Remembering Harpdog Brown. . .
Harpdog Brown photo by Lisa MacIntosh
Harpdog Brown (January 28, 1962 - January 7, 2022)
Maple Blues Awards named him Harmonica Player of the Year for 3 consecutive years (2015, 2016, 2017) and again in 2020! He was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in his hometown of Edmonton, AB. He is a JUNO Nominee and still the only Canadian artist to hold the coveted Muddy Award from the Cascade Blues Society. He was a gifted singer and an imaginative harmonica player and was a pillar of the Canadian Blues scene for over 30 years. In 2020 he was nominated as Male Vocalist of the Year, Album of the Year and Harmonica Player of the Year.
Harpdog Brown had a solid reputation as a real-deal purveyor of classic electric blues. Think of the old Chess Records and Sun Records of the late ’40s and early ‘50s. Before his passing in January 2022, he was touring with his new show called Harpdog Brown & the Uptown Blues Band - a vintage New Orleans Blues sound featuring slide trombone, keyboards, and often a sax and clarinet. Still a vintage vibe, just a different vintage! This music will move you! They performed mostly originals yet they often included great songs of the masters from that era. Think Louis Jordan, Satchmo, Sonny Boy Williamson, Wynonie Harris, even Duke Ellington. Audiences loved this new take on a vintage sound!
He was called a Blues Evangelist, and that’s a very fitting moniker. "I speak the blues like it's the truth, and it is”, he was quoted. "I do feel like I'm a servant of the people. A missionary if you will. Music can heal people if they pay attention to the messages in these songs.” He delivered those messages using the vintage sound whether it be with his lowdown classic blues band the Travelin’ Blues Show (2014-2018) or with his Uptown Blues Band. Harpdog said "Blues has a healing power. It's a beautiful celebration of our perfectly flawed lives. We help people forget about their issues of the moment and then they realize that we all have our issues, and that's OK."
Vancouver-based Harpdog Brown was a gifted vocalist and an imaginative harmonica player born in Edmonton in 1962. An adopted child, he always felt somewhat detached his whole life - "a lifelong battle of not feeling like I belonged. I feel like I was born for the circus, you know, born to travel. The blues tapped me on the shoulder years ago and said 'This is where you belong, son'. So the blues became my circus and there's no better way to travel than with a band!”
His latest album For Love & Money was produced by Steve Dawson and entered the coveted Living Blues Album Charts at #6 in May 2019. It also reached #1 on the !Earshot Folk/Roots/Blues Charts and remained for some 12 weeks. It also reached #1 in Canada on the Roots Music Report as well as #10 in their International Blues Chart and #2 in Classic Blues!