Randy Lilleston

Back in the days when I played only in blues bands, I wanted to be James Harman because James Harman was cool. He was an Alabama-born singer, songwriter and harp player, and unlike most of the latter people, he wasn’t all about the harp. Now, he had enormous, fantastic tone, but like a lot of my favorites, the tone supported the song instead of the other way around. And he could flat-out sing. Even when he got old, he was cool as hell as he shifted to a big ol’ beard and a fez on stage. James Harman had style.

I loved a lot of his songs and played a few in various bands, but my cover of his “If the Shoe Fits, Wear It,” was my favorite. I liked it so much that I played and sang it at my wedding, even though the lyrics were not exactly of the type a freshly minted husband should be singing. But it didn’t matter.

Coolness radiated off of James Harman. He was friends with Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top (among many others) and if you heard a harp cut on a ZZ album, it was problably James. Phil Alvin and Bill Bateman left one of his bands to form The Blasters, and his bands backed dozens of classic bluesmen. Through it all was his punchy voice and his punchier harp, and I’ve stolen a lot of his riffs over the years.

But Harman fell on hard times. Thieves broke into his storage space a few years back and stole thousands upon thousands of dollars worth of vintage stuff, including his brownface Fender Vibroverb amps in custom cabinets with a 1×15 speaker that helped him generate his big, deep tone. His health declined. Gigs dried up. He was diagnosed with cancer of the esophagus in January and he died yesterday.

Let’s tip one for James Harman. Enjoy:

I remember the hopelessness I felt about a year ago at this time. There was a raging virus circulating that had no cure or effective treatment; it was spreading uncontrollably; our government efforts were being undermined by toadies and incompetents, led by a president who talked of injecting bleach or shining ultraviolet light into your body as treatments; and I despaired. I couldn’t believe any of it — that I was in an actual global pandemic, that my life plans were going down the dumper, that so many of the things I took for granted were now gone.

One thing I definitely did not expect was that there would be an effective vaccine — heck, a number of them — less than a year later. I’ve spent a few years editing health care news and am familiar with how long it typically takes to develop vaccines, even when everything went right and the effort was well-funded. The gap ranges from several years to never. I put my thin hopes into the development of an effective treatment instead.

Yet here I am, two weeks after receiving the second dose of the remarkably effective Pfizer vaccine, and I now am considered fully vaccinated. I doubt most of us will ever truly understand what a miracle this is, especially given the stunning first-pass effectiveness of this and a number of its alternatives. It’s unprecedented and it’s saved millions of lives already.

This pandemic is far from over, of course. Most of the world has no access to a vaccine yet, and a pretty good chunk won’t have it at this time next year, either. But its deepest, darkest dangers are probably over for me, at least for now. I lived through a pandemic.

Got Pfizer #2 today, and found out an hour later that a friend had decided against getting a vaccination at all so that he can own the libs or whatever. I expected better out of him. I expect better out of you, too. Fairfax County’s now taking appointments for everyone over 16. As of this writing, over 80 million Americans have been fully vaccinated. Serious side effects are extremely rare — even the concerns about the J&J vaccine involve six cases out of about 6.8 million doses administered — and pretty much all of us know people now who died or became seriously ill from COVID-19. This is pretty much a miracle that’s being handed to you for free. Don’t turn away.