Wynonie Harris (August 24, 1915 – June 14, 1969) was an American blues shouter and rhythm-and-blues singer of upbeat songs, featuring humorous, often ribald lyrics. He had fifteen Top 10 hits between 1946 and 1952. Harris is attributed by many music scholars to be one of the founding fathers of rock and roll.
Harris's mother, Mallie Hood Anderson, was fifteen and unmarried at the time of his birth in Nebraska. His paternity is uncertain. His wife, Olive E. Goodlow, and daughter Patricia Vest said that his father was a Native American named Blue Jay. Wynonie had no father figure in his family until 1920, when his mother married Luther Harris, fifteen years her senior.In 1931, at age 16, Harris dropped out of high school in North Omaha. The following year, his first child, a daughter, Micky, was born to Naomi Henderson. Ten months later, his son Wesley was born to Laura Devereaux. Both children were raised by their mothers. Wesley became a singer in the Five Echoes and in the Sultans and later was a singer and guitarist in Preston Love's band.
In 1935 Harris, age 20, started dating 16-year-old Ollie Goodlow, of Council Bluffs, Iowa, who came to neighbouring Omaha to watch him perform. On May 20, 1936, Ollie gave birth to a daughter, Adrianne Patricia (Pattie). Harris and Ollie were married on December 11, 1936. Later they lived in the Logan Fontenelle projects in North Omaha. Ollie worked as a barmaid and nurse; Harris sang in clubs and took odd jobs.
While performing at Jim Bell's Club Harlem nightclub with Shannon, he began to sing the blues. He began travelling frequently to Kansas City, where he paid close attention to blues shouters. Harris was already a seasoned dancer, drummer, and singer when he left Omaha for L.A. in 1940. He found plenty of work singing and appearing as an emcee on Central Avenue, where his reputation was spreading fast.He was appearing in Chicago at the Rhumboogie Club in 1944 when bandleader Lucky Millinder hired him as his band's new singer. With Millinder's orchestra in brassy support, Harris made his debut on shellac by boisterously delivering "Who Threw the Whiskey in the Well" that same year for Decca. By the time it hit in mid-1945, Harris was long gone from Millinder's organization and back in L.A.
The shouter debuted on wax under his own name in July of 1945 at an L.A. date for Philo. A month later, he signed on with Apollo Records, an association that provided him with two huge hits in 1946: "Wynonie's Blues" (with saxist Illinois Jacquet's combo) and "Playful
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Baby." Harris's own waxings were squarely in the emerging jump blues style then sweeping the West Coast. After scattered dates for Hamp-Tone, Bullet, and Aladdin, Harris joined the star-studded roster of Cincinnati's King Records in 1947. There his sales really soared.
Few records made a stronger seismic impact than Harris' 1948 chart-topper "Good Rockin' Tonight." Ironically, Harris shooed away its composer, Roy Brown, when he first tried to hand it to the singer; only when Brown's original version took off did Wynonie cover the romping number. With Hal "Cornbread" Singer on wailing tenor sax and a rocking, socking backbeat, the record
provided an easily followed blueprint for the imminent rise of rock
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& roll a few years later (and gave Elvis Presley something to place on the A side of his second Sun single).
provided an easily followed blueprint for the imminent rise of rock
& roll a few years later (and gave Elvis Presley something to place on the A side of his second Sun single).After that, Harris was rarely absent from the R&B charts for the next four years, he scored into 1952 (13 in all) — and then his personal hit parade stopped dead. It certainly wasn't Harris' fault — his King output rocked as hard as ever under Henry Glover's supervision — but changing tastes among fickle consumers that accelerated Wynonie Harris's sobering fall from favour.
On June 14, 1969, aged 53, Harris died of esophageal cancer at the USC Medical Center Hospital in Los Angeles. A sad ending for the bigger-than-life R&B pioneer whose ego matched his tremendous talent. (Compiled and edited from Wikipedia & All Music)