Ace Harris was an American jazz

Jazz

Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

 pianist.

Harris played in several territory band

Territory band

Territory bands were dance bands that crisscrossed specific regions of the United States from the 1920s through the 1960s. Beginning in the 1920s, the bands typically had 8 to 12 musicians. These bands typically played one-nighters, 6 or 7 nights a week at venues like VFW halls, Elks Lodges,...

s in the 1930s, working with Billy Steward's Serenaders in 1932 and with Bill Mears's Sunset Royal Serenaders from 1935. In 1937 Harris took over leadership of the Sunset Royal Serenaders, and recorded with them that same year; he remained with the group until 1939.

In 1944, Harris recorded with Hot Lips Page, then joined the Erskine Hawkins

Erskine Hawkins

Erskine Ramsay Hawkins was an American trumpet player and big band leader from Birmingham, Alabama, dubbed "The 20th Century Gabriel". He is most remembered for composing the jazz standard "Tuxedo Junction" with saxophonist and arranger Bill Johnson...

 Orchestra, with whom he recorded several times. He played with Hawkins until 1947, and returned to play with him again in 1950-51. Harris also recorded with small ensembles in the 1940s and with a jump blues

Jump blues

Jump blues is an up-tempo blues usually played by small groups and featuring horns. It was very popular in the 1940s, and the movement was a precursor to the arrival of rhythm and blues and rock and roll...

 band in 1951-52. He played at the Cloister Inn in Chicago in 1954.

A compact disc of Harris's recordings spanning 1937-52 was released by Jazz Classics in 2004.

Harris should not be confused with Johnny "Ace" Harris (1928?-2000), a pianist for The Ink Spots

The Ink Spots

The Ink Spots were a popular vocal group in the 1930s and 1940s that helped define the musical genre that led to rhythm and blues and rock and roll, and the subgenre doo-wop...

.

Further reading

• Hugues Panassie
  Hugues Panassié
  Hugues Panassié was a French jazz critic and producer. His most famous works were Hot Jazz: The Guide to Swing Music and The Real Jazz, published in 1936 and 1942, respectively....
  
  and M. Gautier. Dictionnaire du jazz, 3rd ed., 1987.