When Ruby Harris steps up to play a solo he looks small, shy, and entirely out of place as he chins a 166-year-old electrified violin. But when he starts sawing out Muddy Waters’s “You Can’t Spend What You Ain’t Got,” the notes pour out with demonic intensity–a blistering glissando that somehow sounds both eerily exotic and comfortably familiar. Harris, a 41-year-old sign-company owner and classically trained musician, says he’s “reinventing the violin for the blues.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Though the violin was once central to Delta blues–played often in jug and string bands like the Mississippi Sheiks and the Memphis Jug Band in the 20s–it began to lose its popularity to the cheaper and more portable harmonica. “Maybe they had them in the classier joints,” says Harris. “But if you’re a poor farm worker you don’t have the money for a violin. Every so often I’ll hear one on an old Ma Rainey or Bessie Smith record, but it’s rare in modern blues.” Violinists like Ray Nance from the Duke Ellington Orchestra and Joe Venuti incorporated blues into their playing, “but pure blues violin? Forget it.” Harris says he’s the only electric violinist to front a blues band.
Harris attended art school and then the Manhattan School of Music, where he concentrated on classical training. Around the same time he took some classes with John Cage, but he was more interested in roots-oriented music. Finished with school, he hitchhiked across the U.S. six times before traveling to Ireland, France, Italy, and eventually Israel, picking up on each country’s traditional music. In Jerusalem he became fascinated with the ancient history of the land and enrolled in the Talmudic Research Institute, where he studied Jewish mysticism, illuminated manuscripts, and the Talmud. Eventually he was hired to curate and design the Museum of King David on Mount Zion, a collection of ancient artifacts and holy objects located next to David’s tomb. He also began playing with the Diaspora Yeshiva Band, a group that combined rock and klezmer music.
Harris appears with Mack Simmons and the Mojo Kings every Thursday at 9:30 at Rosa’s, 3420 W. Armitage; call 342-0452.
