User:Trak light/Jara Harris

Jara Harris is an Orange County based artist, mostly known as the founder and frontman/bassist of 90's funk/rock band Slapbak.

Like Prince and Stevie Wonder he plays every instrument exceptionally well, from drums, bass, keyboards, guitar, to vocals. He also engineers and produces music as well as photography, directing and editing music videos. Jara played drums for the family band (The 4 J's) with his older teenage brothers and sister at age 4. By the age of 16, Jara got his first 4 track recorder and started producing, writing and performing his own music by himself. In 1988 he got his first big break when producer friend John Nettlsbey suggested him for the bass position for Michael Jackson's younger, Randy Jackson. Jara came in as the youngest member of the band at 19 and shortly after, Jara got his older brother Jeff in when Randy was looking for a lead guitarist. The band was called Randy and the Gypsys, which supposably the gypsy part came from Jara's image at the time, with his bandana and big hoop earrings. In 1990 Jara became a grammy award winning artist for playing bass on a Jose Feliciano song that won for Best Latin Pop Performance and by 1991 got his own band "Slapbak" signed to Warner Brothers. Slapbak recorded 2 albums for Warner Brothers (Fast Food Funkateers & Slapbak's Blue Light Special), but Slapbak have released many more cds over the years. Although Jara still records and tours with Slapbak to present, Jara has recorded or performed with many artists such as the Time, Randy Jackson, Digital Underground, Earth Wind & Fire, Cameo, Roger & Zapp, Charlie Wilson & Gap Band, Fishbone, Snoop Dogg, 112, Alicia Keys, Ne-Yo, Jordin Sparks, Koshi Inaba, Matt Sorum, En Vogue, Stevie Salas just to name a few. Jara finally decided to record a cd by himself from top to bottom. He wrote, recorded 10 songs all in the month of October of 2007 and then sat on it when he started doing Jordin Sparks. He decided to record 3 more sporadically in 2009 and 2010. Then he added 2 more songs in 2011 that would include a song called "Idiot," along with a video for it. He finally decided to release it in the fall of 2012.

Discography

1989 - Randy and the Gypsys 1990 - Jose Feliciano "Nina" 1991 - Cameo "Emotional Violence" 1992 - Slapbak "Fast Food Funkateers" 1994 - Slapbak's Blue Light Special (never released) 1994 - 4 Xample "for example" 1995 - Slapbak "If It Aint Broke, Don't Funk Wid It" (never released) 1996 - Slapbak "If It Aint Broke, Don't Funk Wid It" (revised version) 1997 - Slapbak "Futurevoid" (never released) 2000 - Slapbak "Return Of The Fast Food Funkateers" 2004 - Stevie Salas "Soul Blasters of the Universe" 2004 - En Vogue "Soul Flower" 2004 - Slapbak "Ghetto Funkography" 2004 - Dodge "Starbass Invasion" 2005 - Slapbak "Too Black For Black Radio" 2006 - Slapbak "The Key" 2006 - Stevie Salas Colorcode "Be What It Is" 2007 - Tawnya Gunn "The Truth" 2007 - Stevie Salas "Sun and the Earth, Vol. 1" 2008 - Koshi Inaba "Shian" 2008 - Jordin Sparks "acoustic version of No Air & Tattoo" 2009 - Slapbak "Underground Mayhem" 2010 - Koshi Inaba "Hadou" 2010 - Stevie Salas "Jam Power" 2012 - Jara Harris "Only"