When the good Rev Larry “Harp Dog” Gordon was a boy he heard Sonny Terry blow his harp and to steal a song title from the great Terry, he became a ‘white boy lost in the blues”.
All he wanted to do was to “whoop and holler, chug and wop, tongue pop and slap like the master of the Marine Band, Sonny, none of this fan dangled ee-lectro-fied Chicago stuff, just the drivin’ train rhythms that get your toes tappin’ and make you want to get up and do the “ham bone”.
When the good Reverend was introduced to slide dobro player Col Ray Price, by a mutual taxidermist friend, he thought “stuff me! This boy can play the blues” and he had finally met his own Brownie.
Hooking up with the Scary Cats they took the blues and great dancin’ boogie to the outback pubs of the Riverina, Sure sometimes it was music to “fight by” but even though they often felt like Jake and Elroy at “Bob’s Country Bunker” they stayed true to the form and played it from the heart. They never once succumbed to the requests to play “Sweet Home Alabama” pointing out to the wayward Jackaroo that it was redneck music and they wouldn’t have a bar of it!
As a duo the pair melds together as one. With Col Ray, a true scholar of the blues, rolling out some of his 5,000 song repertoire, and the good Rev heard in the intro of each song asking the very important musical question “What key Col?”
It’s raw, rough, raunchy and real. A couple of dusty blues men “On the Road Again” “Rollin and a Tumblin” out the real stuff, playing the songs that planted the seed that would grow into Jazz, Rock n Roll and Soul but when you hear Col Ray Price and the Reverend Larry “Harp Dog” Gordon play it, you’ll ask yourself “Did they really need to change it?”
In the Juke Joints and Speak Easys in the South during prohibition Sonny boy Williamson I, said, “If we had a harmonica we had a party and if a guitar player turned up, it was a full scale riot!”
It was good enough then and it’s good enough now.
