Bill Harrison is a mental health counselor and writer who used to play the bass for a living. He recently published his first book, Making the Low Notes: A Life in Music. In it, he writes mostly true stories about the often ridiculous ways he stumbled through a career making the low notes with the noble, mysterious, and ignominious cast of characters who inhabit the underbelly of the music business.
During his decades as a musician, Bill did, in fact, perform with some household names like Martin Short, Chita Rivera, Ray Charles, Jeff Daniels, Buddy Greco, Richard Kind, and Joan Rivers. He learned a ton about music from James Moody, Warren Benfield, Dave Holland, Bunky Green, and the infamous Joe Daley. Bill played a central (though uncredited) role as “the bass player behind Laura Benanti” in the ill-fated NBC-TV series The Playboy Club.
As if all of that wasn’t impressive enough, Bill also frequented orchestra pits in some of Chicago’s most illustrious theaters for shows like Wicked, The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, West Side Story etc.
Bill created the groundbreaking jazz education website PlayJazzNow.com and taught at the American Conservatory of Music, the Clark Terry Great Plains Jazz Camp, the Saskatchewan Summer School for the Arts, and the Montreux Jazz Festival. He likes to think that he helped launch the musical lives of many students from his private teaching studio. Bill’s teaching videos have been viewed over two million times on YouTube—for reals.
If you’re so inclined, you can find Bill’s other writing in After Hours, Another Chicago Magazine, Allium, Counseling Today, The Intermezzo, Sledgehammer, Under the Gum Tree, and in toilet stalls throughout the Chicago vicinity.
Bill currently divides his time between his private psychotherapy practice and writing his next book, a memoir about his father, which will probably be kind of a bummer. He lives in Chicago’s South Loop with his poet/therapist wife, Nina Corwin, and an exuberant Bengal named Jazzy.
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