(7CD)
BIOGRAPHY
For many years Eddie Bean, who died in 1985, hosted informal music and
gambling gatherings at the family’s house on “Bean Hill” in west Pontotoc.
He also worked as a sharecropper, enlisting Terry and other of his fourteen
children to pick cotton in the surrounding fields.
Terry began playing guitar and harmonica as a child, and eventually his
father began featuring him at the home gatherings and taking him along to
other house parties. Although Terry was a “natural,” he stopped playing
around the time he was twelve because several of his brothers were jealous
of the attention he received. Today his brother Jimmy plays bass in church
and occasionally in Terry’s blues band, while brother Jerry Lee sings gospel
as well as lead vocals in the Pontotoc-based Legends of the Blues.
Terry turned his attention instead to baseball, and was a star pitcher on
American Legion league teams and his high school team, which he led to the
state championship in 1980. Equally adept with both hands, Terry pitched
five no-hitters and attracted scouts from several professional teams.
A professional career in baseball was curtailed, however, when Terry was
injured in a motorcycle accident and he lost his competitive edge.
Nevertheless, he continued to play semi-pro ball in his ‘20s until he was
involved in another automotive accident.
Terry decided to “get serious” about the blues in 1988 after visiting the
Delta Blues Festival in Greenville. He went there to see Robert Junior
Lockwood, who played with Terry’s idol, harmonica legend Little Walter, but
inadvertently fell in with the Greenville blues scene.
Every weekend for three years Terry traveled to Greenville and its environs
to play harmonica with James “T-Model” Ford as well as Asie Payton at
various juke joints. He also played across the Delta with artists including
Lonnie Pitchford.
Back home he formed a band, and began playing guitar himself after becoming
frustrated with teaching others his ideal sound. Following the lead of
Arkansas bluesman John Weston, he started using a harmonica rack and
performing as a one-man band, stomping his feet for percussion.
Since the mid-‘80s Terry has worked full-time at a furniture factory in
Pontotoc, but he has maintained a busy performance schedule as both a solo
artist and with the Terry Harmonica Bean Blues Band. He has performed at
festivals across Mississippi as well as in Alabama, Arkansas, Missouri,
and Tennessee, and regularly works at clubs across the region. Since 2002
he has released six self-produced CDs that document both his band and solo
performances.
NEW!
2014-Catfish Blues @FLAC
2024-Drop Dead in Front of Your Door @FLAC