Terence "Jet" Harris (6 July 1939 – 18 March 2011) was an English rock and roll musician. He was an original member of Cliff Richard's backing band the Shadows, serving as the bass guitarist from the group's inception until April 1962, after which he had success as a soloist and as a duo with that band's drummer, Tony Meehan.
Terence Harris, the only child of Bill and Winifred Harris, was born at Kingsbury Maternity Hospital, Honeypot Lane, Kingsbury, North West London, England. His prowess as a sprinter at Dudden Hill secondary modern school earned him the nickname Jet.
Although he learned to play clarinet as a teenager, he made his own four-string double bass to play in a jazz group and later graduated to a professionally made double bass. In 1958, while playing jazz with drummer Tony Crombie and his group the Rockets, Harris received a Framus bass guitar from Crombie and became one of the first British exponents of the instrument.
He played in several groups, including the British skiffle group, the Vipers, and with the Most Brothers (featuring future music producer Mickie Most).
In 1959, he joined Cliff Richard's backing group, then known as "the Drifters", who, in July 1959 at a meeting in the Six Bells pub in Ruislip, changed their name to the Shadows at Harris's suggestion, in order to avoid a legal injunction from the U.S. band, who at the time unbeknownst to its members shared the same name. In 1959, after the neck of his Framus was terminally damaged in a dressing room accident, Harris was presented by the importers with a Fender Precision Bass, one of the first to come to Britain from the United States.
Other sources state that Cliff Richard gave Jet the first Fender Bass (a "Sunburst") guitar in the UK in 1960, about a year after band-mate Hank Marvin got his first red Fender Stratocaster guitar. Both instruments were eventually replaced with matching versions which were used in the film The Young Ones, in which The Shadows played "The Savage" (showing the famous Shadows' walk) to an invited audience of teenagers.
Harris also contributed vocally, adding backup harmonies and occasional lead vocals. He had a trademark scream, used in the Shadows' "Feeling Fine" and Cliff Richard's "Do You Wanna Dance?"
In Mike Read's book, The Story of the Shadows, Harris attributed the start of his depression and related alcohol addiction to discovering that Cliff Richard had had an affair with his wife Carol Costa (whom he had married in 1959) after they were separated. In 1962, Harris left The Shadows following disagreements, mostly with Bruce Welch over his drinking habit (this was also documented in The Story of the Shadows, written by the group with Read).
Soloist and with the Shadows' Tony Meehan
After leaving the Shadows, he signed a contract with Decca and released solo instrumental and vocal work with some success, "Besame Mucho" and "The Man with the Golden Arm" featuring a Fender VI six-string bass guitar.
In October 1962, Harris was part of a package tour of England headlined by Little Richard also starring Sam Cooke. At 14 of the 21 shows, Gene Vincent also appeared. He introduced the acts and sang "Be-Bop-a-Lula" from the front stalls or orchestra pit (work permit restrictions limited his contribution). A photograph of the four musicians backstage at one of the tour venues is part of the Harry Hammond Photographic Collection held by the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. A publicity poster for the tour includes the straplines: "Jet Harris with the JETBLACKS" and "First Solo Appearance" alongside a photograph of Harris.
In late 1962 he was voted 'top instrumentalist' in the readers' poll of the New Musical Express. Then, as part of a duo with former Shadows drummer Tony Meehan, he topped the UK Singles Chart for three weeks in early 1963 with a cover of Jerry Lordan's "Diamonds". Harris and Meehan followed this with two further hit singles, "Scarlett O'Hara" (also written by Jerry Lordan) a UK No. 2, and "Applejack" (composed by Les Vandyke) reaching UK No. 4 also in 1963. Tracks from "Diamonds" onward were recorded with Harris using standard Fender Jaguar and Gretsch guitars, usually de-tuned to D instead of E.
Harris and Meehan also made two short cameo appearances in the black and white film Just for Fun, released in 1963. In the film, "Jet and the Jetblacks" played "Man From Nowhere", whilst the duo performed "(Doin' the) Hully Gully", a vocal track released as the b-side of their hit "Scarlett O'Hara".
Harris was partly responsible for helping Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones break into the music business. Page's first major session was as a rhythm guitarist on "Diamonds" in late 1962. After "Diamonds" became a hit, Harris and Meehan hired Jones to play bass in their touring band.
There were several court appearances involving drunkenness and violent behaviour before the partnership with Meehan came to an abrupt end in September 1963 when a car crash on what was then the A44 (now the B4084) near Evesham, Worcestershire, (in which his girlfriend, singer Billie Davis, was also injured), meant that this success did not last long. Harris attempted a comeback as the "Jet Harris Band", in 1966 and was briefly in the line-up of The Jeff Beck Group in 1967, but somewhat fell out of the music industry. He then worked variously as a labourer, bricklayer, porter in a hospital, bus conductor, and as a seller of cockles on the beach in Jersey.
Harris was declared bankrupt in 1988. The BBC reported that it took Harris 30 years of heavy drinking before he finally admitted to being an alcoholic and sought help. For many years, Harris made a point in his stage shows of saying how long it had been since he quit drinking, winning applause from audiences who knew how it had wrecked his career in the 1960s. Harris still played occasionally, with backing band the Diamonds or as a guest with the Rapiers, and guested with Tony Meehan at Cliff Richard's 1989 'The Event' concerts.
In 1998, he was awarded a Fender Lifetime Achievement Award for his role in popularising the bass guitar in Britain. He appeared annually at Bruce Welch's 'Shadowmania' and toured backed by the Rapiers (a Shadows tribute band). He recorded continuously from the late 1980s with a variety of collaborators, including Tangent, Alan Jones (also an ex-Shadows bassist), Bobby Graham and the Local Heroes. His previous problems with stage nerves had seemingly disappeared, and 2006 saw Harris' first single release in over forty years, "San Antonio".
From 2005 to 2009, Harris achieved a lifetime ambition by touring UK theatres with his own show, "Me and My Shadows". The Rapiers performed as his 'Shadows', and he had a special guest star in his former girlfriend Billie Davis, who had rescued him when the pair were in a road crash in late 1963 that effectively ended his career. "I'm going to go out in my twilight years with a big bang—and 'Me and My Shadows' is one of my little dreams," Harris said at the time.