Soul of the virtuoso.
by Crystal Jarvis
He won’t be categorized, labeled or time-stamped. His identity comes from his music, and that’s all that really matters. Photo by Kevin Qualls
Harry Case is a walking, talking, breathing musical note. A local guitarist with a natural flair for the strings, his repertoire is just an ear-shot away. He creates music and compositions with ease by imitating the sounds of everyday life, from the splash and clink of washing dishes at home to the click of a traffic light to the rattling wail of a truck’s horn.
While enjoying a picnic atop a hill near Anniston’s Martin Luther King Jr. Pavilion at Zinn Park, Case notices an 18-wheeler approaching. He immediately balls his fist and jugs his arm up and down, beseeching the driver to blare his horn.
“Hooonk! Hooonk!” the horn reverberates throughout 14th Street.
At that moment, Case hops up from his chair and twists and turns in search of his guitar to make an effort to clone the tone.
“Dat dat, dat dat. What tone is that?” he asks himself as he plucks his guitar strings to the rhythms of the horn.
“Yeah, I’m full of beats and rhythms,” Case says with an impish grin. “Man-made things usually have a tone I can figure out pretty quickly. But a bird is different — you can’t pinpoint him. By the time you do pinpoint it, he’s on to something else.”
Case thinks beyond the anatomy of acoustics. In his world, every existing atom has musical potential and releases energy to create gifts of song.
“My brain is receptive to anything and everything musical,” he says. “So if I hear something, I try to reproduce it so that I can have it in my sounds that I could call up. It’s ever-going in my world.”
In his world, every existing atom has musical potential and releases energy to create gifts of song. Photo: Kevin Qualls
His brain is also wired to somehow play four instruments at the same time. He plays guitar with his left hand, harmonica with his right hand, tambourine with his left foot and bass drum with his right foot. He’s a singer, a songwriter and a poet. Some people who know him call his talents ingenious.
“I kind of keep my guitar put away when Harry’s around,” says Tom Potts, president of Potts Marketing Group, a fellow musician and one of Case’s long-time friends. “He makes me want to go home and break my guitar open, he’s so good.”
The mystique of Harry Case is soulful and enigmatic. Behind opaque black sunglasses he hides not only his eyes but also his background.
Where’s he from?
“Oh, that’d nail me down too good,” he says with a slight chuckle. “It doesn’t really matter where you’re from. All that matters is your love for music.”
How old is he?
“Timeless,” he says.
Even his name is questionable. He says he only knows what others call him, doesn’t know if “Harry Case” is his real name or not. “Isn’t that wonderful — I don’t know who I am, so I’m free to keep reinventing myself, which is one of the reasons I don’t take myself seriously,” he says.
Eventually, Case reveals something of his past. He spent his infancy in Heflin in Cleburne County, but moved to Anniston as a young child.
Miles Davis, Ray Charles and Hank Williams were among the musical legends who influenced his impromptu style. Photo: Kevin Qualls
His musical biography began at the moment his mother conceived him, he says. She died when he was a toddler, but many folks told him she was a gospel singer and guitar player, a symbol of his musical roots. She was also a shaped-note singer, performing a style of folk music derived from Psalms, odes and anthems. Case recalls once desiring to experience shaped-note singing to find clues about the life of his mother, so he took a tape recorder and sat amid a group of the singers. Then he fell asleep, not remembering anything. “I thought, why did I go to sleep?” he says. “What about this made me go to sleep? She would rock me and I would go to sleep, and lo and behold, it worked on me. I started singing and playing music probably at my conception.”
After his mother died died, a woman Case calls “Aunt Sweetie” brought him to Anniston.
Growing up, music became his way of escape, the force that fed his happiness. His performances amazed and moved listeners, and their acceptance made him want to do it again. “It was the first time somebody said to me, ‘Wow, that’s so good,’” he said. “And I felt like I could do something.”
After high school (of course he won’t say where), he enrolled in Gadsden State Technical Institute, now called Gadsden State Community College, to study business. He planned to fulfill the dream of becoming a successful businessman — not his own dream, but other people’s dream for his life. Then one day he had an epiphany: Business was not what he was born to do. Music was his future.
“I wanted to be accepted,” he says, head down, sunglasses pointing at the grass near his feet. “It’s amazing. In life, you come out in this world in search of peace and acceptance.”
His brain is wired to somehow play four instruments at the same time: Guitar with his left hand, harmonica with his right hand, tambourine with his left foot and bass drum with his right foot. Photo: Kevin Qualls
Once he followed his own heart, it took him to places of which he could only have dreamed — Paris, Germany, Japan. He became the lead singer of the group 3 Degrees, which recorded an album with Ichiban, an English record label once based in Atlanta. “That’s how I got to know how much foreign countries love American music,” he says. “My life before music was a life without a purpose.”
These days, Case performs locally. He played and sang in Anniston at both the Pig Off barbecue competition at Zinn Park in April and at the Noble Street Festival in May.
On stage during the Noble Street Festival, Case thrived on of the energy of the audience. A few heads were bobbing from side to side and a few feet were pattering on the ground. “I just kind of looked out and looked at the people and saw where their heads were and produced a soundtrack.”
Miles Davis, Ray Charles and Hank Williams were among the musical legends who influenced his impromptu style. He listens to all genres of music, including jazz, country, blues, rock, hip-hip, R&B — even rap.
“They’ve got good music behind the dialogue, especially Ludacris (Christopher Bridges),” Case says as he begins to stroke the strings his guitar and spit a few of the rapper’s lyrics.
“Now where’d you get that platinum chain with dem diamonds in it/Where’d you get that matchin’ Benz with dem windows tinted?”
“There is just so much music — there is so much music,” he stresses. “I am thankful for my little brain, my little brain — that country brain that had the love and desire for music.”
The essential Harry Case
Stone of Heaven
The Berman Museum Jade Exhibition.
by Josephine E. Ayers
A white Qing Dynasty fish from the late 18th century is a symbol of wealth. Photo: Trent Penny
Seven thousand years ago, an ordinary object of pure utility suddenly awakened in a Chinese farmer an artist’s sensibility that would influence culture and design to the present day. This plain working man must have looked at his ax with a budding curiosity: Could this hard substance, cool and silky to the touch once the dirt was scraped away, be shaped into something beautiful? What he must have imagined that day slowly took hold until what we know as jade came to embody the 11 virtues central to Chinese history and culture.
According to Confucius (551 B.C.-479 B.C.):
"The wise have likened jade to virtue. For them, its polish and brilliancy represent the whole of purity; its perfect compactness and extreme hardness represent the sureness of intelligence; its angles, which do not cut, although they seem sharp, represent justice; the pure and prolonged sound, which it gives forth when one strikes it, represents music. Its color represents loyalty; its interior flaws, always showing themselves through the transparency, call to mind sincerity; its iridescent brightness represents heaven; its admirable substance, born of mountain and of water, represents the earth. Used alone without ornamentation it represents chastity. The price that the entire world attaches to it represents the truth. To support these comparisons, the Book of Verse says: “When I think of a wise man, his merits appear to be like jade.”
No wonder, then, that jade is called the “Stone of Heaven,” for where else would such a paragon be conceived? Heaven may have been its womb, but the earth gave it substance: Deposits of nephrite jade, or “Chinese jade,” dating to the Neolithic period (to about 5500 B.C.) have been authenticated in China. The mineral of similar composition known as jadeite, was later imported to China from the only known deposits in Burma. The availability of these extensive deposits, especially in southern China, led to the practice of creating objects of beauty for both ritual use and ornamentation.
More than 100 pieces are included in the fascinating exhibition at the Berman Museum of World History in Anniston (through December 2006). Dr. Wade H. Brannon and his wife, Genie, an original member of the Anniston Museum board, acquired objects of a wide array of color and style, thus creating a very personal collection which demonstrates the centuries-old fascination with jade.
The first decorative uses of jade were for ritual objects: sacrificial vessels and funerary objects such as the Bi disk found in the Brannon collection. This piece reveals several qualities of jade history and culture, notably in its color and in its purpose.
An early 20th century vase from a scholar’s studio shows the carver’s artistry in its elaborate protrusions and rings carved from a single stone. Photo: Trent Penny
The Bi disk is thought to be the representation of heaven, the circle enclosing a perfect hole, conveniently placed for the soul to pass through (and for any evil spirits to escape!). This expression of Chinese spirituality — and superstition — can be seen today in modern cities all over China. For example, in the epidemic of skyscrapers in Shanghai, most buildings are built around an opening, through which any evil may pass freely without besmirching the inhabitants.
The deep brown color of the Bi disk in the Brannon collection is the result of the contents of the soil surrounding the mineral deposit. Various geological anomalies produced an extraordinary range of colors of jade. There are the familiar greens: apple, emerald, imperial, spinach, leek, and celadon. There are also colors ranging from nearly white (the charmingly named “Mutton Fat”) to nearly black, with blue, red, russet, gray, and lavender in between. The brown is produced by an excess of iron in the soil.
The collection’s pale funerary urn with intricately traced markings is representative of the ancient Chinese custom of making sacrifices to appease the spirits and to send the soul on its journey to heaven. The milky color, sometimes called “chicken bone,” is due to its having been used to burn the sacrificial substance rather than to its geological origins.
A mythological beast, this one from the Qing Dynasty, was a typical ornament in a scholar’s studio. Photo: Trent Penny
The Chinese moved quickly (over several centuries!) to fashioning pieces for personal use and ornamentation. To carve a modest personal belt or pendant must have been an easy job after the rigors of building such elaborate pieces as have been discovered in archaeological digs in China. Most of these major discoveries remain in China, including the well-known and highly decorative burial suit of Liu Sheng (113 B.C.). This precursor to a simple shroud was composed of 2,498 pieces of jade, sewn together with golden thread. Fortunately, there were also everyday uses of jade, such as artists’ pots and domestic vessels, whose designs evolved over time to include elaborate decoration, frequently representing fantastical figures and intricately carved flowers and foliage. These are the pieces that have attracted collectors like the Brannons.
By the advent of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1912) the high art of jade carving had spread throughout the East and had, in fact migrated to Europe where there are jade deposits scattered about the continent. But no craftsmen of other cultures have matched the Chinese skill and reverence for the qualities of jade. The Brannon Collection’s best representative is an exquisite vase which demonstrates this unique sensibility. The design and execution have a singular delicacy, but its compelling quality is the sensual luminosity of the jade — the sublime beauty of the “Stone of Heaven.”
Josephine E. Ayers is editor-in-chief of Longleaf Style magazine.
Why Longleaf?
More than a tree, it’s the symbol for our region.
by Pete Conroy
Summer 2006
If you are wondering why the name “Longleaf” has made its way to the cover of this magazine, you should read on, or to save time, just know and admit that you are living in Longleaf Country.
Longleaf is a tree, and it’s one that’s special to Alabama because it’s found almost everywhere in the state. In fact all 67 counties now grow the longleaf pine, Pinus palustrus, and over time, each place has probably taken advantage of the tree’s wood, resin, pulp and 12-inch needles. Economically it’s been a staple commodity from the local mountains to the distant Gulf Coast. From industrial turpentine and high-grade lumber to charcoal and delicately woven baskets, longleaf products are everywhere.
Longleaf has been especially important to Anniston. Despite the area’s rich supply of iron ore, it was the area’s more spectacular supply of old-growth longleaf that provided wood for railroad ties and charcoal to fire the furnaces. Throughout the South, iron towns failed without adequate timber, but Anniston, once known as “Pine Ankle,” had both.
Unfortunately, the longleaf’s popularity caused its own near demise. During pre-settlement times, the longleaf was thought to have inhabited 92 million acres throughout the Southeast, but after decades of logging without replanting, that number had been reduced to 3 million acres in 1995.
When the acreage statistics looked most bleak, Calhoun County came to the rescue as local state legislators Doug Ghee and Gerald Willis led Alabama in recognizing the longleaf pine as an official state symbol. They sponsored a successful bill making the longleaf Alabama’s new state tree. Simultaneously, successful conservation efforts to replant the longleaf were under way throughout the Southeast. Longleaf was back.
About the same time, the eastern half of the former Fort McClellan was recognized as being home to something notable, rich in biological diversity and very old. A significant portion of the McClellan-based Choccolocco Mountain range was found to have longleaf trees nearly 300 years old. These were trees that began to grow before the Declaration of Independence, before cars and certainly before anyone knew that fire was required to maintain a healthy longleaf pine ecosystem.
In fact, the best thing that could have happened to the longleaf forest was to have the Army and its explosive artillery move in as a neighbor. For decades, the Army unknowingly aided the pine ecosystem by causing frequent fires, burning away leaves and allowing new seeds to take root. The result has become the best example of the mountain longleaf ecosystem anywhere.
In 2001, McClellan’s longleaf forest created a new identity for the region, when, through the support of the community, state and U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions, it was designated the country’s 542nd national wildlife refuge. From that point forward, all national maps would indicate the Mountain Longleaf National Wildlife Refuge, an important conservation icon, as the region’s back yard.
Representing recovery, regeneration, natural beauty, history, strength, and a remarkable conservation story, longleaf may now become a new regional identity that’s both timely and meaningful. Who knows — it may be that in the future, all things “longleaf” become a brand for all things good.
Some examples:
The Calhoun County Chamber of Commerce has established the new Mountain Longleaf Region. The campaign was so successful that now the chambers of commerce from the entire region, from the deepest canyon to the highest mountain, are united in being the Mountain Longleaf Region.
The Calhoun County Community Foundation has established an important and unrestricted charitable fund called — what else? — the Longleaf Fund.
For two years running, McClellan has become the site of a new and successful festival of the arts and environment in mid-April. Its name? The Mountain Longleaf Festival, of course!
In 2004, McClellan became the summer home of the Alabama Symphony Orchestra. The residency is called “Music at McClellan: the Longleaf Outdoor Concert Series.”
