Harold de Vance Land (December 18, 1928 – July 27, 2001)
Biography
Land was born in Houston, Texas, United States and grew up in San Diego, California. He started playing at the age of 16. He made his first recording as the leader of the Harold Land All-Stars, for Savoy Records in 1949. In 1954, he joined the Clifford Brown/Max Roach Quintet, with whom he was at the forefront of the hard-bop/bebop movement. The Land family moved from San Diego to Los Angeles, in 1955. There he played with Curtis Counce, led his own groups, and co-led groups with Bobby Hutcherson, Blue Mitchell, and Red Mitchell.
Playing style
Land had an inimitably dark tone within the hard-bop and modal jazz paradigms. Over time this would contrast more and more with the brighter tonalities of more Coltrane-influenced saxophonists, although Land started to implement Coltrane's musical innovations. Land's "dire, brooding [tenor saxophone] sound began somewhere between rhythm and blues and Coleman Hawkins, and after the early 1960s owed more and more to John Coltrane's harmonies, phrasing and experiments with modalism."
Discography
As leader/co-leader
{|class="wikitable sortable"
!Year recorded
!Title
!Label
!Year released
!Personnel/Notes
|-
|1958-01
|Harold in the Land of Jazz
|Contemporary
|1958
|Quintet, with Land (tenor sax), Rolf Ericson (trumpet), Carl Perkins (piano), Leroy Vinnegar (bass), Frank Butler (drums); reissued as Grooveyard (Contemporary, 1963)
|-
|1958-11
|Jazz at the Cellar 1958
|Lone Hill Jazz
|2007
|Quartet, with Land (tenor sax), Elmo Hope (piano), Scott LaFaro (bass), Lenny McBrowne (drums)