ONLY GOOD SONG: Leigh Harris

Mostrando postagens com marcador Leigh Harris. Mostrar todas as postagens

domingo, 1 de março de 2015

Leigh Harris - House of Secrets

Leigh Harris - House of Secrets - 1999

Leigh Harris, aka "Little Queenie", is a woman of many talents and accomplishments. Leigh Harris co-founded Little Queenie and the Percolators with John Magnie, and over the years has shared billing with such diverse artists as B.B. King, Elvis Costello, Taj Mahal, Asleep at the Wheel, the Neville Brothers, the Guess Who and NRBQ. She completed her first solo album in 1999.

After winning the prestigious Big Easy Award for Best Female Performer in 2000, she went on to produce and record her second solo record - POLYCHROME JUNCTION in 2001. House of Secrets brings us a very intimate Leigh Harris, artfully breathing life into a program of wildly various selections including songs by Doc Pomus, Brian Wilson, Jagger-Richards and Ray Davies. Supported by a pool of exceptionally sympathetic musicians, Harris stamps each performance with her own personality. There are fine originals by John Magnie and Glenn Patscha, two excellent Harris compositions 'Telephone Sleeping in My Bed" and "Crazy Mirrors" and an exquisite reading of "Paint This Town" in a duet with pianist Joshua Paxton.

01 - Like A Ghost

02 - Incommunicado

03 - Paint this Town

04 - Devel Jumped a Rabbit

05 - Backstreet Girl

06 - Telephone Sleeping in My Bed

07 - Evening in Paradise

08 - Caroline No

09 - Crazy Mirrors

10 - Oklahoma USA

11 - Midnight Star

Explore more Leigh Harris HERE

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quarta-feira, 18 de dezembro de 2013

Little Queenie & the Percolators - Home

Little Queenie & the Percolators - Home - 2007
featuring Leigh “L’il Queenie” Harris, John Magnie, Tommy Malone and others (1977-1982)

By Grant Britt from nodepression.com

In New Orleans, she’s considered royalty. As Lil’ Queenie, she fronted the Percolators, a rowdy, raucous amalgamation of bluesy rockers with a jazzy side as well who rattled the Crescent City in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. Today, under her commoner name of Leigh Harris, she makes her home in Rural Hall, North Carolina, not far from Andy Griffin’s hometown and Mayberry touchstone of Mt. Airy.

But just because Harris has chosen a quieter and drier setting to live in doesn’t mean that she’s not still percolatin’. Ex- Percolator partners and current Subdudes Tommy Malone and John Magnie may not be with her when she plays this far south, but she’ll still bring a rowdy, funky bunch of backers when she plays Papa Mojo’s Roadhouse this Friday night.

Harris started singing before she could walk, and by her late teens was standing shoulder to shoulder on stages with a who’s who of New Orleans musical royalty including Professor Longhair, Dr. John and the Nevilles. “It was just kind of neighborhood guys, and I was just too young and stupid to be intimidated,” she says with a throaty chuckle. “ I had too much hubris, or somethin’.”

Whatever you called it, the crowds who packed Tipitinas loved her work, as did the artists, especially Fess. “Johnny and I did this duet at Tipitinas every Monday night,” Harris recalls. “All the Nevilles would come in, because it was a really neighborhoody thing, and Fess would too, and George Landry, who was Art and them’s uncle, Big Chief Jolly. And Fess would say, (she drops down into a gravely croak) “sang that ’Ode To Billie Joe.’” Which I really didn’t do with Johnny, he had heard me do it when I was even younger, doing a solo act, playing guitar. He said one of his great lines ever, one of his great malaprops: ‘You sang that real nice, dahlin’- I likedted it.’ ”

The Percolators grew out of that duo, adding future Subdude Tommy Malone as well as a rotating cast of characters that included some of the city’s finest horn players and even slide guitar wizard Sonny Landreth for a time. The band name came from a quote in clarinetist/ saxman/viper Mezz Mezrow’s book, Really The Blues. “Mezz is describing this situation where all the musicians all one by one are all achieving collective satori, and someone in the house screams out, ‘percolate you fool, percolate!” But she says few people got the reference. “I’ve had people give me toy coffepots, with my face on these appliances for years,” she says. I tell her it seems obvious that anybody who heard the band and got caught up in the pulsating riddims would realize that it was not something as common as caffeine but an internal lava flow that was bubbling up to splash all over them. “No shit, man,” she says with a sigh.

READ MORE HERE

01. I Gotta Song I Gotta Sing
02. My Dawlin New Orleans
03. Gumbo Heaven
04. Wild Natives
05. Inspiration
06. I Was Just Practicing
07. Cant Get Ridoma Smile
08. Surrender
09. Telephone Sleeping in My Bed
10. Hum Hum
11. It Will Be Me
12. Blackhaired Girl

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quarta-feira, 4 de dezembro de 2013

Leigh Harris - Polychrome Junction (re-post)

Leigh Harris - Polychrome Junction - 2001

from CDUniverse

Recorded in New Orleans in 2000 by the innovative keyboard/percussion/vocal quintet, Roy G Biv, led by vocalist Leigh "Little Queenie" Harris, Polychrome Junction opens with Harris's "Dog Days" (later tapped for re-release on Sony's Doctors, Professors, Kings, and Queens: The Big Ol' Box of New Orleans) : a funk-drenched, witty paean to Crescent City weather ("Down here in the land of the dreamy dream/the air condition stay on past Halloween"), complete with authentic howling about the heat and a blistering tuba solo by "honorary Biv-ouac" Matt Perrine. Jazz standard "Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most" receives a major groove overhaul with percussionist Michael Skinkus's multilayering of shekere, congas, djali, shakers and bells, and pianist Joshua Paxton & organist David Ellington's adroit, joyous cross-pollination of New Orleans and Afro-Carribean polyrhythms; kit drummer Karl Budo picks up his sticks and lays down a subtle but definite NOLA street beat on "Poinciana". Young tenor saxophonist Rebecca Barry guests on "Oh, What a Beautiful Morning" to great effect in both her solo and interplay work with Harris .

The dizzying rendition of "Cloudburst" is a standout, and Harris's take on "Candy" will send many listeners to the bedroom or the kitchen--or both. Harris's two other compositions, "Crazy Mirrors" and "Paralyzed" (written with Subdude John Magnie and Bruce MacDonald),are vivid tales of unrequieted love and sexual obsession. "You Always Knew Me Better (Than I Knew Myself"), written for Harris by Dr John and Doc Pomus, is a soulful, heartwrenching ballad performed as a duet between Harris and Paxton. The final track, Earl King's "Make a Better World", provides ample forum for Paxton and Ellington's James Booker/Professor Longhair chops and Harris's undeniable take-no-prisoners way with an R&B classic. Polychrome Junction is a fine archive of an extremely creative group comprised of top-notch musicians living and working in contemporary New Orleans, in energetic, fertile flower, containing superb playing and vocalising throughout.

01. Dog Days
02. Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most
03. Oh What A Beautiful Morning
04. Paralyzed
05. Poinciana
06. You Always Knew Me Better (Than I Knew Myself)
07. Crazy Mirrors
08. Cloudburst
09. Candy
10. Make A Better World

Leigh Harris - Vocals
Josh Paxton - Piano, Clavinet
David Ellington - B3 Organ
Karl Budo - Drums
Michael Skinkus - Baata, Bongos, Congas, Djali, Djimbe, Cowbells, Sleighbells, Tiny Bells, Bones, Shells, Skerkeres, Vibraslap, Marracas, Bicycle Horn, Tambourine
Rebecca Barry - Tenor Sax (3)
Matt Perrine - Tuba (1), Bass (9)

N.B: Esse disco eu subi para primeiramente atender a um pedido num destes foruns da vida, sem a intenção de postá-lo no blog, mas, confesso que fiquei com pena de perder um link para esse disco um tanto quanto dificil de se achar. Se serviu para 1, pode ser que sirva para mais 5 ou 6. Essa é a lógica.

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