MUSIC - JANUARY 28, 2004

Harris a rare treat at Creole

By LAWRENCE COSENTINO

Odessa Harris ought to have trouble convincing people she has the blues. Her face is made of harmonious circles, like a smiling sun from an antique map. Even worse, her luminous smile transmits a profound inner peace, if not joy.

But visibly having it together is what separates Harris from the general run of belters.

Harris

In art, as in life, ripeness is all. Odessa Harris has sung, on and off, for over 50 years, with acts ranging from a traveling Arkansas carnival to B.B. King. Yet only in the past few years has Detroit’s newly rediscovered master vocalist come into her own, with a top-notch band, masterful arrangements, and a gracious, natural vocal authority. Her superb new CD, “The Easy Life,” is, incredibly, her first full-length recording ever.

Harris’ current resurgence, including a performance at the Creole Gallery this Friday, Jan. 30 at 8 p.m. (tickets are $13 at 487-9549), offers a rare treat: a mellow and fine vintage that fate somehow waited until now to uncork properly.

In a rich pile-up of treat upon treat, Harris will be joined by Johnnie Bassett, modern heir to blues guitar heroes like Tampa Red, T-Bone Walker, and jazz pioneer Charlie Christian. Like Harris, Bassett is also a well-seasoned artist whose star has deservedly risen at the turn of the century. On keyboards will be slow-funk organ master/composer Duncan McMillan (“my musical arranger and savior,” says Harris), and local drummer Sean Dobbins.

Harris grew up in Arkansas in the 1930s, and began singing in a local Baptist church. Early in her teens, she was already on the road, singing at crap houses (gambling joints), taverns, fairs and other assorted venues.

After a grueling four-year tour with a carnival in the early 1950s, Harris got off the road and became a nightclub fixture in Jacksonville, Fla. One evening in 1959, Harris and some friends went to see the visiting B.B. King perform in Jacksonville. “We got a table right in front of him,” recalls Harris. “Then somebody from the audience passed him a note, and he called me up on the stage. He realized that I could do a little something, and he hired me.” King told her to get on the bus the very next morning. She did.

Harris calls her two years with King “a great experience,” but an unusually tough grind. “We were working 365 days a year,” she says, “living out of a suitcase, and it just wasn’t something I could get used to.”

In 1972, Harris moved to the Detroit area, singing regularly with a group called Sonny Freeman and the Unusuals. “When he died,” says Harris, “I guess I just lost interest again. I quit for 12 years.” It was during this hiatus that Harris discovered Buddhism.

“The paths you can go down when you are striving as an artist can be very detrimental to you,” she says, “and that’s where I was when I was introduced to Buddhism. It saved my life.” A fellow Buddhist and Detroit music legend, jazz trumpeter Marcus Belgrave, began to urge Harris back onto the stage. “We kept running into each other,” says Harris, “and he said, ‘Odessa, why you keep sittin’ down doing nothing?’ He convinced me.”

Although Harris puts her own stamp on a variety of pop standards and blues standbys, she leans hard on original tunes by McMillan and organ master Bill Heid that suit her slow-grooving talents to perfection.

People call the overall effect “laid back,” but Harris isn’t too interested in labels. “I don’t know whether it’s laid-back or what,” she says. “I just sing what I feel, and I give it my all.”

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