Harry "The Hipster" Gibson (June 27, 1915 – May 3, 1991) was a jazz pianist, singer, and songwriter. June 27 is the 178th day of the year (179th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar, with 187 days remaining. ... 1915 (MCMXV) was a common year starting on Friday (see link for calendar). ... May 3 is the 123rd day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (124th in leap years). ... 1991 (MCMXCI) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Jazz is a musical art form that originated in New Orleans at around the start of the 20th century. ... Pianist Claudio Arrau, Carnegie Hall, 1954. ... Ercole de Roberti: Concert, c. ... A songwriter is someone who writes the lyrics to songs, the musical composition or melody to songs, or both. ...

Harry Gibson played boogie woogie and smooth jive piano while singing in an unrestrained, wild style. His musical career began in the late 1920s, playing stride piano in Dixieland jazz bands in Harlem, NYC. He remained there throughout the 30's, adding the barrelhouse boogie of the time to his repertoire, and was discovered by Fats Waller in 1939. Between 1939 and 1945, he played at various jazz clubs on 52nd Street, "Swing Street," New York City notably the Deuces, run by Leon Enkin and Eddie Davis. He recorded such songs as "Handsome Harry, the Hipster," "I Stay Brown All Year 'Round," "Get Your Juices At The Deuces," and "Stop That Dancin' Up There." Harry was also known for his wild piano which was insane for the year 1944, take a listen to his songs "Riot in Boogie" and "Barrelhouse Boogie" and for an example of his strange singing style "The Baby and The Pup." He wrote all his own songs, which were quite unusual and ahead of their time. A short grand piano, with the top up. ... For other uses, see Harlem (disambiguation). ... 52nd Street, properly West 52nd Street, is a cross street in Manhattan in the Broadway district known as the street of jazz, the street that never sleeps or, simply, the street. The blocks of 52nd Street between 5th and 6th avenues were renowned in the mid 20th century for the... Nickname: Big Apple, Gotham, NYC, City That Never Sleeps, The Concrete Jungle, The City So Nice They Named It Twice Location in the state of New York Coordinates: Country United States State New York Boroughs The Bronx Brooklyn Manhattan Queens Staten Island Settled 1676  - Mayor Michael Bloomberg (R) Area    - City...

He was known in the 1940s for his unusual songs and his unique, wild singing style, as well as his intricate mixture of a hardcore boogie rhythm with ragtime, stride, and jazz piano. During this same time period, while working on Swing Street at night, he was a fellow at the prestigious Juilliard Graduate School during the day. The peak of his career was from 1939 to 1947, after which drug use led to his decline, and with the rising popularity of rock and roll among teenagers in the 1950s, older musicians were not in high demand. But in the 1960s, when Harry saw the huge success of the Beatles, he decided to switch over to rock and roll himself (not a great departure for a hard-rocking boogie pianist). His career came to a sudden end in 1947, when his song "Who Put The Benzedrine in Mrs. Murphy's Ovaltine" put him on the black list, but in 1986 he made a comeback album that resulted in another album in 1989, both of which reveal his considerable musical gift. In this later period, he played hard rock, blues, bop, and novelty songs, and a few tracks where he mixed ragtime with rock and roll. See below for the link to the lyrics to his wild songs. The Juilliard School is a performing arts conservatory in New York City, informally but definitively identified as simply Juilliard, and most famous for its musically-trained alumni. ... Rock and roll (also spelled Rock n Roll, especially in its first decade), also called rock, is a form of popular music, usually featuring vocals (often with vocal harmony), electric guitars and a strong back beat; other instruments, such as the saxophone, are common in some styles. ... 1939 Benzedrine advertisement Benzedrine is the trade name of the racemic variant of amphetamine (dl-amphetamine). ... Ovaltine (registered trademark of Associated British Foods) is a brand of milk flavoring product made with sugar (except in Switzerland), malt extract, cocoa, and whey. ... Second edition cover of Maple Leaf Rag, perhaps the most famous rag of all Ragtime is an American musical genre enjoying its peak popularity between 1899 and 1918. ... Rock and roll (also spelled Rock n Roll, especially in its first decade), also called rock, is a form of popular music, usually featuring vocals (often with vocal harmony), electric guitars and a strong back beat; other instruments, such as the saxophone, are common in some styles. ...

In his autobiography, he says he coined the term hipster during his gig on Swing Street, when he started using "Harry The Hipster" as his stage name. Since there is no evidence of earlier usage of the term in written form, we might tentatively believe this until otherwise proven. See link to his autobiography below. A hipster is a person who is strongly associated with a subculture that considers itself hip. ...

Also of note, is that he may have been the only pianist of his era, the 30's and 40's, who went on to play in full-scale rocking blues bands in the 70's and 80's. Unlike his 1940s contemporaries, who continued to play the same music for decades, (if they survived), Harry had a total metamorphosis between the 40's and the 80's, where the only thing that remained was his tendency to play hard rocking boogie woogie and ragtime, and his shtick was to sing comical songs praising drug use, almost as if he were the musical Cheech and Chong. For example, a song in 1989 about a little grass shack in Hawaii made of Maui Wowie that can be smoked as needed, replanted from the seeds, and rebuilt from the stems and leaves. CRICA, CHOCHA CULOS BORICUAS....SON LOS MEJORES. RICARDO SUAREZ ES UN CABRON Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong were a comedy duo who found a wide audience in the 1970s and 1980s for their stand-up routines, which were based upon the eras hippie, free love and especially drug culture...

Unlike Mezz Mezzrow, who grew up white but consciously abandoned it to adopt the black music and culture as a White Negro, Harry grew up in the South Bronx section of New York City. His constant use of black jive talk was not an affectation, it was simply his uptown New York dialect. His song, "I Stay Brown All Year Round" demonstrates his confusion about the pigmentation of his own skin. Milton Mesirow, much better known as Mezz Mezzrow (9 November 1899 - 5 August 1972) was an American Jewish jazz clarinetist and saxophonist from Chicago, Illinois. ... Essay by Norman Mailer recording the wave of young white people in the 20s, 30s and 40s, who were so enamored of jazz and swing that they adopted the black culture as their own. ... This article or section is not written in the formal tone expected of an encyclopedia article. ...

The most common reaction people make these days when seeing Gibson's 1944 soundies for the first time is that Harry Gibson was playing rock and roll, and they usually guess that he was a contemporary of Jerry Lee Lewis or Little Richard. People are usually quite surprised when they are told that these soundies were filmed in 1944. Gibson took the boogie woogie beat of his predecessors, but he made it frantic and wild, like a rock and roller would do in the 1950s. In retrospect, it seems that Harry Gibson was the first white rock and roller, preceding others by a decade. The video samples below give evidence of this.

Photos

• good color photo
• please click photo to enlarge

External links

• biography
• autobiography
• song lyrics
• myspace tribute page

Video Samples

• from 1944, Opus 12 EEE
• from 1944, 4F Ferdinand The Frantic Freak

Audio Samples

• (30 seconds of) "Barrelhouse Boogie" http://sg1.allmusic.com/cg/smp.dll?link=haopnx9kem4oyywmfoug9iq&r=20.asx
• (30 seconds of) "Riot In Boogie" http://sg1.allmusic.com/cg/smp.dll?link=k7q7bc2u4yo664ikcpmwazu&r=20.asx
• (30 seconds of) "The Baby and The Pup" http://sg1.allmusic.com/cg/smp.dll?link=s2wyupcjpoq2q7cy4j28cba&r=20.asx
• (1 minute of) "Hipster's Boogie" http://www.artistdirect.com/nad/store/artist/album/0,,92037,00.html

Discography

Discography

HANDSOME HARRY, THE HIPSTER -MUSICRAFT 290 THE HIPSTER'S BLUES, OPUS 6 7/8 -MUSICRAFT 290 RIOT IN BOOGIE -MUSICRAFT 291 STOP THAT DANCIN' UP THERE -MUSICRAFT 291 THE HIPSTER'S BLUES, OPUS 7 1/2 -MUSICRAFT 292 GET YOUR JUICES AT THE DEUCES -MUSICRAFT 292 4F FERDINAND THE FRANTIC FREAK -MUSICRAFT 293 BARRELHOUSE BOOGIE -MUSICRAFT 293 (April 21, 1944) John Simmons, bass; Sid Catlett, skins These were published as an album of 4 singles (8 sides) "Boogie Woogie in Blue," Musicraft Album 64

STOP THAT DANCING UP THERE / PUT A NICKEL IN THE SLOT -V-DISC 200 side a STOP THAT DANCING UP THERE / PUT A NICKEL IN THE SLOT -V-DISC 420 side a YOU CAN'T HAVE THAT AGAIN / ZOOT GIBSON STRIDES AGAIN -V-DISC 492 (1944, 45) V-Discs were 12-inch vinyl 78's shipped to soldiers during WWII. They were meant to be played by soldiers on regular record players. V-Discs were among the first vinyl records ever made.

I STAY BROWN ALL YEAR 'ROUND -MUSICRAFT 346 WHO PUT THE BENZEDRINE IN MRS. MURPHY'S OVALTINE? -MUSICRAFT 346 WHO'S GOIN' STEADY WITH WHO? -MUSICRAFT 347 WHAT'S HIS STORY? -MUSICRAFT 347 (Feb 8, 1946) Radio Recorders, Los Angeles. CA. Slim Gaillard, axe; Tiny Brown, bass; Zutty Singleton, skins

THE WOLF SONG -DIAMOND 2065 THAT'S THE STUFF YOU GOTTA WATCH -DIAMOND 2065 BOP BOP -DIAMOND 2066 BEER PARTY SATURDAY NIGHT -DIAMOND 2066 IT AIN'T HEP -DIAMOND 2067 LEAVE ME! I HATE TO BE ALONE -DIAMOND 2067 (Feb. 12 & 13, 1947) Al Hall, bass; Morey Feld, skins. These were published as an album of 3 singles (6 sides), Diamond Album D9

I Hope My Mother-in-Law Doesn't Come for Christmas -MACGREGOR 1021 The Worm Song -MACGREGOR 1022 THE BABY AND THE PUP -MACGREGOR (1951)

JACK AND THE BEANSTALK -ALADDIN 3199 GOLDILOCKS AND THE 3 BEARS -ALADDIN 3199 (1953. Another Aladdin master, called TWO CATS, unreleased at the time, has been issued on a CD rarities compilation in recent years. It's a two-part spoken jive record)

Live Fast Die Young Have A Good Looking Corpse -Hip 502 Be My Guest -HIP 502 Gotta Way With Women -HIP 502 Dixie Preacher Man -HIP 502 (1957). These 4 songs released on a 7-inch EP “Dig Harry The Hipster.” Hip Records was owned by Harry "the hipster" Gibson

HARRY THE HIPSTER DIGS CHRISTMAS (1974) LP album of new recordings, released later as CD

EVERYBODY'S CRAZY BUT ME (1986) LP includes 11 new recordings, also CD

WHO PUT THE BENZEDRINE IN MRS. MURPHY'S OVALTINE (1989) CD album includes 10 new recordings as well as 6 tracks taken from a live 1976 show