It's all blues

Pat "Hatrack" Gallagher follows his ears and plays whatever moves him

by David Ritchie

Twenty years after his first show at Concord's historic Colonial Inn, Pat "Hatrack" Gallagher and the Workingman's Jazz

Band recently settled into a weekly gig there. They effortlessly mix jazz and blues, two genres that, despite parallel origins, no longer get mentioned in the same breath. It seems almost fitting that the 283-year-old building, which overlooks one of the country's most historic commons -- a training field for troops when there was only talk of a revolution -- now hosts the unique musical styles that developed in the resulting nation.

Gallagher himself is unique. At home on both the chromatic harmonica and diatonic (blues) harmonica, he follows his ears and plays whatever moves him. The warmth of his jazz playing on the chromatic is reminiscent of Toots Thielemans (the undisputed king of jazz harmonica). On the blues side, he names Peg Leg Sam as his inspiration.

The blues, as it appears today in many New England venues, is the stepchild of Chicago electric blues and rock and roll, typified by seemingly endless guitar solos. While younger and younger (and increasingly soulless) guitar technicians grab the attention in the blues community, the 50-year-old Gallagher continues his genuine and passionate love for the traditions of American music. A discussion with him is a romp through his memories of a life spent seeking out that history. "I don't think that many people know who Peg Leg Sam was, like they know who Sonny Terry was or some of these other more famous harmonica players. But Peg Leg, he was the equal of any of them. . . . He was a helluva character, and he really was my main man."

The country blues that Gallagher plays are rooted in the Mississippi Delta. It's a style he's been exploring for 25 years in collaboration with friend and guitarist TJ Wheeler, the only guitarist he works with. Wheeler shares Gallagher's passion for the traditions, having learned to play bottleneck guitar from Bukka White and Furry Lewis. Wheeler, Gallagher says, can also whip out his Gibson L-5 and play like Wes Montgomery and is equally at home playing his '53 Telecaster. "He's a complete guitar player. And that's kinda the way I try to approach my musicianship on the harmonica. . . . I'll play jazz, I'll play blues, I'll play country blues, I'll play the Fox Chase, y'know; and I think you gotta be well-rounded if you're really gonna play your instrument.

"I guess it's what you hear in your head. . . . So I'm aimin' at it all. Some guys, they don't wanna play `Stardust,' they wanna play `Hoochie Coochie Man' and that's it. But to me, `Stardust' and `Hoochie Coochie Man' are the same thing." He laughs. "So I don't know, maybe I'm spreadin' myself too thin . . . you gotta be true to what your ears do, and the older you get, your ears change on you . . . you have to go with it."

Gallagher and TJ Wheeler traveled around in the '70s playing and meeting some of the early and influential performers, guys who had ties to the country blues of the Delta. "Now it seems like a lot of people have totally forgotten the roots, y'know . . . it bothers me, because I can listen to Muddy Waters play electric guitar, because I can hear the real thing, I can hear the blues comin' through it."

But, Gallagher says, many of today's musicians never did their homework. "They never played an acoustic guitar, they never played any bottleneck on a National steel-they never learned to make those sounds. All they do is play the electric guitar, and you can't hear the echo of the history of it comin' through. All you're hearin' is like Stevie Ray Vaughan or somethin', and everybody thinks that's the blues, y'know? Like Monster Mike and Jonny Lang . . . they make these guys out to be blues artists. These guys aren't blues artists, they're rock guitar players, and they're headlining at the House of Blues, man, and I'm rollin' my eyes, y'know?" He laughs. "I'll listen to anything if the person has done their homework and can play their instrument and is trying to tell me what they feel."

His conversation often turns to his memories of the musicians who influenced him, many of whom he had the occasion to meet. "Eubie Blake was playing sort of ragtime music. That was when they first started jazzin' the stuff up. Scott Joplin, Eubie Blake. . . .  I mean, here was a guy who was playing in whorehouses before Louis Armstrong was born. Talk about a link to the past." Gallagher has a huge amount of respect for the musicians who defined the genres throughout the years, especially the instrumentalists.

"What Frank Sinatra had was the tunes, man, he had all these guys givin' him the best songs, and great arrangers, and a huge fuckin' record company behind him. And he was a pretty gifted singer, but he didn't invent all that phrasing and everything, for Christ's sake. I mean HE listened to Billie Holiday. You know he did, man, and they ALL . . . they ALL owe it all to Louis Armstrong."

He keeps going back to the common thread between the styles rather than the clear boundary between them. "You had guys like Louis Armstrong goin' over and making records with these blues singers, and Sidney Bechet, Jack Teagarden, a lot of those guys made a lot of blues records.

"The blues goes right throughout . . . you can't tell me Hank Williams wasn't a blues singer." True to his word, Hatrack Gallagher recently released the CD, It's All the Blues to Me on High Desert Records (available at local record stores or from www.cdfreedom.com). The CD features TJ Wheeler on guitar, David Maxwell's great piano work, as well as his regular combo, the Workingman's Jazz Band. It's a rousing tour through the music of a harmonica lover and singer, from jump-blues to pensive jazz standards, again jumping back and forth between chromatic and diatonic harmonica.

So you can be sure that a live Hatrack Gallagher show will cover a lot of ground. At the Colonial Inn last Tuesday, the Workingman's Jazz Band started out light with Rick Maida and Ric Mauré on upright bass and piano. Gordon Grottenthaler and Gallagher took the cue and made their way over to join on drums and harmonica, playing a beautiful version of Ann Ronell's classic, "Willow Weep for Me" in waltz time, followed by Charlie Parker's "Yardbird Suite." The sound was actually quite good in the cozy wooden room. The crowd was a combination of hotel guests and area regulars, some of whom had obviously been there before.

One patron insisted on hearing "Summertime," and I learned why when they launched into a great jump-blues version using the chromatic harmonica, a great rendition that made me forget the slow, melancholy tune I'd heard a million times before. Gallagher has a very clean jazz style. Likewise on the blues numbers, he has a nice easy style (easy to listen to anyway). Altogether a very pleasant evening with a group of musicians who probably always have the best time of anyone in the room.