Voce\u2019s critique of The In Sound<\/em> was not a dismissal of Harris\u2019s talent, but rather a lamentation of his direction. To Voce, Harris\u2019s technical prowess was unquestionable, yet the application of that skill toward dissonant or "far-out" forms felt like a betrayal of the instrument’s capacity for "warmth and beauty." This sentiment was emblematic of a broader critical struggle to categorize Eddie Harris, an artist who had achieved massive crossover success with his 1961 hit "Exodus" but who was increasingly interested in pushing the boundaries of the tenor saxophone.<\/p>\n Recorded in August 1965 and released later that year, The In Sound<\/em> was a pivotal moment in Eddie Harris\u2019s career. Before this album, Harris was often dismissed by jazz purists as a "commercial" player due to his success on the pop charts. However, The In Sound<\/em> was a deliberate move toward a more sophisticated, adventurous jazz vocabulary. It featured a rhythm section of extraordinary caliber, including pianist Cedar Walton, bassist Ron Carter, and drummer Billy Higgins\u2014musicians who were at the forefront of the Hard Bop and Post-Bop movements.<\/p>\n The album is perhaps most famous for introducing "Freedom Jazz Dance," a composition built on wide interval jumps (specifically fourths) that challenged the conventional bebop scales of the time. While Voce found the album\u2019s direction "incomprehensible," the track would go on to become a jazz standard, most notably covered by Miles Davis on his 1967 album Miles Smiles<\/em>. This disconnect between Voce\u2019s 1966 review and the album\u2019s eventual status as a masterpiece of modern jazz illustrates the rapid evolution of listener sensibilities during the period.<\/p>\n To understand the friction present in the 1966 review, one must look at the timeline of Harris\u2019s career and the technological shifts occurring in jazz:<\/p>\n The musicianship on The In Sound<\/em> was, even by the standards of the time, exceptionally high. The quartet and quintet configurations provided a bridge between the melodic accessibility of the past and the rhythmic complexity of the future.<\/p>\n The tracklist itself was a mix of standards and originals, a common strategy to ease audiences into more difficult material:<\/p>\n While Voce noted that Higgins "managed to do practically nothing, but very well," modern listeners view Higgins\u2019s restraint on this session as a masterclass in taste and supportive accompaniment.<\/p>\n The core of Steve Voce\u2019s critique\u2014that Harris possessed a "lovely sound" but used it for "ugly" purposes\u2014is a classic example of the "beauty vs. truth" debate in jazz. For critics like Voce, the saxophone was an instrument of song; for Harris, it was an instrument of discovery. The "backwater of ugly modern jazz" that Voce referred to was actually the fertile ground of Post-Bop, where musicians were beginning to prioritize intervalic leaps and rhythmic displacement over traditional melodic flow.<\/p>\n Voce\u2019s question\u2014"Can it be that he is trying to find a \u2018pop\u2019 form of far-outery?"\u2014was particularly biting. It suggested that Harris was merely trend-chasing rather than engaging in genuine artistic exploration. However, history has largely vindicated Harris. The "far-outery" he explored on The In Sound<\/em> was not a commercial gimmick but a legitimate expansion of the saxophone’s vocabulary. His use of the altissimo register (playing notes above the standard range of the instrument) and his complex rhythmic phrasing became foundational for subsequent generations of players.<\/p>\n While Eddie Harris rarely responded directly to individual critics in print, his subsequent musical choices served as a definitive rebuttal. He continued to ignore the boundaries between "commercial" and "avant-garde," later incorporating funk, soul, and comedy into his act. In interviews later in his life, Harris often spoke of the "jazz police"\u2014the critics and purists who tried to dictate what a jazz musician should sound like. He maintained that his technical facility was a tool that allowed him to play in any style he chose, whether it was the "sweet" sound Voce admired or the "ugly" modernism he feared.<\/p>\n Atlantic Records, for its part, stood by Harris. Nesuhi Ertegun recognized that Harris was a unique asset: a musician who could sell records to the general public while simultaneously influencing the most advanced musicians in the genre. The In Sound<\/em> became a steady seller for the label, and its influence grew as "Freedom Jazz Dance" became a staple of jazz education.<\/p>\n The 1966 Jazz Journal<\/em> review serves as a historical marker for the end of the "consensus" era in jazz criticism. As the music moved into the late 60s and early 70s with the advent of fusion and free jazz, the divide between critics and creators would only widen. Steve Voce\u2019s inability to "comprehend" Harris\u2019s deployment of technique was a harbinger of the confusion that would meet Miles Davis\u2019s Bitches Brew<\/em> or Ornette Coleman\u2019s Science Fiction<\/em> a few years later.<\/p>\n Today, The In Sound<\/em> is regarded as a high-water mark of mid-60s jazz. It captures a master musician at the peak of his acoustic powers, backed by one of the finest rhythm sections in history. What Voce saw as "incongruous" is now seen as "versatile." The very "ugly" modern jazz he decried is now taught in conservatories as the pinnacle of the art form.<\/p>\n Ultimately, the sixty-year-old review reminds us that the "Out Sound" was not just a musical style, but a challenge to the status quo. Eddie Harris, with his immaculate tone and his refusal to stay in a comfortable "backwater," proved that jazz could be both beautiful and difficult, both popular and progressive. The tension that Steve Voce felt in 1966 was the sound of the future arriving\u2014a future that Eddie Harris was more than ready to embrace, even if the critics of the day were not yet prepared to follow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Aesthetic Conflict of 1966 In the mid-1960s, the jazz landscape was fracturing into several distinct camps. On one side stood the proponents of "The New Thing" or the "Out…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":8076,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[551],"tags":[316,5440,833,318,315,317,2458],"class_list":["post-8077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-jazz-blues-news","tag-blues","tag-eddie","tag-harris","tag-improvisation","tag-jazz","tag-soul","tag-sound"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/empire-music.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/empire-music.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/empire-music.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empire-music.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empire-music.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/empire-music.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8077\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empire-music.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/empire-music.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empire-music.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empire-music.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The Context of The In Sound<\/h2>\n
![\"JJ](\"https:\/\/jazzjournal.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Eddie-Harris-The-In-Sound.webp\")
<\/figure>\nA Chronology of Eddie Harris\u2019s Artistic Evolution<\/h2>\n
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Supporting Data: The Personnel and Tracklist<\/h2>\n
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![\"JJ](\"https:\/\/jazzjournal.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/CF26-Jazz-Journal-Last-Tickets-Remaining-350-x-292.gif\")
<\/figure>\n\n
Analysis of the Critical Reaction<\/h2>\n
Official Responses and Historical Perspective<\/h2>\n
![\"JJ](\"https:\/\/jazzjournal.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Swanage-JF-2026.webp\")
<\/figure>\nBroader Impact and Implications<\/h2>\n