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Harry "The Hipster" Gibson (June 27, 1915-May 3, 1991) was a jazz pianist, singer, and songwriter. Events 1358 - Republic of Dubrovnik is founded 1709 - Peter the Great defeats Charles XII of Sweden Year 1915 ( MCMXV) was a Common year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar (or a Common year Events 1491 - Kongo monarch Nkuwu Nzinga is baptised by Portuguese missionaries adopting the baptismal name of João Year 1991 ( MCMXCI) was a Common year starting on Tuesday (link will display full calendar of the Gregorian Calendar. Jazz is an American Musical art form which originated in the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States A pianist (/'piənɪst/ is a Musician who plays the Piano. A professional pianist can perform solo pieces play with an ensemble or Orchestra A songwriter is someone who writes the Lyrics to songs the Musical composition (chords or Melody to songs or both [1]

Gibson played New York style Stride piano and boogie woogie while singing in an unrestrained, wild style. Stride, also known as New York ragtime, is a jazz piano style where the pianist's left hand may play a four-beat pulse with a bass note or tenth interval on the first and third Boogie-woogie is a style of Piano -based Blues that became very popular in the late 1930s and early 1940s but originated much earlier and was extended from piano His music career began in the late 1920s, when he played stride piano in Dixieland jazz bands in Harlem. Dixieland or Dixie is a name for the southeastern portion of the USA; see Southern United States, Dixie. Harlem is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan, long known as a major African American cultural and business center He continued to perform there throughout the 1930s, adding the barrelhouse boogie of the time to his repertoire, and was discovered by Fats Waller in 1939. Fats Waller (born Thomas Wright Waller on May 21, 1904 &mdash December 15, 1943) was an American jazz pianist [2] Between 1939 and 1945, he played at various Manhattan jazz clubs on 52nd Street ("Swing Street"), most notably the Deuces, run by Leon Enkin and Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis. Manhattan Island, in New York Harbor, is much the largest part of the Borough of Manhattan, one of the Five Boroughs which form the City of New York 52nd Street is a 19 mile long one-way Street traveling west to east across Midtown Manhattan. Edward Davis ( March 2, 1922 &ndash November 3, 1986) who performed and recorded as Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis, was an American

Contents

Career

In the 1940s, Gibson was known for writing unusual songs, which were considered ahead of their time. He was also known for his unique, wild singing style, his energetic and unorthodox piano styles, and for his intricate mixture of a hardcore, gutbucket boogie rhythms with ragtime, stride and jazz piano styles. The piano is a Musical instrument played by means of a keyboard that produces sound by striking steel strings with Felt covered hammers Boogie is a repetitive Swung note or Shuffle Rhythm, "groove" or pattern used in Blues which was originally played Rhythm (from Greek ῥυθμός - rhythmos, "any measured flow or movement symmetry" is the variation of the length and accentuation of Ragtime (alternately spelled Rag-time) is an American musical genre which enjoyed its peak popularity between 1897 and 1918 Stride, also known as New York ragtime, is a jazz piano style where the pianist's left hand may play a four-beat pulse with a bass note or tenth interval on the first and third Jazz is an American Musical art form which originated in the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States Gibson took the boogie woogie beat of his predecessors, but he made it frantic; similar to the rock and roll music of the 1950s[3] Examples of his wild style are found in the songs "Riot in Boogie" and "Barrelhouse Boogie". Boogie-woogie is a style of Piano -based Blues that became very popular in the late 1930s and early 1940s but originated much earlier and was extended from piano Rock and roll (also known as rock 'n' roll) is a form of Music that evolved in the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s with roots in mostly African An example of his strange singing style is in the song "The Baby and the Pup. " Other songs that Gibson recorded were "Handsome Harry, the Hipster", "I Stay Brown All Year 'Round", "Get Your Juices at the Deuces", and "Stop That Dancin' Up There. " Gibson recorded a great deal, but there are very few visual examples of his act. However, in New York in 1944, he filmed three songs for the Soundies film jukeboxes, and he went to Hollywood in 1946 to guest star in the feature-length film musical Junior Prom[4]. Soundies were an early version of the Music video: three-minute musical films produced by professional film crews in New York Chicago and Hollywood between 1940 jukebox is a partially automated music-playing device usually a Coin -operated machine that can play specially selected songs from self-contained media The musical film is a Film genre in which several Songs sung by the characters are interwoven into the narrative Gibson preceded the first white rock and rollers by a decade, but the Soundies he recorded show significant similarities to rock and roll[5]. White People is the second album by Handsome Boy Modeling School.

While working on "Swing Street" at night, Gibson was a fellow at the Juilliard Graduate School during the day. The Juilliard School, located in New York City, is a world renowned Performing arts conservatory. [6] At the time, Juilliard was strictly a classical music academy, and Gibson excelled there, which party explains the richness of the music he brought to the jazz world. The other part of the explanation is, his own inventiveness, and Gibson was almost always billed and promoted as a musical genius.

Unlike Mezz Mezzrow, who was white but consciously abandoned his heritage to adopt the black music and culture as a white negro, Gibson grew up near Harlem, New York City. Milton Mesirow, better known as Mezz Mezzrow ( 9 November, 1899 &ndash 5 August, 1972) was an American Jazz White People is the second album by Handsome Boy Modeling School. The term black people usually refers to a racial group of Humans with dark Skin color, but the term has also been used to categorise a number of diverse "The White Negro Superficial Reflections on the Hipster" is an essay by Norman Mailer that recorded a wave of young White people in the 1920s 1930s and Gibson's constant use of black jive talk was not an affectation; it was simply his uptown New York dialect. African American Vernacular English ( AAVE) – also called African American English; less precisely Black English, Black Vernacular, His song, "I Stay Brown All Year Round" is based on this issue[7]. In his autobiography, Gibson says he coined the term hipster some time between 1939 and 1945, when he was performing on Swing Street and he started using "Harry the Hipster" as his stage name. [8]

His career went into a tailspin in 1947, when his song "Who Put the Benzedrine in Mrs. Benzedrine is the trade name of the Racemic mixture of Amphetamine (dl-amphetamine Murphy's Ovaltine" put him on the music industry blacklist. Ovaltine is a brand of Milk flavoring product made with Sugar (except in Switzerland Malt extract Cocoa, and Whey. [9] His own drug use led to his decline, and with the rising popularity of young rock-and-roll musicians among teenagers in the 1950s, older musicians were not in demand. In the 1960s, when Gibson saw the huge success of The Beatles, he decided to switch over to rock-and-roll. The Beatles were a pop and rock band from Liverpool, England formed in 1960 By the 1970s, he was playing hard rock, blues, bop, novelty songs and a few songs that mixed ragtime with rock-and-roll, and his hipster act became a hippie act. Hard rock (also referred to as heavy rock) is a variation of Rock music which has its earliest roots in mid-1960s garage and Psychedelic rock The Blues is a vocal and instrumental form of Music based on the use of the Blue notes It emerged as an accessible form of self-expression Ragtime (alternately spelled Rag-time) is an American musical genre which enjoyed its peak popularity between 1897 and 1918

His comeback resulted in three more albums. Harry the Hipster Digs Christmas, made of new recordings in 1974, sounds like a home recording and is not noteworthy. But two professionally produced albums, Everybody's Crazy but Me, (its title taken from the lyrics of "Stop That Dancin' Up There"), which was released by Progressive Records in 1986, and Who Put the Benzedrine in Mrs. Murphy's Ovaltine which was released in 1989 by Delmar Records, demonstrate the ample talent of this quite gifted musician, and are equal in every way to his early work. Those two albums include some jazz, blues, and ragtime, but mainly consist of rock and roll songs about reefer, nude bathing, hippie communes, strip clubs, male chauvinists, "rocking the 88s", and even about how hip Shirley MacLaine is. Rock and roll (also known as rock 'n' roll) is a form of Music that evolved in the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s with roots in mostly African Cannabis ( Cán-na-bis) is a Genus of Flowering plants that includes three putative species Cannabis sativa subsp The Hippie Subculture was originally a Youth movement that began in the United States during the early 1960s and spread around the world A commune is an Intentional community of people living together sharing common interests Property, possessions Resources, work and Income A strip club is a Nightclub or bar that offers Striptease (the erotic removal of a performer's clothing and possibly other related services such as Chauvinism (ˈʃoʊvɨnɪzəm is extreme and unreasoning Partisanship on behalf of a group to which one belongs especially when the partisanship includes malice and hatred 88 ( eighty-eight) is the Natural number following 87 and preceding 89. Shirley MacLaine (born April 24, 1934) is an American Academy Award -winning Film and Theater Actress, well-known [10]

Harry Gibson may have been the only pianist of the 1930s and 1940s to go on to play in full-scale rocking blues bands in the 1970s and 1980s. Unlike his 1940s contemporaries, most of whom continued to play the same music for decades, Gibson gradually shifted gears between the 1940s and the 1970s, switching from jazz to rock. The only elements that remained constant were his tendency to play hard-rocking boogie woogie, and his tongue-in-cheek references to drug use.

Harry's family did a biographical movie short on Harry's life and music in 1991, shortly before his death, which came about by suicide. The movie is called Boogie In Blue and was published as a VHS video that year.

Notes

  1. ^ Harry Gibson, Flavin Feller. (December 5 1995). Boogie In Blue (VHS). Rhapsody Films.
  2. ^ His autobiography, published as liner notes to album, Everybody's Crazy But Me, 1986, Progressive Records, United States
  3. ^ Jazz On Record: The First Sixty Years; by Scott Yanow, 2003, p. 277 and foll.
  4. ^ The Internet Movie Database www. imdb. com
  5. ^ Jazz On Film, the Complete Story; by Scott Yanow, 2004, p. 28
  6. ^ Liner notes, Boogie Woogie in Blue album, 1944, Musicraft. See also: Cooper, Kim; David Smay (2005). Lost in the Grooves: Scram's Capricious Guide to the Music You Missed. Routledge, 98-99. ISBN 0415969980.  
  7. ^ The Rise of a Jazz Art World; by Paul Douglas Lopes, 2002, p. 210
  8. ^ His autobiography appears in liner notes of Everybody's Crazy but Me album, 1986, Progressive Records, United States.
  9. ^ Statement by drummer Tom Magee in movie Boogie In Blue
  10. ^ Harry Hipster Gibson Lyrics

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