Artist: James Harman
Album: Fineprint
Label: Electro-Fi
Release Date: 4.13.2018
Veteran California blues harpsman James Harman has his own tough act to follow with Fineprint. He and his 2015 Bonetime was nominated for an unprecedented five BMA Awards: Song of the Year, Album of the Year, Traditional Album of the Year, Harmonica Player, and Traditional Male Blues Artist of the Year. Not bad for the well-travelled Harman. Born in Alabama, he took a real liking to black blues and soul music, and did some stints in Florida, Chicago, New York, Miami, and New Orleans before becoming a fixture in the Southern California blues scene.
This release features 13 Harman originals and was produced by Harman and his guitarist of the past 18 years, Nathan James. Special guests include Gene Taylor (Blasters, Fabulous Thunderbirds), and Jeff Turmes (Mavis Staples, Janiva Magness). Other folks who have played with him—Kid Ramos and his bandmates from the Bamboo Porch Revue, like drummer Marty Dodson and bassist Troy Sandow—appear on select tracks. As Harman says in the liners, “As usual, with me, it is not a recording of tracks all done in one time period by one set of players, but rather a collection of songs I have recorded that I liked hearing together.”
Through his long career starting in the early ’60s and blossoming after he started gigging with Canned Heat in the ’70s, Harman has built an immense song catalog. Twenty of his original songs have been used in film and television. He’s been nominated for 20 BMAs, won two for his contribution to Remembering Little Walter, which received a Grammy nomination. This, unless we lost count, is his 34th album release.
The title track is a tribute to Harman’s mentor, the late John Lee Hooker. “In With the Grief” features solos from Gene Taylor and Harman in a call-and-response mode to Harman’s lead. “Come On and Dance with Me,” imbued by James’ resonator, was inspired by a fishing trip to Mexico. “At the Flophouse,” where Harman tries to impart some moral positivity, features the same players. “A Busy Man (When This Old World Turns Its Back on You)” is the same song Harman lent to Walter Trout for Trout’s Full Circle and features Jeff Turmes on bass and some hollering. Two versions of the funky New Orleans’ “Watcha Gonna Do About Me” appear here, the first a Sonny Leyland piano-driven take with the next, recorded on a different day, featuring Harmon’s main guys in the Bamboo Porch Revue.
To give some insight into what might inspire a Harmon song, take “Memory Foam Mattress,” inspired by a TV commercial that he watched in a lonely hotel room. Or consider, “Familiarity Breeds Contempt, Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder” about the strangest of all adult life dualities. It features Carl Sonny Leyland on piano. “Slam on the Brakes’’ is a spontaneous live track that features Kid Ramos on guitar.
This is the iconic James Harman on top of his game as usual. Expect nothing less.
—Jim Hynes
Did not realize James had experienced such success! I remember pretty recently reading about a charity concert for him at one of the club’s in southern .ca. I’m glad he has experienced more success over the years than I had realized, as this article suggests. Guess I’ll have to look a little deeper to make sure how significant the BMA is etc. By the way, I was around the same clubs as JH for a good many years and,was never aware of any resemblance in style,between Hooker and himself. I suppose he’s referring to meeting Hooked arou d The Belly up Tavern
which many, many people did. Hooker was quite friendly to all of us blues musicians who were around.