Harry Shields (June 30, 1899 – January 19, 1971) was an early jazz clarinetist.
Harry Shields was born in uptown New Orleans, Louisiana, the younger brother of noted clarinetist Larry Shields. Harry spent almost his whole career in New Orleans. He played with the bands of Norman Brownlee, Sharkey Bonano, Tom Brown, Johnny Wiggs, and others. Many fellow musicians regarded Harry as superior to his more famous brother, Larry. Johnny Wiggs commented that Harry Shields was the only clarinetist he'd heard who could always play the right note without fail.
Famous quotes containing the words harry and/or shields:
“All my life I’ve been running, from welfare officers, thugs, my father. See, there they are [the killers]. There on the bridge. I’m a dead man. Nosseros told me that. He told me. He said, “You got it all, but you’re a dead man, Harry Fabian.””
—Jo Eisinger, and Jules Dassin. Harry Fabian (Richard Widmark)
“If one doubts whether Grecian valor and patriotism are not a fiction of the poets, he may go to Athens and see still upon the walls of the temple of Minerva the circular marks made by the shields taken from the enemy in the Persian war, which were suspended there. We have not far to seek for living and unquestionable evidence. The very dust takes shape and confirms some story which we had read.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)