The first album Blondie’s Debbie Harry fell in love with
Before forming Blondie, Debbie Harry had spent years in the real world gaining genuine life experience, which she could then pour into her lyrics. Although she was relatively late to the game, music has always played a prominent part in Harry’s life, and her obsession was largely thanks to the radio, which opened her mind to a whole new world.
In those days, the radio was a portal which allowed the listener to transport themselves away from all the worries encompassing their existence. Before the advent of streaming platforms, the radio was appointment listening for music lovers if they wanted exposure to new sounds. In Harry’s case, it was crucial in shaping her music taste.
During an interview with Rolling Stone in 2004, Harry referred to herself as a “radiohead” and recalled being enchanted by the device as a child. When asked if she owned one in her bedroom as a child, the Blondie singer responded: “Yeah, a little radio where I could have my ear right next to the speaker. In those days DJs could be freaky — the late-late-night DJs were the ones. Funky, soulful stuff, maybe a little bit of rock. What could be better? I was always a radiohead.”
Thanks to the radio, Harry fell in love with jazz, the first genre that captured her imagination. While she later traversed down the path of rock ‘n’ roll, there’ll always be a place in her heart devoted to jazz.
In the same interview, Harry was also quizzed about the first album she fell in love with, to which the singer replied: “It was a compilation album called I Like Jazz: Fats Waller, Paul Desmond and all this really, really heavy jazz stuff from the Fifties. I didn’t have a lot of money to buy records, and at that point you couldn’t really download, so I’d listen to a lot of radio.”
This conversation isn’t the only time Harry has spoken about her love of jazz and explained how it helped her become the artist she is today. During a conversation with The Guardian, the Blondie vocalist named the Fats Domino track ‘Blueberry Hill’ as the song responsible for making her fall in love with music.
“I’m so terrible on songs and dates, I warn you – you may as well be talking to me about fish oil,” she said. “But I do remember one of the first things that had an effect on me as a child: hearing Fats Domino do Blueberry Hill. It was music my parents weren’t into, so this was stuff just for me.”
Harry continued: “I love it when musicians and their instruments sort of become an entity in themselves – you see it with Nina Simone and Ray Charles as well as Fats Domino. All their music is so emotional for me. If I’d grown up differently, maybe I’d have had the diligence to learn an instrument. Oh well – I don’t think I’m going to get there at this point!”
Although Harry has never fully committed to exploring jazz from an artistic perspective, in 1994, she collaborated with the Jazz Passengers on their album Love and finally put her love of the genre to use.
