suave tone that allows for some slippery swinging. While Harris' soon-to-be-distinctive funk mode is in full bloom on the opening track, "When a Man Loves a Woman," his lovely ballad form from the VeeJay days remains intact on "Berkeley Square." The support couldn't be more professional -- Cedar Walton (piano), Ron Carter (bass), Billy Higgins or Bobby Thomas (drums) -- nor the selections more conventional (contemporary and past standards, plus Harris' title track), which ought to make this a candidate for reissue in our conservative jazz climate. ---Richard S. Ginell, AllMusic Review

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