Talk:Wynonie Harris
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[edit] Speculation
"Harris' severe alcoholism resulted in his career going into a tailspin in the mid-1950s."
...that seems speculative, since there are other performers who preserved their careers in spite of too much booze. A correlate is not necessarilly a cause. Harris' career might have flagged because of drinking, but than again another (perhaps unknown) cause ruined his career and drove him to drink.
Also, there's a surplus in this article about Harris as genre catalyst and artist influence, but not enough about Harris himself or his music -- almost as though his music would have been less interesting if Elvis et al. had never covered his records. But Harris' best records would still be good even if there never had been an ensuing Rock genre. It's disparaging to treat them as a prequel to others popularity, or view WH as a "failed" commercial success story. His records prove that he was an artistic success, and that's where the focus ought to be. AC 15:48, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
He recorded little after 1956 and nothing after 1960. He did record at least in 1963 a record called "the comeback".
[edit] Mistakes
This article is wrought with mistakes. For example: 'His first big solo hit was in 1944 with his record "Who Threw The Whiskey in the Well".' The song was written by De Lange and Brooks and given to Harris to sing by Lucky Millinder while Harris was the singer in Millinder's band. I will clean things up a bit. --Bentonia School 15:27, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
I've gone through it and completely revamped it. Have to get the citations up - will do soon. --Bentonia School 00:01, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Hit Parade Horse Race lead paragraph triviality
(This is a follow-up & partial recap of my 8/19/06 comments, since which the article is much improved. Yet some of the lead paragraph still chafes...)
The current introductory paragraph mentions:
He had 15 Top 10 hits between 1946 and 1952 and is generally recognized as one of rock and roll’s forerunners, with an early influence on Elvis Presley. He was the subject of a 1994 biography by Tony Collins.
All true, but misplaced. Must Hit Parade stats lead a musician article? We don't score and value musicians by numeric popularity. Numbers might make sense if the musician's personal goals and fame rested on having hits and financial success, but otherwise it supports the POV that musicians should be appraised like baseball players. The lead paragraph should say that WH was popular, without statistics.
The bit about being a forerunner of rock n' roll seems judgemental when lead with. A reader wondering "who's he?" might suppose that if not for RnR, Harris should be forgotten. The Elvis mention seems to suggest WH was an inferior roughdraft for the superior EP.
The Tony Collins bio lead mention seems to imply WH would be less noteworthy without that book. Biography articles usually should not lead with the names of the biographers, unless perhaps there's some great biography, like Boswell's Life of Johnson.
Better to move above data lower down in the article, perhaps the Elvis & RnR under an "influence" section, and the chart action under career, and T. Collins should stay in the footnotes. --AC (talk) 06:18, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
