Greatest Hits: Drinkin’ Wine Spo-Dee-O-Dee

In a musical landscape full of bawdily suggestive lyrics and thinly veiled double entendres, jump-blues king Wynonie Harris bore the proud distinction of possessing one of the dirtiest mouths and one of the wickedest leers in R&B history. During World War II Harris built a reputation as a debauched blues shouter through his tireless touring schedule, so that when the war era ban on record production was finally lifted in 1944 his debut recording, the incomparable “Who Threw The Whiskey in The Well,” was released to an audience who already regarded Harris as a genuine musical sensation. In the years that followed he would offend the sensibilities of countless straight laced listeners with his bawdy tales of a freewheeling life lived on the fringes of society. Yet for every delicate set of ears that Harris outraged there were hundreds more that thrilled by the visions of unbridled hedonism and unselfconscious joy that Harris’ recordings offered as a welcome relief from the post-war era’s atmosphere of stifling moral correctness. The recordings featured on Wynonie Harris’ Greatest Hits served as an inspiration to many early Rock and Rollers, who adapted the gleefully smutty entendres of “Keep on Churning”, “Bloodshot Eyes”, and “Good Morning Judge” to their own subversive purposes. Though Harris’ work is sadly overlooked today, any listener interested in the origins of Rock and Roll ought to familiarize themselves with these seminal recordings.