Music Review: Harry "The Hipster" Gibson - Who Put The Benzedrine In Mrs. Murphy's Ovaltine? - Page 2

But what really set Harry apart from the majority of his more formal white brethren who were playing jazz and blues in the thirties and forties, was his full tilt Boogie style of playing piano and his disregard for convention when it came to lyrics. It was songs like the title track from this CD, "Who Put The Benzedrine In Mrs. Murphy's Ovaltine?" (an updating of an old Irish folk song "Who Put The Overalls In Mrs. Murphy's Chowder?") that ended up getting him black listed from radio play and put his career on a downward slope it wouldn't recover from until the seventies. "She never ever wants to go to sleep/She says that everything is solid all reet" may not sound so off to us, but for the far stiffer morality of 1944 that was taking things just a little too far.

Scroll back up the page for a second and look at the picture on the cover of the disc, remind you of someone? I don't about you but when I see a picture like that Jerry Lee Lewis springs to mind. Harry was barreling his way through barrelhouse, ragtime, jive, and boogie-woogie, doing things that no one had ever done before while playing the piano long before Little Richard and Jerry Lee came along in the fifties. He was an outlaw in an era where it was still dangerous to be one, and long before it became fashionable.

Fast forward to the seventies where Harry made a second career for himself by playing up tempo/rag-time/blues – rock music all the while still writing the types of outrageous lyrics he had been famous for. He wasn't going to get much airtime on the radio with lyrics like "I'm the kinda of guy, always high/ on reefer, hash, and snow" but his style of music wasn't exactly top ten anymore either.

Which isn't to say it wasn't great stuff because it was. Listening to Harry singing and playing on Who Put The Benzedrine In Mrs. Murphy's Ovaltine? is a great treat. He can put more expression into a phrase with his raspy, Louis Armstrong sounding, voice then any emotionally overwrought pop singer you'd care to match up against him.

He wasn't only writing songs about the joys of recreational drug use either, which in the "Just Say No" era of Regan's United States took some nerve; he had a wonderful sense of humour that was put to good use as well. "Get Hip To Shirley MacLaine" is a part mocking, part respectful take on her New Age proclamations of the 1980s.

Article Author: Richard Marcus

Richard Marcus is the author of the forthcoming book What Will Happen In Eragon IV? and has had his work published in print and on line all over the world. The not so long-haired Canadian iconoclast writes reviews and opines on the world as he sees …

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