Jonny Teupen, Harporhythm, 1971

MPS LP, 1971

1 happy together/just written a tune
2 la chica guapa
3 canon mood
4 the love we know is like flowers grow
5 trouble in mind
6 another revolution
7 a latin affair
8 song of the open air
9 never gonna be a sky-scraper
10 the girl i once met i just married
11 hold me - i've got to leave you
12 g-string

jonny teupen, harp
j.a. rettenbacher, piano, elp, organ, bass
juggs whigham, trombone
karl drew, ts
shaka keane, flgl
milan lulic, gtr
cees see, ds, perc
peter thoms, ds
plus string ensemble

this is a guest posting, from a generous anonymous poster. thanks!

the internet seems to be pretty empty of information on jonny teupen. i'm guessing he's dutch; and probably the only dutch harpist to issue three jazz albums on the legendary mps--or any--imprint. he occupies some weird middle ground between the adult sixties soul jazz of chicago harpist dorothy ashby and the incessantly good-natured 1980s swiss new-age harpist andreas vollenweider. (there are moments when he evokes the spirit of spiritual jazz harpist alice coltrane too, but those are brief and to be found more on his previous album "harpodelic.")

teupen's first mps album, "play harp" is sort of baroque light jazz like you'd hear la-la-la'ing in the background of a 1960s european movie. his second, "harpodelic" is probably my favorite -- and already offered up at magic purple sunshine, with its truly wonderfully genre-bending cover of the fool on the hill and overall mashing up of easy listening and light psychedelic funk.

i must warn you that this album begins with some incessantly perky easy listening tunes that may cause you to wonder which cosmic elevator you have stumbled onto (and cause you to question my judgment completely!). but after a bluesy cover of trouble in mind teupen starts bending genres again to delicious effect. it must be said there's a fine line in teupen's music between grooving and snoozing, but when he grooves it's worth the admission. standout tracks, completely off-center and weird, are after the revolution, song of the open air--with a brief harp/electric piano duet--and the funky hold me i've got to leave. at the very least you've never heard a harp played like this.

so anybody got any info on mr. teupen? he doesn't look like a hippy but he must have been influenced by all those hippies lining the streets of amsterdam back in the late sixties. only from a label like mps.

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