Catching up with Terry “Harmonica” Bean

When asked what drove him to start playing the blues, Terry “Harmonica” Bean says, “Well, number one, when you have 18 brothers and 6 sisters, that’s the blues already.

“You see, I was born with that stuff. My father, Eddie Bean, he played with B.B., he could have been an outstanding bluesman and traveling the world himself, but he chose not to. He left the fields and went to the factory. My grandfather Rolphie Johnson, he played. He knew all of those old blues guys, Son House, Charlie Patton, he knew all of those people. Everybody played the blues at my house. I started going to the delta and met T-Model Ford, Asie Payton and so many of them playing the real Mississippi hill country blues like my parents did up in Northeast Mississippi.”

What, in Terry’s mind, makes blues music the blues?

“You’ve got to understand this, a lot of people don’t. It ain’t but two kind of blues: there’s the Mississippi blues out of the Mississippi delta or Northeast Mississippi blues, which is the hill country blues; now this other kind of blues, these people got the Texas blues and the Arkansas blues and the Ohio blues. All of this stuff came out of the Mississippi blues. And just because these people are living in another state, they call it something different, but that same style is the Mississippi blues with people from another place playing it. When you hear a guy playing the blues and playing it right, the foundation of it is Mississippi, and if you ain’t got that in it, you ain’t got nothing.”

Bean has been described as a shaman. When asked how he responds to the energy of a crowd, he says:

“Whether you like the blues or not, when you hear it it’s real. And everybody and everything has the blues. You don’t have to know how to play an instrument to have the blues. It gets your attention, whether you like it or not. When you hear the blues and you hear it right, it will stop you in your tracks and make you listen to it. When you’re playing it right, it will get your ear. You’ll find yourself moving your feet and clapping your hands and not even realizing you’re moving.”

How did Terry find himself working with Tim Duffy and the Music Maker Foundation?

“I’ve known Tim for many, many years,” Terry says. “Before I even met him I knew who he was. I think he works a lot of stuff with Big Jack Johnson. A lot of time I would go somewhere playing with some other people and he’d already be there. Over the years, I had a lot of friends in North Carolina, and I finally got to talk to Tim. They gave me a guitar with some kind of something on it… All I know is I wired it up and went at it. And it started from there.

“I’m getting to do what my parents and them couldn’t do. They had a chance to do a little of it, but it seems like they passed the torch down to me, and that’s what I’m doing. I’m carrying it around.”

Terry “Harmonica” Bean’s new album, Drop Dead in Front of Your Door, releases on the Music Maker label this September. Get your copy early by joining the Listeners Circle!