Swamp-blues artist Slim Harpo has long been one of Louisiana’s least chronicled music stars. The new book by British writer Martin Hawkins changes that. At 416 pages, Slim Harpo: Blues King Bee of Baton Rouge is a major music biography. LSU Press will publish the book September 19. Hawkins applies a scholar’s detail and a fan’s affection to his exhaustively researched Harpo history. Working from the fragmentary information that exists about the late Baton Rouge musician, Hawkins tells Harpo’s story while simultaneously describing the hard world from which he came. Poverty, racial discrimination and a business that routinely treated its talent unfairly all figure in Harpo’s unlikely success story.
Hawkins writes straightforwardly about the impoverished conditions Harpo and his contemporaries—including musicians Silas Hogan, Arthur “Guitar” Kelly, John W. “Big Poppa” Tilley and Buddy Guy—routinely experienced. And despite the hit records and growing fame Harpo gained in the late 1960s, he never gave up his physically strenuous day job.
Born in 1924 on Belmont Planation in the West Baton Rouge Parish community of Mulatto Bend, Harpo grew up to be a singer, songwriter, guitarist and harmonica player of international significance. He wrote and recorded hits that reached high into the American pop and rhythm-and-blues charts. They include 1961’s mournful country-blues ballad, “Rainin’ in My Heart.” A regional anthem, the song always fills south Louisiana dance floors. Another major hit for Harpo, 1965’s irresistible, The King Bee Gets His Due country-funky “Baby, Scratch My Back,” does the same, albeit in much livelier style.
Following Harpo’s original recordings, young British acts re-recorded his songs in the mid-1960s and beyond. The Rolling Stones, the Yardbirds, the Kinks, Dave Edmunds, Van Morrison (then a member of Them)—all paid homage to Harpo. They also exposed his music to vastly larger, younger audiences. Through the decades that followed, Harpo’s songs, many written with the help of his wife, Lovell, achieved timeless status.
Most of Harpo’s recording sessions happened at colorful producer J.D. Miller’s studio in Crowley, Louisiana. Subsections in the eight chapters of Blues King Bee of Baton Rouge give extensive detail about the sessions and the songs, grouping them into the months and years they were recorded. Miller’s deal with Nashville’s Excello Records led to national distribution for recordings by Harpo, Lightnin’ Slim, Whispering Smith and other Louisiana swamp-blues acts.
The creation and production of Harpo’s music serves as the backbone for the Blues King Bee of Baton Rouge narrative. All the while, a large collection of supporting characters—including Miller, swamp-blues peers Lightnin’ Slim and Lazy Lester and Harpo band members—accompany the King Bee throughout the book.
Because Harpo died in 1970 at 46, his band members survived him by decades. Hawkins expands upon the rare interviews Harpo gave during his lifetime through interviews with the musicians and Harpo’s family members and contemporaries. Interviewees include the musician’s stepson, William Gambler, who worked with Harpo and his band, guitarists Rudy Richard and James Johnson and drummer Jesse Kinchen.
Hawkins possibly provides too much introductory material for Harpo’s entrance into the book. Even so, his thoroughly researched, painstakingly written and richly illustrated Blues King Bee of Baton Rouge instantly joins the relatively small list of essential books about post-1950 Louisiana musicians.
The King Bee gets his due.
