Hugh Holmes has gone by the title and moniker The Undaunted Professor Harp for many years. And with good reason. He knows his stuff well enough to get an honorary PhD and he isn’t afraid to try different things no matter how dire the circumstances.
The Professor plays some of his harps through a rotating Leslie amplifying, which gives his band a full organ sound even though he only fronts a four-piece. That electric harp is how he has distinguished himself on the greater-Boston music scene.
Professor Harp gets his inspiration from studying the masters, and, struggling to keep a band together with his busy schedule, keeps him on the edge. His CD will include “They Call Me The Professor” written by Tom Ferraro with a Guitar Slim feel. There’s another blues on the CD, also written by Tom Ferraro, called “Fighting The Battle” about “the hypocrisy of people who grin in your face.”
Harp’s social views will rare their head in these songs. His tune “My Life: An Exercise In Blue” reveals his anti-war sentiment. He uses a blues call and response to describe how people in power are going to drive us off a deep ravine, and for the instrumental answer, Harp blows tap.
“I’m totally against these Middle Eastern wars,” Harp said. “That’s what the blues is all about, people’s social views. Only difference now is we’re not picking cotton as much. Agribusiness took that over and sent it overseas or something. We don’t have segregated hotels, but the social factors still exist.”
Harp has been on the Boston scene since 1969. When asked how he broke into the scene, the Professor offered this: “I don’t know if I’ve really broken in. There’s still a lot of closed circles. That’s what I don’t like about the blues scene.”
Back in the day, Harp found some players in Cambridge to work with, but then he moved onto some players who had graduated from Berklee College Of Music, but he didn’t think they had the right feel for the blues. “I’ve been scrambling to find people. It’s a very tough grind,” he said. Harp came from a musical family, his father was a saxophone player. “He hawked his sax to get married. I don’t know if that was a good idea,” Harp said, laughing.
“I started off playing drums when I was a kid,” Harp continued. “One day when I was 17, my father gave me a blues harp. I tried to play it, but I gave up. I couldn’t do it. For maybe six months to a year I gave it up. All of a sudden I started seeing these harmonica players on TV, with Muddy and J. Geils. I saw J. Geils and the J. Geils Blues Band on Mixed Bag. That was a TV show on Channel Two, public TV.”
After that, Harp got up close and personal by seeing George Smith and Big Mama Thornton at the Boston Tea Party, a one time popular Boston nightclub on Berkley Street. Before the show Harp and a man he did not recognize were leaning against a car together, making small talk. Harp later discovered, during the show, that it was Smith he was standing with. He believes Smith may have taken him under his wing as he did many other young players during his career. “Without George Smith, you’d have no Rod Piazza. You’d have no Kim Wilson. You’d have no William Clark. You’d have no James Harmon. You damn sure wouldn’t have any Professor Harp. That’s why I play today. I got a lot of influence from George Smith. This cat was an under-rated monster, that west coast style. He never got his due, either.” Smith passed away in 1983.
Smith influenced Professor Harp with the sheer sound of his harmonica. The Professor had never heard it played so well in the live setting. “It just brought shivers down my spine,” Harp said. “I used to think harmonicas were toys. Then you start hearing the electrified harp, what the blues guys were doing. Man, that was something else after that.”
Professor Harp credits Frank Frost in Mississippi for being first known to have blown harp through a Leslie speaker. Harp player Lee Oskar, from the 1970s R&B band War, as well as blues artists like Little Walter, Junior Wells, and Buddy Guy also became influences. Professor Harp got interested in using that rotating Leslie speaker by a suggestion from Jimmy Vaughn. The electric harp means the harp is cupped with a microphone as usual but played through a rotating Leslie speaker.
“They call the harmonica, a mouth organ, so why not do it,” Harp said. “It gave me an extra thing to do. I like to do the basic stuff. I don’t like to play with a bigger band than four pieces, not live. Anybody can get a big sound with a big band. The challenge is to get a big sound with a small band. I learned that from seeing in 1975 The Thunderbirds.” The Thunderbirds, from Texas, had three pieces and a harp. “That’s the approach I like,” Harp said. “When I first saw them, they were a skeleton. They had a big sound but a small band.”
Harp likes the way the instrument allows him to extend his set list to R&B and soul, and, he especially likes when music fans come into his venues and ask “where’s the organist?” The Professor can simulate the keyboard melodies and rhythms in many blues and R&B standards.
Professor Harp said he was originally drawn to the instrument because it’s so small but once cupped with a microphone becomes powerful. The Professor got invited up on stage to play with Muddy Waters in Boston one night and it turned into a standing invitation every time Waters came to town. “What you learn from all guys like that, it was just totally priceless,” Harp said.
Professor Harp keeps a brisk pace even after 40 years in the business. “Hopefully, I’ll get some recognition before they take me out of here,” he quipped. “I’d like to see the blues scene get a little less exclusionary. There’s a lot of closed circles around. That’s counterproductive to keeping the blues alive. Blues is the music of the people.”
Harp said blues music goes back further in history than what most people assume is black field workers in the American south. He said the music is rooted in centuries old music in Africa. Harp recently had two Africans visiting from Senegal who were boogying at his show. Harp would like to travel to Africa to play the blues. “I’m not in love with flying, but I’d like to be able to do that, play the blues over there,” he said.
Harp listens to a lot of different kinds of recording artists. Bobby Rush is one of the professor’s favorites, and he also likes to surf the internet to find new blues artists. Organ trios are an interest too.
The nucleus of Harp’s band is Tom Williams on guitar and Bruce Thomas on bass with a rotating drummer. These days, Professor Harp’s rooms include L.A. Roberts in Attleboro, Massachusetts, Chili Head BBQ in West Bridgewater, Massachusetts, and Smoke’ Joe’s in Boston. “I play everywhere I can play. Like the old Bobby Bland song, the high class joints, the low class joints. I play them all, man. I just play anywhere I can play. If they pay me, I’ll do that.”
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