Joe Harriott formed his own quintet in 1958, and their style of hard-swinging bebop was noticed in the United States, leading to the release of the Southern Horizons and Free Form albums on the American Jazzland label.

On August 3, 1963, the Joe Harriott Quintet featuring Mike Falana was appearing at the Marquee in Oxford Street.

Free-form innovator
By now firmly established as a bebop soloist, in 1960 Harriott turned to what he termed "abstract" or "free-form" music. He had some loose free-form ideas by the mid-1950s, but finally settled upon his conception in 1959, after a protracted spell in hospital with tuberculosis. At first he struggled to recruit other like-minded musicians to his vision. Indeed, two of his core band members, Harry South and Hank Shaw, left when these ideas surfaced. He finally settled on a line-up of Shake Keane (trumpet, flugelhorn), Pat Smythe (piano), Coleridge Goode (bass) and Phil Seamen (drums). Les Condon temporarily replaced Keane on trumpet in 1961, while Seamen left permanently the same year, his place taken by the return of the quintet's previous drummer, Bobby Orr. Frank Holder toured with Harriott and contributed to recording projects during this period. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.