i am a much bigger fan of James than of the last 25 years of ZZtop. their early stuff was pretty cool but they went off some kind of deep end for me in the 80's. i didn't even discover James Harman until the mid 90's. ---------- http://www.reverbnation.com/jawboneandjolene
I really like that little high to low run he does at 2:17
James is a real storyteller, in words and delivery.
I notice a similarity at times in vocal delivery between him and William Clarke. Is that a west coast thing or were they both influenced by someone in that aspect?
James Harman is one of my favorite all rounders, just a great vocal delivery style with killer harp, and boss storytelling via songs. And his band...wow, especially on the albums you mention.
I got put onto him in 1991 when I was jamming with a band in Oslo where I was living at the time, and have all the albums you mention - agree x10 on your comments.
It was only recently though that the vocal delivery similarity on some tunes between him and William Clarke really stood out to me.
My band warmed up for Harman in Norway last year.. Nice guy with a great sense of humour! We were about to go on and Harman came over to me and asked if I was excited! I told him yes.. He looked at me and said: "Don't be! Let them be excited!". It brought more coolness to my game,really :)
Later that evening,Harman got sick and tired of a woman standing in front of the stage. Really wasted,dancing some kind of "erotic" dance making a fool of both herself and her husband. So Harman announced: "And the winner of the dancecontest......is the woman with issues". Cracked up the place :)
Had a conversation with James back in the 90's. At the time, he didn't really consider himself a harmonica player, but more of a story teller/songwriter. The harmonica he used to further the story.
Also, I became more into ZZ Top after watching a video that was called something like "Eric Clapton's Guitar Summit", in which there was a lot of guitar bands playing at an outdoor festival. Eric played as second last act (and his performance was pretty damn good) and deferred to Billy Gibson as being a greater blues guitarist (in interview between shots of the live concert) and letting them close the show. The ZZ Top set was excellent and really showed the subtle and dry humor of this band in concert. ---------- The Iceman
"His harp playing, to me, fits his music well and always sounds right, no he doesn't claim to be any sort of technical master of the harmonica."
He has TONE and TASTE, two things I think rank above technical mastery in the list of key components of musical expression. That is not to say technical mastery and music theory knowledge are not incredibly important and worthy goals in and of themselves if you really want to unlock the secrets of music (especially for Jazz based styles) but in terms of musical communication and musical expression I think they are subordinate.
You could say Billy Gibbons is his guitar equivalent in that regard. He may only (generally) play from a pentatonic scale and three chords, but he sure knows HOW to play them.
