Corey Harris 1969–

Blues singer, guitarist

Studied in Cameroon

Appeared on Living Blues Cover

Moved to Rounder Label

Selected discography

Sources

“Corey Harris wants to redefine the blues,” noted Steve Inskeep of National Public Radio. Traditional acoustic blues attracted a host of young performers in the 1990s and early 2000s, but Harris set himself apart from the pack by looking both back to the African roots of the blues and forward to reggae, hip-hop, and Latin styles. For Harris, the blues represented not simply a musical style but a manifestation of musical ideas that African-descended peoples everywhere held in common. Not a stereotypical blues musician, Harris earned a degree from a small liberal arts college in New England. In his ability to bring together a variety of black musical traditions, he could be compared with the well-known musician Taj Mahal, who was instrumental in exploring the roots and revitalizing the traditional sounds of African-American blues.

Corey Harris was born in Denver, Colorado, on February 21, 1969. As a small child he demonstrated his musical leanings by banging on pots and pans at home. Both his parents were music-loving southerners, and they encouraged the young musician to explore his talent. Early on, Harris heard the folk music of Odetta and the reggae of Bob Marley. He started taking trumpet lessons at age five, but was greatly influenced by listening to his mother’s collection of records by bluesman Lightnin’ Hopkins, which convinced him to switch to the guitar when he was 12 years old. In high school in Denver, Harris played in a rock band and honed his singing voice in church.

Studied in Cameroon

Harris attended Bates College in Maine, where he studied anthropology and linguistics. He divided a year abroad between France and the West African nation of Cameroon, hoping to study pidgin—the simplified form of English that arose in Africa as a way of communicating along trade routes. African linguistic patterns would eventually have an impact on Harris’s music, but at this point he was content simply to soak up the African traditions he encountered in Cameroon, fascinated by the links he heard between the juju music of Cameroon and Nigeria and the African-American blues he knew back home. “I always knew that the basis of black music is rhythm, but it was a great demonstration to see all the different ways rhythm comes out,” Harris was quoted as saying on his website.

At a Glance…

Born on February 21, 1969, in Denver, CO. Education: Graduated from Bates College, Lewiston, ME; studied in France and Cameroon; returned to Cameroon after graduation for further musical study.

Career: Taught English and French at middle-school level in Napoleonville, LA; played on streets for tips in New Orleans; made demo tape, 1994; signed to Alligator label; released debut album Between Midnight and Day, 1995; toured with Natalie Merchant; released Fish Ain’t Bitin’, 1997; released Greens in the Garden, 1999; traveled to Mali, 2001; signed to Rounder label; released Downhome Sophisticate, 2002.

Selected awards: Watson fellowship, for study in Africa, early 1990s.

Addresses: Label —Rounder Records, One Camp St., Cambridge, MA 02140. Website —http://www.coreyharrismusic.com.

After graduating from Bates, Harris used the proceeds of a fellowship to return to Cameroon for a year. After his return to the United States, he took a job teaching middle-school French in Napoleonville, Louisiana. He had not yet thought of making his career in music, although he sometimes performed at clubs and coffeehouses in nearby New Orleans. But Harris told the Cleveland Plain Dealer that a fellow teacher caused him to rethink his priorities: “She said, ‘You’ve got so many talents. You don’t need to teach.’ She was supposed to be my mentor. That stayed with me.”

Harris began playing for tips on the streets of New Orleans and barnstorming around the South in his car, performing wherever he could. “I didn’t have a record deal or an agent or anything,” Harris told Guitar Player. “It was just me and my guitar, making enough money for gas and motels. There were sacrifices, but I was just crazy about playing.” In 1994 Harris made a demo tape, and a year later he was signed to the blues-oriented Alligator label, awaiting the release of his debut album, Between Midnight and Day.

Appeared on Living Blues Cover

That album featured Harris and his guitar covering acoustic blues classics such as Charley Patton’s “Pony Blues,” Sleepy John Estes’s “I Ain’t Gonna Be Worried No More,” and Mississippi Fred McDowell’s “Keep Your Lamp Trimmed and Burning.” Strong sales and positive reviews for Between Midnight and Day put Harris on the cover of Living Blues magazine and led to an offer to open for 10,000 Maniacs vocalist Natalie Merchant on her 1996 tour. But Down Beat reviewer Robert Santelli, even as he praised Harris’s “jagged, salt-of-the-earth voice” and “rough-‘n’-tumble, wonderfully rhythmic guitar style,” argued that “Harris needs his own songs to make a real splash.”

Harris took that advice to heart on his second album, Fish Ain’t Bitin’, which featured New Orleans-style brass on several tracks and offered his own compositions, including “5-0 Blues,” one of several Harris songs that would address the issue of police misconduct. That album again snared the attention of alternative rock artists; Harris was asked to perform on the 1998 album Mermaid Avenue, which featured completions of previously unfinished songs by folk legend Woody Guthrie.

On his third album, 1999’s Greens from the Garden, Harris gave full expression to the stylistic freedom that had been brewing in his career up to that point. Harris rejected the blues revivalist label. “That’s really the nature of the media,” he told the Chicago Sun-Times. “Anything they can sum up in one simple phrase, they’ll do it.” Harris produced the album himself, lending it the feeling of a relaxed live performance. Singing in both English and French, and accompanied by his band and various guest musicians, he delved into cajun music, New Orleans funk, jazz, Cameroonian juju, Piedmont blues, and other styles. With pieces such as “Basehead,” which depicted cocaine users as inheritors of a slave mentality, Harris grew as a songwriter.

Moved to Rounder Label

Greens from the Garden drew critical raves and planted Harris firmly on the playlists of Americana-oriented radio stations—an increasingly common format in the nonprofit public radio sector. The album’s only downside was that it strained his relationship with Alligator, a label mostly devoted to straight-ahead blues material. The label insisted on a professional remix of the material Harris delivered, and label head Bruce Iglauer, while supporting Harris’s new creative freedom, told the Chicago Sun-Times that the album “got away from my personal tastes as a blues fan.” Harris recorded one more album for Alligator, a duo collaboration with pianist Henry Butler titled Vu-Du Menz. But he moved to the eclectic Rounder label for his next release, 2002’s Downhome Sophisticate.

The album reprised “Keep Your Lamp Trimmed and Burning,” this time in an explosive electric sermon-like arrangement. Acoustic tracks included “Capitaine,” an evocation of a Niger River fish, and in several places the album benefited from a fresh infusion of African influences—Harris had traveled to Mali shortly before going into the studio. Harris addressed the theme of African-American mistrust of the police in “Santoro,” which likened a police car to a frightful biblical beast on the prowl. He incorporated Latin traditions into the album, many of whose song texts were cast in reggae-influenced or African-influenced speech patterns. In all, noted Robert L. Doerschuk of All Music Guide, “few artists reflect the breadth of black music as vividly as Corey Harris.” Harris was well on his way to becoming the alchemist of black music, recombining its constituent elements into new and powerful substances.

Selected discography

Between Midnight and Day, Alligator, 1995.

Fish Ain’t Bitin’, Alligator, 1997.

Greens from the Garden, Alligator, 1999.

(With Henry Butler) Vu-Du Menz, Alligator, 2000.

Downhome Sophisticate, Rounder, 2002.

Sources

Periodicals

Albuquerque Journal, November 16, 2001, p. 2.

Chicago Sun-Times, May 21, 1999, p. Weekend Plus-9.

Down Beat, March 1996, p. 55; July 1997, p. 63.

Guitar Player, August 1999, p. 35.

Plain Dealer (Cleveland, OH), May 12, 1999, p. El.

Seattle Times, January 20, 2000, p. Gil.

Vancouver Province, August 13, 2002, p. Bll.

Washington Post, May 29, 2002, p. C5; December 6, 2002, p. C4.

On-line

“Corey Harris Biography,” Corey Harris Website, www.coreyharrismusic.com (March 28, 2003).

“Corey Harris,” All Music Guide, www.allmusic.com (March 28, 2003).

Other

Additional information for this profile was obtained from National Public Radio’s, “Morning Edition” program aired on May 17, 2002.

—James M. Manheim