“Give Me Your Heart,” Blind Uncle Harry’s most recent single, is about as straight ahead a love song as they come. It’s built upon a slightly jangling electric guitar part, accompanied by accordion. The track also features a female backing vocalist. It simply expresses a desire to partner up with another person.
https://blinduncleharry.bandcamp.com/track/give-me-your-heart
Blind Uncle Harry is Chris ‘Harry’ Doran’s stage name, and the singer/songwriter resides in Bloomington, Indiana. His is quite an evocative performing name. However, Doran actually has an uncle Harry who was – wouldn’t you know it? – blind. This uncle, unsurprisingly, was also a musician. A fiddle player, in fact. Today’s Blind Uncle Harry is a musician, with a bit of a hippie persona going for him that works with a wide variety of different musicians to create his unique sound.
Although the artwork for “Give Me Your Heart” features Blind Uncle Harry in a stylish sports jacket posing in front of a red sports car, his sound is not what one would call smooth and sporty. Instead, this song – and much of his other music – is sung over simplistic instrumentation. This particular song finds him singing over a melody and rhythm that stays pretty much the same, from beginning to end. There are no melodic bridges in it. No electric guitar solos. Nothing fancy, in fact.
If you believe Bob Dylan is a fantastic natural vocalist, you’ll also likely love the sound Harry makes when he sings – which is rough around the edges, and inside and out. Like Dylan, Harry aims straight for the heart (no pun intended) with his music. In other words, he doesn’t try to pretty up his songs with fancy vocal runs and such. Instead, he sings with an admittedly warbly vocal tone that gives his message to the listener straight. Even this track’s female accompanist can’t make this singing particularly easy on the ears. At approximately six minutes, this is a lot of the same, for a long, long time. With that said, though, it’s still an effective musical moment.
The guitar riff the track is based on is one that gets right into your brain and sticks. It’s not flashy, but it’s nevertheless functional. Harry knows a good guitar chord structure when he hears one, and he’s chosen a winner with this song.
Hearts find their way into nearly every love song and play a pivotal role with this piece. It’s strange how a blood-pumping muscle has grown to become the representation of romance. In this lyric, Harry doesn’t want this person’s money or even his/her physical affection. No, he wants and needs this other’s heart – to have and to hold.
ONLINE:
https://blinduncleharry.com/
https://www.facebook.com/BlindUncleHarry/
When compared to Blind Uncle Harry’s other recordings to date, “Give Me Your Heart” stands out as one his most sincere. He can be both silly and sarcastic in song, but not here. No, this is Blind Uncle Harry getting right to the heart of the matter, so to speak, and telling this person exactly what he wants and needs. And really, how can anybody turn down such a heartfelt plea?
-Dan MacIntosh
