Mike Shaw | 3 JUL 2025
Because it is so technically demanding, jazz can sound difficult. But accomplished players make the difficult simple, the hard sound easy. That is the achievement of vocalist, composer, and lyricist Karla Harris and her all-star team of instrumentalists on her newest album, her fifth, titled MERGE.
MERGE cover art (click to enlarge)
A combination of American Songbook standards, R&B classics, and originals, the album displays Harris’s versatility, not only in her selection of tunes but in execution: from scats of highly complex jazz lines, to tender passages and drawn out notes that demonstrate her control and range, through a delivery that is consistently strong, agile, athletic.
From the opening cut to the thirteenth and concluding “Happy People Blues,” a tribute to “my optimistic husband,” MERGE once again proves Karla Harris a reliable source of musical treats and treasures for anyone who appreciates a wonderful voice and music that swings.
EarRelevant’s Mike Shaw spoke to Harris just days before the album was to be released:
Mike Shaw: Am I correct in my assumption that the album’s title refers to that mix of genres that plays out through the album?
Karla Harris: Yes, but it’s not just about merging styles, it’s also commentary on me. The song, “Merge,” was the last track to come together. A couple of weeks before the session, I decided we needed a title song for the album and I came up with the lyrics and melody. “All the many colors woven on a lifetime loom; all the shapes and the mosaic casting light into the room; all the lingered legacies from ancestors of different hues … I was never just one thing and in truth neither are you. …” My mother was black, my father white, she growing up in St. Louis and he in Sullivan, Mo, a small town about an hour southeast of the city. There were country cousins and city family.
Shaw: Which accounts for your divergent tastes in music, and perhaps the song’s final statement: “I revel in it all. I revel in it all.” Was that the impetus for the album?
Harris: I awoke one morning January 2024 knowing that I wanted to do this album, but the impetus came a couple years earlier. Tyrone (Jackson) and I were doing a house concert at Lake Lanier, just he and I, piano and voice. We decided to mix it up a bit in he second set and did a Marvin Gaye tune. From the back of the audience a guy yells, “I want more of that.” I thought, “I want more of that too,” and we started to incorporate more R&B in concerts. A couple of years later in 2024, I knew that would be a part of the album.
Shaw: Tyrone of course is the pianist on the album, but more than that, you and he have worked together for a long time—including on songs you brought to this album.
Harris: We worked together on some of the arrangements of the standards, like “Almost Like Being In Love.” Tyrone had arranged “Stand By Me” for a combo at Kennesaw State University where we both teach, and one of my students performed it with him. Then we did it at a Christmas show at Callanwolde. Arrangements for a couple of the songs actually came about at a sound check, like a grove that Robert (Boone) started on “Nice Work If You Can Get It,” and Chris’s (Burroughs) hip-hop inspired groove for Stanley Turrentine’s “Sugar.”
Shaw: Tell us about the recording of “Sweet Land” on which you play piano.
Harris: I don’t typically play piano when performing; it’s something I work with at home, mainly. But Tyrone convinced me that my playing was right for this song. I sang as I played for what was supposed to be a scratch track, but we kept the cut.
Shaw: Beyond the songs’ lyrics, you bring your voice as an instrument to this album in various passages of scat singing. The first cut, “What Is This Thing Called Love?” has a scat solo that sounds like a line you might hear from a saxophonist or pianist.
Harris: Tyrone wrote that line for me. I’ve always been comfortable with vamping out on a tune, but taking a solo is different. It has to be a song I’m very comfortable with to scat. The trick is to sing in the moment while slightly anticipating the next moment, creating something first in your head, a melody that goes with the song’s changes. It’s a little like standing on a cliff and opening your wings to see if you can catch the current from the wind. And when you do, you can’t think about it too much, just ride it out until it ends.
Shaw: You’ve mentioned Tyrone and drummers Robert Boone and Chris Burroughs. Who else performs on the album with you?
Harris: There are two rhythm sections, one with Kelly McCarty on bass and Robert on drums, the other with bassist Billy Thornton and Chris. Mace Hibbard and Sam Skelton play saxophone, and Sam plays those haunting flute solos on “Merge.” Justin Powell is the trumpeter, Frankie Quinones on percussion, and we had four guitarists: Trey Wright, Patrick Arthur, Chris Blackwell, and Doc Powell. All the musicians are Atlanta peeps. ■
EXTERNAL LINKS:
- Karla Harris: karlaharris.com
- Jazz in the Alley: .thejazzinthealley.com
Read more by Mike Shaw.
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