Customer Reviews

Who Put the Benzedrine in Mrs. Murphy's Ovaltine?

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1930 to 1950 style Jazz that is almost gone today. Harry the hipster is nothing but fun. You can hear in his music that the man loved to jam. Harry was the consummate Jazz Party musician. I would describe his sound as Dixie Land meets Big Band. He plays lose keys around fun lyrics. Harry tosses in the standard Jazz "man" and "yea" into songs as James Brown tosses around vocal sounds that aren't quite lyrics (e.g. the sound just prior to "I feel good"). In either case the song isn't the same without it. I had the pleasure I knowing Harry briefly because I lived near his home in St. Petersburg Florida a couple of years before he died. This album captures Harry as he should always be remembered and a style of music that is almost forgotten. Thanks Harry

The legendary pianist and flamboyant original hipster made his mark in the mid-1940's and was banned from the radio back then for singing about drugs. Finally, in the 1980's, he made his second coming. This is a fantastic CD with rocking boogie, rocking ragtime, rocking jazz, and funny lyrics, of the 1980's sessions. Harry Gibson was a genius.

The CD met my expectations very well -- I used it in my Jazz Appreciation class at Coastal Carolina University as an example of the extensions of Jazz in the 40's. Mr. Gibson was extremely talented in many ways (jazz, scat, contemporary and classical included) and I hope to add his music to my collection in the future.