Anyone ever heard of him?

I hadn't, until last night. I heard him do a song in a movie that came out in 1946 and he reminded me a lot of Jerry Lee Lewis.

After getting his name from the credits and reading up on him on imdb, it looks like he was blacklisted for releasing a song in the 40s called "Who Put The Benzadrine In Mrs Murphy's Ovaltine?".

Just wondering if anyone knows if he gets any credit for clearly being an influence on people like Jerry Lee Lewis that came a decade or more later.

Piano Boogie Jump

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Posted by Kafka

I am the moral conscience of TD

Member since Jul 2007

158988 posts

Posted on 1/3/21 at 9:43 pm to DaleGribble

Jerry Lee has a habit of claiming never to have heard of people that critics say influenced him, so I don't know.

With songs like "Benzedrine" I'd think Harry was more in the Tom Waits storyteller tradition, though I admit I'm not really familiar w/his other work.

I do have a great piece of Hipster trivia: Harry was the original choice of director Henry Hathaway for a gangster movie he was about make: Kiss Of Death. Hathaway wanted Gibson for the role of smiling killer Tommy Udo. But the studio insisted on casting Richard Widmark.

The role made Widmark a star overnight. What might have happened to Harry's career if he'd played it?

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Posted by DaleGribble

Bend, OR

Member since Sep 2014

6821 posts

Posted on 1/3/21 at 9:53 pm to Kafka

That's really interesting. This guy(Harry Gibson) seemed to have a lot of close brushes with fame.

I read where he's the person that actually coined the term "hipster" (after "squares" started using hep and hepcat). He released a song called Harry The Hipster in 1944, so it seems likely to be true.

His style was probably more jazz/boogie woogie than anything else, but it's still surprising to not see him get any credit as at least some kind of link to the birth of Rock and Roll, or even with the Beat Generation.

This post was edited on 1/3/21 at 9:57 pm

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