I'm listening to a lot of the posters here (Todd Parrott and PT Gazell spring to mind) on their YouTube channels and I'm getting more and more impressed with Country and Bluesgrass harp.
When I first started playing, I was looking at Little Walter, Sonny Boy Williamson and Junior Wells, but I did have some introduction to this stuff by tuition tapes.
Since coming back to harp after some years, I started listening to the many great 'new' harp players out there, but I feel I've missed an important building block in my playing. I remember many years ago Charlie McCoy brought an instuction vid out, but there doesn't seem to be too much in the way of tuition in this style.
My school Harmonica Academy Taught By Tony Eyers teaches celtic fiddle tunes,and Bluegrass tunes,along with blues,But he specializes in the fiddle tunes
if your interested heres a link
http://www.harmonicaacademy.com/
---------- Hobostubs
Last Edited by on Apr 06, 2011 1:15 PM
I think Sandy Weltman has some of the best teaching material that I've seen for country and bluegrass harmonica. As far as who is the best bluegrass player, without a doubt, Buddy Greene. I say this because he plays incredibly fast but remains super clean and precise. He has an album called, "Rufus" which features some of the best bluegrass harp playing I've heard. "Happy Man" is also a great album and features Jerry Reed.
I would also put Brendan Power right up there with Buddy, but Brendan plays a variety of styles, and uses alternate tunings which are really cool.
I really like bluegrass harmonica... and recommend all those already mentioned.
Another favorite of mine is Wailin Wood (Glen Woodland), who plays bluegrass and gospel music. He was at a Buckeye Harmonica Festival several years ago, and I really enjoyed him and bought both of his CD's... outstanding diatonica harmonica playing!
He use to have a website, but it doesn't appear to be working.
There's a couple of YouTube videos... here is one:
David Naiditch is also awesome, especially on chromatic harmonica... I have his CD "Harmonica and Guitar Duets" that is great... I have to get his other ones:
Thanks all. There's a lot here to be going on with.
I like Sandy Weltman's stuff for tuition.
I think I've figured out why this style passed me by.
One: I remember back when I was learning some 23 years ago that this style had a lot of pucker playing to get the speed. I'm a tongue blocker and I put a lot of harp in my mouth. This in itself tends to impede fast runs and tongue taps, but I was happy at the time as I wanted a big fat blues tone.
Two: Some of these guys (and I won't say who) sound 'harmonica'ish' (Jason Ricci coined this expression). Lots of sucking and blowing, giving the impression of speed when in reality, it's just panting. Not to criticise, everyone has a 'smoke and mirrors' trick, including delay pedals to give an illusion of more notes than there are in reality and that's no bad thing. It's all about performance, but when you're 18 years old you can be quite dogmatic about such things. As someone once said: 'the beauty of youth is wasted on the young.'
I'm going to have a 'pucker' week. No harp playing unless it's pucker.
