Search - James Harman :: Cards on the Table

James Harman
Cards on the Table
Genres: Blues, Pop

Track Listings (13) - Disc #1
1. Night Ridin' Daddy
2. Where's My Thang
3. Cards on the Table
4. 'Temporary Blues
5. Black Under Black
6. Don't Spoil My View
7. Three-Way Party
8. Sparks (Start Flyin')
9. Run, Run Tonight
10. Last Clean Shirt - James Harman, Leiber, Jerry
11. I'll Call You - James Harman, Turmes, J.
12. Crazy by Degrees
13. Walk the Streets (Cold and Lonely)

CD Details

All Artists: James Harman
Title: Cards on the Table
Members Wishing: 1
Total Copies: 0
Label: Black Top Records
Release Date: 6/7/1994
Genres: Blues, Pop
Styles: Electric Blues, Modern Blues
Number of Discs: 1
SwapaCD Credits: 1
UPC: 633081110421

Synopsis

Amazon.com

Unfortunately, on Cards on the Table, the usually restrained James Harman is a little too understated. In his quest for the subtlety of his favorite blues classics, the bandleader has fallen prey to a certain blandness. Harman and his righthand man, multi-instrumental whiz Jeff Turmes, wrote 12 of the album's 13 tunes. None of them match the concise catchiness of the other song, Leiber & Stoller's "Last Clean Shirt," but numbers like "Sparks" and "Crazy by Degrees" describe relationships gone wrong with sly wit and striking guitar riffs. Friend-of-the-band Anson Funderburgh adds some guitar to "Temporary Blues," and "Where's My Thang" and "Black Under Black" get the full-blown R&B treatment of female backup singers and a horn section. All these songs should be much more vivid in live performance. --Geoffrey Himes

CD Reviews

Cold blues served with an icepick or in a horn

fowlm@prodigy.net | cincinnati, ohio | 07/13/1998

(3 out of 5 stars)

""icepick" harman serves up more of his cool brand of texas beerjoint blues, and there's tasty stuff here even though his quirky sense of humor and fondness for the odd sometimes get in the way of the truly cool. high points are "night ridin' daddy" with its breezy harp and harman's vocal dead on for jim morrison, and "temporary blues" with guest guitarist anson funderburgh trading riffs with the harman band's twanger robby eason. if only icepick had soloed between the two six-strings here, he could have reprised butterfield blowing between bishop and bloomfield. a chance missed, but it's a great blues anyway. and there's good doses of that cold harp on other tracks, so it doesn't really matter. what isn't so cool is "where's my thang," a 7-minute nonmusical and nonhumorous gag that has harman evidently walking around the studio asking the musicians if they've seen his "thang," whatever that is. There's also a couple! ! of tunes with, ugh, horns, and some that just drag. a playable disc though, and i keep putting it on."