Chris Potter

Biography

Jazz saxophonist Joseph Christopher Potter was born in Chicago, IL on 1 January 1971, but soon moved to [and grew up in] Columbia, SC. His father, formerly a genetics researcher at the University of Chicago, now “crunches numbers” for the South Carolina Department of Education; and his mother is a professor of child psychology at the University of South Carolina.

His first instrument was the piano [“I started playing piano when I was a kid, just by ear”], but Chris was drawn to the saxophone before he entered the fifth grade:
“I remember the first thing I heard was Paul Desmond and Dave Brubeck, Take Five. I think I’d always heard the saxophone in a rock and roll context, that harsh, ugly sound. And then I heard Paul Desmond make it real pretty. I started with alto. I was really into Johnny Hodges with Ellington.”
Jazz singer/bassist Jim Ferguson recalls:
“Chris Potter used to sit in with us when I was in college. His folks would bring him to the gigs. He was eight or nine years old at the time and could play well even then.”
Chris expanded his woodwind expertise to include the tenor and soprano saxophones, as well as alto flute and bass clarinet. And the list of influences he cites grew to also include Wayne Shorter, John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, Ben Webster, Coleman Hawkins, Sonny Rollins, Joe Henderson, Ornette Coleman, Eric Dolphy, Dewey Redman, Stan Getz and Lester Young:
“I studied with guys in Columbia, and professors in the jazz department at the university helped me a lot. I played in the USC big band under Roger Pemberton all through middle school and high school.”
In 1983, at age twelve, Chris was presented with the IAJE Young Talent award for saxophone ... an international honor which that year also included drummer Terri Lyne Carrington [with whom Chris would later record], bassist Charnett Moffett, and pianist/vocalist Harry Connick, Jr. Also, by the time he was thirteen, he was playing professional gigs.