It’s the birthday today of the influential blues shouter Wynonie Harris.
I’ll hand the microphone over to Nick Tosches, because why would I bother to try to add to it? Tosches devoted a chapter in his book Unsung Heroes of Rock ‘n Roll to this hugely important figure. When Harris was hired by bandleader Lucky Millinder in 1944 to replace Rosetta Tharpe as his lead singer, Harris was already a “local sensation” (in whatever locale he visited, that is. He very quickly dominated any market he performed in). Millinder represented a break for him but very quickly (immediately, really) he moved from hired hand to headliner. He was BIG. Harris was a thrilling performer, he used everything he had, a real blues shouter, full-body performance (someone once said Elvis’ shenanigans were mild compared to Harris).
Tosches starts the chapter with this very Tosches-esque line:
We know that rock ‘n’ roll was not a human invention, that it was the work of the Holy Ghost.
Oh Tosches, never change.
Harris started in the 1930s, “hit” in the 1940s, and then watched as the new decade rolled through, and “rock” became a “thing”, or – put another way – it got a NAME, but he had already been DOING it. You can’t blame him for pointing at all the youngsters saying, “I WAS DOING IT FIRST.” His time with Millinder was short, but they recorded two songs for Decca, both of which were hits, especially “Who Threw the Whiskey in the Well?” (recorded in 1944 and released in 1945)
Harris was too big to be contained, too wild to control. He recorded with a bunch of different labels before signing with King. Tosches again:
The music-business establishment was hesitant in its acceptance of Wynonie Harris and his vigorously vulgar style of shouting the blues. In its review of his ‘Young, and Wild’, Billboard remarked rather aloofly that the record might perhaps be “Good for the back rooms at the Harlem spots.” But it sold, and that’s what mattered.
Harris was TOO MUCH in all things: he lived fast, indulged in drink, in women, in flashy cars, in bragging: he was the ultimate showman living the ultimate showman’s life. I have a feeling that the recordings – as thrilling as they are – can’t hold a candle to what he must have been like live. He generated audience frenzies. He’d come back to his dressing room and women would be hiding there saying, “Please come home with me.” He often “complied”. Unless they were white women, which they often were. In that case, he would literally hide from them. He didn’t want the trouble. The point is: He was electric!
There’s “Drinkin’ Wine Spo Dee O Dee” – again, covered by everyone in the decades that followed.
There’s the explicit “Lovin’ Machine” from 1951:
In 1948, he recorded “Good Rockin’ Tonight”, which had already been covered by a number of people, but this is the one Elvis heard. Everybody heard it.
Nick Tosches again:
He has been remembered by those who knew him as a wild man, a creature of lurid excesses. Roy Brown, who wrote “Good Rockin’ Tonight,” recalled that “He’d walk into a bar and shout ‘Here comes the blues!’ He was wild. He’d jump off the bar and say, ‘Man, I’ll eat you up!’ He was like that. He got shot through the head, he got shot through the ears, he’d get beat up, but he didn’t mean no harm.” (For the record, the only shooting injury sustained by Harris was one in the hand, inflicted by an irate cuckold.)
So that’s how it was.
There are some pretty funny quotes about Harris in that Tosches chapter from those who knew him. “He was very loud and very vulgar.” “This man was a concept. Hell, he was too much.”
The music “developments” (mild word for a chaotic explosion) in the 1950s changed the present, altered the future, and erased the past. It has taken decades of work to rebuild the eradicated timeline, to place things in their proper context, to restore important figures to their rightful spot. History sometimes happens this way. Mythologies erected themselves overnight. A hierarchy was quickly created, almost organically. That hierarchy had great staying power. Which means that massively important figures like Rosetta Tharpe and Wynonie Harris were in many ways forgotten for decades. Nobody was “thinking” about this AS it was happening (or, they were, but what they were thinking was: “How long can I ride this wave?” “What do I need to do to keep myself in the game?”) What I’m trying to lead up to is, the great Wynonie Harris fell into obscurity almost overnight, a casualty of the craziness. The way it all played out in the ’50s, the explosion of rockabilly (“rise” is too calm a word) didn’t leave room for anything that WASN’T part of the initial whirlwind. The rupture was so violent nothing survived from “the time before” (meaning: last week). And so Wynonie Harris vanished. He kept recording. He kept performing. He drank himself to death. It’s a sad story. He said things like “I like this Elvis kid, but you should have seen what I was like.”
I wish I had, Wynonie!!
Thank you so much for stopping by. If you like what I do, and if you feel inclined to support my work, here’s a link to my Venmo account. And I’ve launched a Substack, Sheila Variations 2.0, if you’d like to subscribe.
