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Ain’t No Uncle Tom in My Blues: Life and times of The Undaunted Professor Harp

Ain’t No Uncle Tom In My Blues: Life And Times Of The Undaunted Professor Harp is a rant and a rave through harmonica master Professor Harp’s decades-long career as a professional Black Bluesman in the Boston area. Professor Harp remembers it all, stating, “My memoir, it’s as much about injustice as it is about music. Times haven’t changed so much for Black folk in the last half-century. Well, to be fair, I didn’t grow up in a cotton field, and I’m glad I didn’t. Jim Crow gentrified into Chad Crowe, Esquire, but it’s Jim Crow all the same. Learned to play harp (harmonica) on my own, studied the greats like George Harmonica Smith and James Cotton. I’ve sat in and played with Muddy Waters – lost my musical virginity that night long ago. Proud to have been on the bill with the world famous B.B. King. Still, something’s wrong, something’s missing. Somehow, after so many years, I still can’t get tight with a band of my own.

The great Solomon Burke gave me my stage name, “Professor Harp.” I added “Undaunted” because that’s who I am. I’ll never give up on the Blues. No matter that Blacks have abandoned their own heritage, their own musical history. No matter that whites have appropriated the Blues and turned it into something it was never meant to be. No matter that my life as a Bluesman living in a sea of white folks here in the New England area has been nothing but a vicious struggle, battling the racism that is inherent in our part of the world. Fighting the battle of childhood abuse, isolation, bullying. No, I’ll never give up trying.