(Acoustic Blues / Piedmont Blues) Richard 'Hacksaw' Harney - Sweet Man - 1996, FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

Richard "Hacksaw" Harney was born in Money, MS, on July 16, 1902. He passed away on Christmas morning in 1973 of stomach cancer.

Hacksaw Harney
"Hacksaw was an octopus!" As I burst into laughter, Robert Lockwood, Jr., continued his assessment of Hacksaw Harney. "Well, that's the only way to explain how he could play so many notes at once. Of course, Robert [Johnson] stole his licks from a lot of guys, but I know for a fact that he learned from Hacksaw. And you know Hacksaw was just as good on the piano, don't you?"

These comments, delivered on October 6, 2000 by one of the most highly esteemed guitar players in the world and a man who has lived through the history we discuss on these pages, serve to confirm what blues artists have been saying for years: Richard 'Hacksaw' Harney was regarded as the greatest musician in the Mississippi Delta by his peers.

For Adelphi, the story began in Chicago in 1969 when Big Joe Williams would finish a sentence with the words, "Yeah, _____'s good [fill in the blank with artist's name], but Hacksaw could cut him in a minute!" The sentiment was repeated so often, by so many musicians that finding Hacksaw and hearing him play became an obsession for the Adelphi crew. When Dewey Corley helped locate the traveling piano tuner and convinced him to sit in with other Memphis musicians for interviews and informal jam sessions, the reward was immediate and lasting. As he explains at the end of the Shantytown clip, Hacksaw did not even own a guitar and had not played for over 20 years, but, he admits, "I was good 20 years back. My match was hard to find on guitar from then on back."

If this was rusty playing, we can only imagine what men like Big Joe Williams, Robert Lockwood and Robert Johnson heard in the 1930s. By that time, Hacksaw had mastered a very sophisticated sound, due in part to his experience with a jazz orchestra during the early 20s and reinforced by his ongoing exposure to a variety of musicians in his travels as a piano tuner and rebuilder.

With profound pleasure and respect, we offer these glimpses of a truly remarkable musician for your enjoyment. ~Denise Tapp

Adelphi Records is pleased to present this ten song collection demonstrating the guitar wizardry of Richard Hacksaw Harney, the musician's musician from the motherland of American Music. Hacksaw was sought out by blues researchers in the 1960's because of the high esteem with which his contemporaries regarded him, many of whom were still awed by recollections of his occasional, impromptu appearances in Delta jukes or on the legendary King Biscuit Time radio show in Helena, Arkansas. In 1969, Adelphi's traveling studio followed the Harney reputation from Chicago to Jackson and back to Memphis, where Hacksaw was finally located, with the assistance of a posse of aging but enthusiastic blues musicians. Their persistence was amply rewarded by his sparkling and complex finger-picking playing.

In the liner notes, we mistakenly attribute the nickname 'Hacksaw' as originating during the artist's brief career in boxing. Pinetop Perkins set the record straight by reminding us that this outstanding musician (equally stunning as a piano player) supported himself by tuning and repairing pianos. "He always carried a little hacksaw with him, and he could grab a piece of anything and make a new key with that hacksaw. He taught me how to repair a piano."

Reviews:
"An essential purchase for anyone with an interest in acoustic blues guitar." Living Blues, which nominated Sweet Man for Best Historical Recording of 1996.

"...[T]his album documents a first-rate fingerpicker roughly in the Blind Blake tradition, but with a thrilling array of moves all his own." Musician.

"Stunning acoustic fingerpicked guitar from this unheralded Delta musician. Amazingly, he was 70 years old and had suffered a minor stroke when these recordings were made in 1972." Blues Access

"I wasn�t expecting much from this disc, a reissue of a 1972 recording session featuring blues guitarist Richard "Hacksaw" Harney. Hacksaw wasn�t just obscure, he was an unknown, and I�d never heard of the Genes record label. Two strikes. And surely the musical talent scouts sweeping the south during the early �60s had picked the blues cupboard clean?

Born in 1902, Hacksaw left no recorded legacy to speak of. He and his brother worked as backup musicians on a handful of sides during the 1920�s, but before they could achieve wider recognition Hacksaw�s brother was knifed to death in a juke joint. Hack spent his life working as a piano tuner in Memphis and around the Mississippi Delta, yet somehow this shy fellow had achieved legendary status among Delta musicians. Robert Lockwood Jr. claimed that Hack was well acquainted with Robert Johnson and was "the only somebody that could compete with Robert." Big Joe Williams also spoke of Hack as a musical giant, yet for several years the folklorists weren�t able to track him down.

He finally turned up in Memphis in 1969, eventually recording these 10 tracks in a Maryland studio in 1972. Hack plays Piedmont fingerstyle blues, merging ragtime with blues stylings a la Blind Blake. Most of the numbers are up-tempo instrumentals, all in a swinging style intended for dancing. Hack�s repertoire reveals that bluesmen of the day didn�t just play the blues, but also mixed in tin pan alley pop tunes and well-known ballads. On several of the tracks he gets a distinctive mandolin effect using tremoloed single note runs or chords.

Though the studio setting was obviously very casual (you can hear studio banter before and after tracks, and in a one instance during a tune), the recording quality is good enough for guitar aficionados to try and dissect Hack�s fretwork. Hacksaw passed away one year after this, his only recording, but fortunately he was able to leave his mark."� Scott Boggan