Those who thought they knew Eddie Harris in 1974 got a big surprise when they heard the Chicago-born jazz-based tenor saxophonist break from his own past to unleash one of the most inventive funk albums of the 1970's, Is It In.
A far cry from the traditional jazz stylings of his 1961 Top 20 smash hit reworking of the theme from "Exodus" or the 1964 bop extravaganza The In Sound, which ranks among his best work, Is It In shows a restless Harris searching for inspiration in the sweaty funk grooves of Isaac Hayes, Marvin Gaye, whose Let's Get It On had come out the previous year.
That Harris would cut an album capable of standing shoulder to shoulder with such giants at the time was something nobody expected, which makes the fact that the album was recorded right here at Chicago's Paragon Studios all the more noteworthy.
Sadly, it would be Harris's last foray into funk, as his tireless artistic vision took him into the world of spoken word comedy (!) soonafter.
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chicago funk at its best