Harry “The Hipster” Gibson, born Harry Raab, was a jive-talking, American jazz pianist, singer, and songwriter. He’s your Phantom Dancer feature artist this week.

The Phantom Dancer is your weekly non-stop mix of swing and jazz from live 1920s-60s radio and TV every week.

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HARRY

Gibson liked playing Fats Waller tunes. When Waller heard Gibson in a club in Harlem in 1939 he hired Gibson to be his relief pianist at club dates.

Between 1939 and 1945, Gibson played at Manhattan jazz clubs on 52nd Street (“Swing Street”), most notably the Three Deuces.

During one audition for a nightclub engagement, where he played piano for a girl singer, he gave his true name of Harry Raab. The club owner insisted on a “showbiz” name, shouting, “I’m calling you two The Gibsons!” Harry adopted Gibson as his professional name.

In the 1940s, Gibson was known for writing unusual songs considered ahead of their time. He was also known for his unique, wild singing style, his energetic and unorthodox piano styles, and his intricate mixture of hardcore, gutbucket boogie rhythms with ragtime, stride and jazz piano styles.

Examples of his wild style are found in “Riot in Boogie” and “Barrelhouse Boogie”. An example of his strange singing style is “The Baby and the Pup”. Other songs that he recorded were “Handsome Harry, the Hipster”, “I Stay Brown All Year ‘Round”, 4-F Ferdinand the Frantic Freak”, “Get Your Juices at the Deuces” and “Stop That Dancin’ Up There”.

Gibson’s wild-man theatrics belied the fact that he was also a highly trained classical musician. While working on “Swing Street” at night, he was a fellow at the Juilliard Graduate School during the day.

Gibson was invited to perform at Carnegie Hall, for a jazz concert held on December 2, 1944. Hosted by Eddie Condon, the program featured many celebrities from the jazz world.

Gibson performed a serious rendition of Bix Beiderbecke’s piano piece “In a Mist”.

“The acoustics are so big in Carnegie Hall that when I hit that piano, I thought I was playing 40 pianos,” said Gibson. “After I did the Carnegie Hall concert, I got a write-up in Downbeat that said the best thing in the whole program was Harry Gibson, the guy that went up and played Bix Beiderbecke solos. Musicraft [Records] saw the writeup, came down to the Deuces to listen to me. Billie Holiday was late for her show, and Irving Alexander always stuck me on when she was late for her show to keep the people there… And I’m doing my Harry the Hipster act… and I go out with ‘Barrelhouse Boogie.'”

Musicraft signed Gibson on the spot, and he recruited drummer Big Sid Catlett and bassist John Simmons for a recording session the next morning, resulting in the hit album Boogie Woogie in Blue. “Eight songs, and not a clinker in ’em,” said Gibson proudly. “Right straight out, eight takes, eight songs. Perfect.”

He recorded “Who Put the Benzedrine in Mrs. Murphy’s Ovaltine?”, released in January 1946. “I was with Musicraft at the time,” recalled Gibson in a radio interview with Dr. Demento. “We got in there, man, we knocked the tune off and bam! I get splashes [press coverage] for a month. One month later, benzedrine becomes illegal. You dig, it was legal when I made it. They put the kibosh on the record and they stamped it subversive.”

Radio stations across America refused to play it, and Gibson was blacklisted in the music industry. Although his mainstream movie appearance in Junior Prom was released that year, it could not overcome the notoriety of the “Benzedrine” record.

Sidelined from a recording career, Gibson pursued live appearances.

His old records were revived in the 1970s on Dr. Demento’s national radio show, particularly “Benzedrine”, which was included on the 1975 compilation album Dr. Demento’s Delights.

His comeback resulted in three new albums: Harry the Hipster Digs Christmas, Everybody’s Crazy but Me, (its title taken from the lyrics of “Stop That Dancin’ Up There”) (Progressive, 1986), and Who Put the Benzedrine in Mrs. Murphy’s Ovaltine (Delmark, 1989). The latter two feature jazz, blues, ragtime, and rock and roll songs about reefer, nude bathing, hippie communes, strip clubs, male chauvinists, “rocking the 88s”, and Shirley MacLaine.

15 July PLAY LIST