Otto Harris

Otto Harris was among the most popular bandsman among his mates, both in B-1 and in the Rhythm Vets, the combo he worked with out of Greensboro after the war. Walter Carlson said he was “always the fun man, smart, very witty, and at a time when you were dead serious about something, Otto would come up with something would make the entire group laugh, breaking all that seriousness, and you come right back with the feeling of something relaxed, or released from you. He really kept the group going like that.”

Harris majored in English lit at NC A&T. Carlson said that he read a lot–he was known to keep a book on stage and he’d sometimes be reading when he had a break on a song. “He was our Shakespeare fellow, ” Carlson said.

Once B-1 got to Hawai’i, Harris also proved to be an excellent writer and social critic, pennning a regular column, “Musically Speaking,” for The Mananan, the base newsletter. He covered the national jazz scene as well as what was going on around Hawai’i, where bands big and small were playying somewhere nonstop, it seemed, to entertain the tens of thousands of military personnel there for R&R.

In his columns, he kept up with race news from the states, reporting on Benny Carter evicted from an exclusive Laurel Canyon neighborhood.

and was especially sensitive to how Black Americans were being abused in popular song, taking to task Louis Jordan who has “the most complete Uncle Tom act put on by any Negro band in reent years.” He adds: “The combintion of comic swallow-tail oat, Deacon Jones dialogue, parncing etc, si just about everything the uniformed ofays expet of his kind.”

His last column before mustering out combined that joyous situation with his pechant for jive:

Old man, the deal has gone down righteously and I’m, at last, a 45 pointer. Naturally, I’m about to blow my wig with joy but the main issue is to get back across the big pond. That will make it! By the time you dig this scribe, I may be stiffing a stroll on a 3 pointer in the states with a fine vine draped over my frame. If the issue jumps down that way, I’ll be rellay a booted stud, if not–well–I’d rather not trouble my knowledge box with such a drag.

Harris, Otto. “Musically Speaking.” Pearl City, HA. The Mananan. 3 Oct. 1945: 7.