Terence "Jet" Harris was born in Kingsbury, North London, on July 6th 1939, the only son of Bill and Winifred Harris. Nicknamed "Jet" by his school friends because of his ability at being one of the fastest runners in the school, he left school at the age of fifteen and started work with his father as an apprentice welder, making milk churns.
Winifred Atwell's "Left Hand Boogie" (released in 1952) was the nucleus of Jet's initial interest in music and left him fascinated by the 'bass' sound on Winifred's left hand.
Self-taught (through necessity as his family couldn't afford formal music lessons), Jet became the first man in the UK to play the electric bass guitar and news soon spread of his outstanding abilities on the instrument. This led to him playing with various groups between 1956-1958, including Tony Crombie's Rockets, Terry Dene's Aces, The Vipers Skiffle Group, The Most Brothers and also Wee Willie Harris.
In between gigs Jet used to frequent the now famous home of British Rock 'n' Roll, the 2 I's Coffee Bar in Old Compton Street, Soho. Apart from playing, he also served cola and rumbaba's to the customers.
In 1958 Jet was introduced to a young Cliff Richard and was duly invited to join Cliff's backing group The Drifters, however, due to an injunction by the American group "The Drifters" they were forced to change their name. Thus, history was made at the Eight Bells Pub near Ruislip, when Hank Marvin, Bruce Welch and Jet began discussing new names for the band. It was Jet himself that came up with the name "The Shadows".
The first hit record that Jet played bass on was "High Class Baby", which reached number seven in the charts of 1958. This was closely followed by the smash hit "Apache", which spent 6 weeks in the No.1 slot and was voted "single of the year" in a number of music publications. Jet went on to write with the band and played on many further Shadows recordings including "Man of Mystery", "The Stranger", "Midnight", "36-24-36", "The Savage", "Guitar Tango", "Nivram", "Peace Pipe" and "FBI" to name but a few.
However, in 1962 (after recording his final Shadows track, "Wonderful Land") Jet left the band to concentrate on a solo career and had two hit singles in his own right; "Besame Mucho" and the main title theme from the film "The Man With The Golden Arm".
1963 saw Jet teaming up once again with his former Shadows band-mate, drummer Tony Meehan, culminating in an immediate hit with the single "Diamonds" (a number composed for him by Jerry Lordan who had written "Apache", "Wonderful Land" and other hits for The Shadows).
"Diamonds" stayed at number one for six weeks giving their former band a run for their money and made musical history by making Jet the only instrumentalist in the world to have had a number one hit record playing bass guitar as the lead instrument. The duo had a further two top twenty hits with "Scarlett O'Hara" and "Applejack".
Late in 1963, a very serious car crash nearly put paid to a successful career. Jet was extremely lucky to survive as he suffered severe head injuries.
During the 70's Jet played with various groups and released "Inside Jet Harris" which was recorded in Gloucester Prison. Apart from Jet, the only other person to have recorded a live performance in a prison was Johnny Cash. Soon afterwards though, a number of personal and professional problems saw Jet turning his back on the music business and he left the industry to concentrate on his photography.
Jet was (and still is to this day) a great photographer (having wonderful teacher by the name of Dezo Hoffman) and because of his unlimited access Jet was able to take exclusive photographs of Cliff and The Shadows that no one else could. A number of these photos have been published in various books, including some of Dezo's own.
After a considerable amount of time spent battling his own personal demons, the 80's saw Jet return to the music scene with a number of tours across Holland, Norway and Sweden and the 1989 release of the Anniversary album.
In 1996 Jet joined the Local Hero's as their special guest and has since played with them in France, Germany, Holland and Norway as well as appearing on their acclaimed album "One Of Our Shadows Is Missing".
Fender Guitars presented Jet with a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1998, and also sponsored Jet with his amplification. Burns Guitars have also presented Jet with a Legend lead guitar, a special edition six-string Bass called the Jet Six, and a four string Bass. RotoSound are Jet's official string sponsors.
1999 saw the low-key release of his album "The Phoenix Rises" and now, in 2002, Jet is back touring the UK and is set to release his fantastic new album, "Diamonds Are Trumps", on September 23rd through Solent Records.
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