prestigious Manhattan School of Music Archives

Why jazz drumming legend Eric Harland had to go to Bible school – By John Shand Source:amp.smh.com.au Of all the reasons for dropping out of music school, Eric Harland’s has to be among the weirdest. There he was at the prestigious Manhattan School of Music on a full scholarship, his career as a jazz drummer taking off like a rocket, and the notoriously hard-to-please singing great Betty Carter among those to hire him. But none of that mattered to Harland’s mother back home in Texas. She was thinking long term. Very long term. She had an unconquerable fear for the health of his eternal soul. “I came from a very religious family,” Harland explains, “and it was really hard for me to enjoy being in college, because my mum was so concerned that I was doing something wrong, or something against God … I was so far away from home, and she ...