Entertainment For Lively Minds
Jet Harris...
Posted by Inky Fingers on 18 March 2011 - 4:02pm.
...has died. He made records like this. No-one else did.
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Oh, that's dead sad.
I knew Jet. He was somewhat... challenged... in the 80s and 90s, and was often to be seen rolling around Gloucester city centre with some very odd coves indeed. He used to come into the guitar shop I worked in in Gloucester in 1996 occasionally. I had no idea who he was at the time.
Very sad. Although it seems he got it together rather more in his later years.
I think he's a craftsman
Sad news.
He was one cool looking guy in the early sixties. RIP
Not just cool looking...
he had the coolest nickname. Amazingly I can't think of another Jet in the music biz, despite the fact that he coined it 50 years ago
Jet Black of The Stranglers?
Nowhere as cool as Mr Harris though
Bugger!
That's my theory gone at the first hurdle
P.J.Proby
recorded a couple of US singles under the name Jett Powers in the late 50s
In 1963 my dad gave me my
In 1963 my dad gave me my first record player - a Dansett Bermuda since you asked - he also gave me two records and I still have them: From Me To You by the Fabs and Scarlett O'Hara by Jet Harris and Tony Meehan on the flip side was (Doing) The Hully Gully - it's so clear in my mind that I didn't need to look it up.
Both Jet and Tony are gone now.
RIP
man, was he in some bands,Vipers skiffle group.The Drifters and the Shadows,Jeff Beck group. RIP Jet.
I don't think
the Jeff Beck connection ever got past the rehearsal stage though. No gigs, no recordings.
Britain's first ever electric bassist hero?
Most guitar lovers know how Hank Marvin imported and played the first ever Fender Strat in the UK for The Shads. So was Jet the first ever Brit to play a Fender Precision Bass in Blighty? He looks so wonderfully James Dean cool in this great clip. RIP Jet Harris
To be pedantic
It was Cliff who imported the UK's first Stratocaster from the USA at his own cost, then allowed Hank to use it.
A few years later the Fiesta Red Strat (serial number 34346) went back to Cliff's stewardship where it was resprayed white (thus destroying the priceless patina it had acquired while in Hank's care).
More recently Bruce Welch has taken possession of Strat #34346 and I believe it has been resprayed yet again, this time back to its original Fiesta Red.
Incidentally, that's not Strat #34346 in the YouTube clip above. Hank had acquired his own Strat by 1961 and while they are the same colour, the Strat in the clip has a rosewood (dark) fingerboard, while #34346 has a maple (light) fingerboard. The UK's first Strat can be seen here on this early Shadows' EP showing the original line-up with Jet Harris and Tony Meehan.
faultless fascinating pop facts, mojoworking
I never knew that Cliff resprayed Hank's red Strat! Why that's as much a horrible piece of cultural vandalism as setting the words of The Lord's Prayer to the tune of Auld Lang Syne!
Jet still looks like he's rockin' an early Fender Precision Bass in that pic though
Thank you sir!
I can also reveal that the white Telecaster Bruce is holding in that picture (and on the cover of the debut Shadows' LP) was not his own guitar, but was hired for the photoshoot.
Apart from the respray details, it's all here:
Not only...
...was Bruce's guitar hired, or borrowed, for the photo shoot, but on the LP sleeve you can still see the tell-tale string from the shop's price tag, which has been tucked up behind the guitar. No Photoshop in those days.
That's true
I guess Bruce was still using his cheap Grimshaw guitar at the time and thought it wouldn't measure up to Hank's fancy new Strat on the LP sleeve photo.
More here:
http://www.penumbra.co.nz/34346.html
That's disputed.
It was either Jet Harris or Brian Gregg (from Johnny Kidd and The Pirates and many others)