Toast.
‘Have a nice day’ is toast, along with smiley faces and rainbows. Deflated, each and every one.
After all, Drop Dead in Front of Your Door is a blues album. A Mississippi blues album, to be precise. Unmuddled, undoctored, undeniable blues. And if the title hasn’t tipped its hand, then the thick rhythms slithering around an asphalt voice leave no room for doubt.
True, Terry Bean goes by the moniker of “Harmonica,” a title he has wheezingly lived up to for years, present recording included. The 63-year-old comes fully battle-tested, having harped alongside fellow Mississippi axmen like hellion T-Model Ford, wild card Asie Payton and hypnotist Jimmy “Duck” Holmes. But Bean is really a one-man, do-it-yourself band, typically sucking air through his racked harmonica while also simultaneously making his own guitar brood. Such is the case here, carrying the load of 11 moans and stomps all by his lonesome. And true to his juke-joint résumé, Bean doesn’t baby electrification of that guitar, stressing out a poor Peavy amplifier in the process.
Pontotoc, Mississippi—plunked between Oxford (home of Ole Miss) and Tupelo (birthplace of Elvis)—is where Bean was born, in 1961, one of 24 children (18 brothers, 6 sisters). And Pontotoc, Mississippi, is where Music Maker’s Tim Duffy lugged his tape deck to record Bean in March of 2023. The resulting in-home session comes without spit and polish. This is pure, first-take, gut-instinct blues, complete with spontaneous asides as an additional stamp of authenticity. In other words: You are right there in the room with him. Right inside Terry’s house pictured on the album cover.
But you know where you are, geographically, just by the telltale, regional groove that wavers between the Delta flatland and the kudzu-choked hill country to its north. For example: The heavy thunderclouds looming over the slowly seeping “How Much I Love You” versus the assertive shove of “Boogie With Me People,” which fibrillates over its invitation to a sundown-to-sunup binge. Adding in the emotional opposites of a wooing “I Can Be Your Man” and the two-timing “Pretty Girl” accounts for the four originals, all of which make use of the guitar’s low, murky bass notes to beef up attitude and the slurp of harp to engrave in the detailed filigree.
Yet even when songs get “covered,” old warhorses emerge newly redesigned to local minimalist specifications. Bean is no copycat when thumbing through the songbooks of Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, and even Sonny Boy Williamson II, returning the Delta-by-way-of-Chicago repertoire back home. For instance: In 1951, “How Many More Years (Are You Gonna Wreck My Life)” was a jarring ensemble blast in Wolf’s oversized hands. But Bean’s moody, solo version drags the ground, its spare notes overdriving the amp each time the tension spikes. “I’m Ready,” Muddy’s ode to violent preparedness, shoots its tombstone bullets into a dense north-Mississippi drone formed by interlocking riffs, above which the harp flutters on the generated updrafts. Sonny Boy’s “Help Me” staggers with a wicked little lurch. “She Moves Me” strips down the furthest, to bare harmonica.
Still, the didn’t-see-that-coming surprise has to be “It’s a Man’s World.” Yes, James Brown rewired for the shotgun shack.
All of which leads back to the title track. For as much of a bummer “Drop Dead in Front of Your Door” would appear to be, it ends up being a love song. Kinda. More of a sex song, actually. Its fatal tagline is tied to the consumptive nature of the lyrics’ nightlong amorous intent. Waters first cut the song in 1953 as “Mad Love (I Want You to Love Me),” the flipside of “Blow Wind, Blow.” Then, it heaved in stop-time. A steady, undulating, and haunting roll now takes the place, casting a trance vastly more conducive for dancing at house parties on humid Pontotoc nights—the known antidote to a blues-toasted day.
Label: Music Maker
Release Date: 9/6/24
Artist Website: musicmaker.org/artist/terry-harmonica-bean
Reviewed by Dennis Rozanski
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