Clarinet and Tenor Saxophone | b. 1942

Wendell Harrison grew up in Detroit, began clarinet at seven, switched to tenor saxophone at Northwestern High School where his classmates included trumpeter Lonnie Hillyer, saxophonist Charles McPherson and drummer Roy Brooks, and left for New York in 1960. He spent the decade working with Grant Green, Sun Ra and Eddie Jefferson, and touring and recording with Hank Crawford across four Atlantic albums. In 1970, worn out by the road, he returned to Detroit, reconnected with the city's jazz community, met trombonist Phil Ranelin, and co-founded the Tribe collective and record label in 1971. Tribe did more than release records: it published a magazine addressing Black political consciousness alongside its music content, and operated as a model of musician self-determination that anticipated structures the broader independent music world would adopt years later. Its key albums, Harrison's "An Evening with the Devil" (1973) and Ranelin's "Vibes from the Tribe" (1975), are among the most collected independent jazz releases of the decade. After Tribe disbanded in 1977, Harrison founded Rebirth Inc. as a non-profit jazz education organisation and the WenHa label for his own recordings. He has continued to record, teach and perform in Detroit across a fifty-year career. He received the Kresge Eminent Artist Award in 2018.