My tin sandwich adventure started at an open mic Blues Jam long ago. I showed up with my tele and just wanted to sit in. The fellow running the show was a local harp monster named "Johnny Reed". We enjoyed some of natures finest out in the parking lot, during the band's break, and shared some small talk. As I was called up after break, I was blown away, having never played with a harp player before, I was amazed at how much sound this guy was getting out of that harp. The next day I purchased a bluesband and wore it out. Having already known most 1 4 5 stuff on guitar, and the changes, it was a matter of technique. I learned the biggest lesson, "when Not to play" and away it went. I became obsessed with the harmonica and have had a wild ride with it sinse. I'd be interested in hearing other stories, how you got started?
i came up in the wilds of western ny state. not a lot of blues going on close by, let alone harmonica unless it was the dylan/young 1st position folk thing. but before all that, way back when, my grandad played for me. like at age 5. it affected me but took many years to manifest. as did surfing a.m. radio in the early 60's at age 6 or so, hearing all the "Race radio" shows from the big stations on sunday nights. heard a lot of Jimmy Reed, Muddy, Slim Harpo, etc etc. then typically the Brit invasion came along and i caught a whiff of the blues thing from Mick, Roger Daltry, and others playing harp. Magic Dick. then Cotton, the Walters, and so on. age 16 i was given a harmonica my mom's dad had given my dad the year i was born. dad passed 4 years after i was born so i had cause to be blue. my legacy. sadly i was just not very trainable and became a hard head drunk and doper so progress was very slow. finally late in the 90's- after several years of sort of faking it with bands and a duo or 3- it did sink in deeper and i began to unlock some "secrets" of better playing, like breathing exercises, different positions, control of air column, tongue blocking, etc etc. these days i am very happy with what i do and i am still discovering new stuff. it took me a long time so it's good i was stubborn. for me i had to leave behind all the various substances and get cleaned up before i really began to learn.
I've been a huge rock and roll fan all my life. I spent he "formative" years, from about '69 to "79 listening to all those great bands, Hendrix, The Stones, Led Zep, The Who, CCR, The Beatles, Dylan, Cream, Santana etc.,etc.,etc ...............the golden years (sorry, nobody will ever convince me there has been a better time for music than the period from the late '50's to about '80 - I won't even debate it - case closed. Yeah, I'm a curmudgeon, take that generation whatever).
Anyway, so my first love is guitar, but I don't pick one up and try to play until about 6 or 7 years ago. It's not good, not only am I making nothin' but noise, but I'm really struggling with even the simplest chords, and it's so bad I can't even envision a path to someday being able to play a few simple songs.
So I pick up the harmonica, being familiar with Magic Dick and some of the various Rock and Roll frontmen that honk from time to time, and thinking this instrument can't be that hard to learn, it's a FREAKIN HARMONICA!!!!!
And to a certain extent, it was true. You know the drill, within a day or so, Red River Valley, a coupla other real simple tunes, it was no Whammer Jammer of course, but it sounded musical, and never having played anything (not counting a brief semi credible stint on drums in college with a garage band) it was kind of a thrill.
Stumble upon this site and start to realize just how much I don't know and can't do, so the jokes on me. But hey it's all good.... having fun with it, been on stage with some pretty good local musician friends (the thrill of my musical life) though it's 50-50 they're just humoring me.
And the best part, picked the guitar back up and making some progress there, though I'm definitelly flirting with "jack of all trades - master of none" territory. Apparently, a lot of the deeper messages behind kudzu's videos can be applied to other instruments as well.
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Oh yeah, a by-product of picking up the harp has been that I circled back to investigate all the guys that inspired my rock and roll heroes, Muddy, Wolf, LW, Robert Johnson et al, which opened up a whole new chunk of material (for me) to listen to.
The Blues - The gift that keeps on giving.
Last Edited by on Dec 20, 2012 8:23 AM
Growing up i'd hear some harp on a Pop record and think that a pretty cool sound. Then one day i was listening to some of my older brothers records. One was the lovin'Spoonfuls What a Day for a Daydream (1966)not too keen on that but the B side was this. And so here i am today.(John Sebastian on Harp)
My grandmother gave me a tremolo harmonica she bought on a trip to China. I played it enough to learn a couple of songs, 'The Alphabet Song' and 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star'! I'd played baritone tuba in elementary school and middle school, then switched to choir for high school. That's about when I got the harp. In college I tried piano, but the summer before my freshman year I screwed up the tendons in my wrists with a repetitive stress injury. (No jokes, it was work related, not recreational!) After a week or two of piano class I lost the feeling in my fingers so I gave that up. I kept singing, and eventually, my friend started a band. I joined up, mostly because I wanted to write lyrics.
I was happy to sing backup, but since he played guitar and sung he got annoyed that I'd theoretically be on stage without an instrument.
I tried guitar, but even although my wrists had had years to heal, they immediately flared up again. I was given the maracas, but I couldn't seem to figure out when to shake them. It's the delay- they don't sound when you swing them! After I shook the maracas our other guitar player's parents had brought back from Africa for him (made out of a real gourd) so hard the top came off, I was relegated to backup vocals again. I did try the harp, but I got a Blues Harp first and it tore my lips up so fast I couldn't practice enough to get good enough to play.
The band broke up after we kicked the one guitar player out. A few years went buy, and my asthma was getting worse, and I was really missing music. I dug out the harp my grandmother gave me at about the same time my friends and I started going to watch an open mic every Monday. Eventually, I switched to diatonic. We actually did bring the garage band out of retirement for one open mic. I started jamming with a friend and we formed a band. We played a lot of open mics and added a bass and a second guitar (slash Uke), and a part time drummer. We got one real show (no pay, but a scheduled full set.) Then our lead singer got weird on us and we kicked him out (he'd basically already told us the band wasn't a priority.) My bass player, and theoretically the uke player, still record some stuff, but we haven't gotten enough material together to do shows. He likes to jam, and I'm less free-form. I'm really comfortable on songs I've played a few times, but I'm not comfortable improvising on stage yet, and we don't get to practice enough, on our regular stuff or our jamming, to get me to that place.
We have been trying to record some stuff, but mixing stuff down is still a problem, and we haven't been able to get together with our uke player for a while and we don't want to put anything out without him.
My goal for this year was a paying gig. Instead the band broke up. I did get a dollar tip at an open mic though. :)
I guess that's the beginning and the middle of the story. (And if the Mayans are right!!! lol!)
Anyway, I'm expecting the Mayan calender to burst open and Rick Astely to step out. Maybe we'll get a paying gig next year.
There was a film or video of The Lovin' Spoonful playing Night Owl Blues prominently featured at the US pavilion at Expo67 in Montreal. I wonder what happened to it.
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They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art.
It's all so long ago. I know there harps around when I was a young kid, I think I recall thinking how it was impossible to play them. I realised each hole could produce a separate note, but the holes were clearly to small for anyone to possibly play individual notes. I think I recall dismissing the possibility of playing a harmonica. A noisy toy. Then one day my guitar playing buddy bought a marine band in G . He handed it to a guy we knew who made some basic chord tones with it. Ok, I now realised it could be done, but I had no harmonic knowledge, nor any understanding of the instrument. I sang, by ear. That's all. But something kept me coming back to harmonica. At various times I owned up to 4 at one time. No idea how to play, it was like a Rubik's cube puzzle. Just beyond me, but I couldn't help fiddling with it. I heard Dylan play...at thd time I would have settled for that. Eventually I got some books and started to play some actual tunes, learned the "blues scale", messed about for another 5 years or so. by the time I signed up for a beginners course with a tutor, I could play enough for the tutor to tell me he couldn't teach me anything, and invite me to sit in at his next gig. That wasn't so long ago, 6 years I think. I'd been at it for 25 years by then, sporadically, just making noise and trying to work it out by myself mainly. ----------
Actually Sebastian was in my story too. I was around 10, watching The John Davidson Show. Sebastian was the guest and he sang Welcome BAck Kotter. He took the harp out of his pocket, played and threw it away over his shoulder. Then he did it again for the next solo. A showmanship move I have never seen since.
Then my Dad liked Dylan and I had free reign to my parent's records. I didn't know what Dylan was singing about, but I knew all the words. Then Simon and Garfunkel had a tune called A Simple Desultory Phillippic which was Simon imitating Dylan.
There was some Dylanesque harp and then, while the harp continued to play, he says "I lost my harmonica, Albert" I didn't understand the reference to Grossman, but named my first harmonica Albert.
The only other harp I can remember before actually playing one was a toy plastic banana shaped harp.
I was working as a camp counselor and one of my bosses was a music major. He had a harp. I asked if I could see it. I took it to a corner and jammed for a half an hour. I remember an 8 year old kid walked past and asked me if I was a professional.
A half a year later I was in a bookstore and there was Gindick's Musically Hopeless. AT 15 years old it was a minor miracle that I had the 14 bucks. My friend said "There's something flaky you would do." I said I would. He said "You'll never get anywhere with that."
I took it home and the moment I played it it was my thing.
I started playing drums in a marching band in 6th grade but just for a year or so. When the British invasion hit I wanted to take it up again but I was banned from playing drums by my step-father. I bought a kit anyway and brought it into my bedroom where it lived for 6 months without notice.
One day I got a phone call which my step-father answered. He came to my room to tell me and saw the drums. I went out to the living room to take the call my step-father came walking behind me down the hall with the bass drum, tom still attached. He proceeded to throw them out the front door onto the lawn, the rest of the kit soon to follow. BTW, Ludwig Hollywood in black pearl like Ringo.
I tried storing them at a friends house for a while but her dad was an alcoholic and there were three out of control brothers as well. Ended up taking the kit back to the store but was only offered the balance of the loan erased. I said, "I've paid $100 so far. Can't you give me something back?." There was a Marine Band, $1.75, in the showcase so I said, "What about that?". Walked out with the little bugger in my pocket figuring if my step-dad wanted to throw that out he'd have to throw me with it. Eventually he did. The rest of the story is my life. ---------- LSC
My Dad played a little bit of harmonica. He had Harmonicats records. I heard a bunch of them as a little kid. It didn't move me.
I saw Mojo Buford with Muddy Waters at Chicagofest and Billy Branch with the Sons of Blues and I got hooked on that sound and the songs! I wanted to play that stuff.
I picked up a book called Chicago Blues by Mike Rowe. I just started digging. I was surprised how many of the legends were still alive. I started going to see them. I bought and listened to a ton of records by all of the older guys. I listened to guys who were fairly obscure to most of you like, Earring George, Little Willie Anderson, Good Rockin' Charles, Little Arthur Wild Child Butler and Big Leon Brooks.
I read a ton of Living Blues, Blues Unlimited and anything I could get my hands on. I went and saw a ton of live Blues music. I would go to any club where I felt safe. Being young and indestructible, I felt safe most places I went.
I don't consider myself much of a harp player. I'm really more of a fan of the music. When I play, it is like icing on the cake.
When I was 20 years old I was hitchhiking around the Pacific Northwest and ran into a guy who played harp. We were walking down a dusty highway trying to thumb a ride with no luck at all, and he pulled out a harp and started playing a train rhythm. I was blown away by how cool it sounded. Then he played some blues riffs and I was hooked.
As soon as I could I walked into a music store and bought a Marine Band harp.
Those were the guys that I listened to and saw as much as I could. Big Leon had serious tone and could deliver a tune. I wore out his records, too.
There were other unrecorded guys, too. Scott Bradbury and Joe Charles were solid guys and were the first guys that ever let me sit in with them. Jerome Binder hipped me to microphone stuff. They could flat out play. ---------- The Blues Photo Gallery
I have that last album Big Leon Brooks recorded on CD, but those four cuts on the "Living Chicago Blues" series from the 70's are just as good as it gets IMO. Did you get to see lefthand Frank at all Joe? Another favorite of mine from that series.
Wow, Rick. until you got to the train rhythm I thought maybe we'd met. What year were you in the PNW?
Last Edited by on Dec 24, 2012 12:42 AM
I don't remember seeing Left Hand Frank. I've enjoyed Left Hand Frank's recordings. He was a good singer and guitarist.
Regarding those Alligator recordings, I did see Dimestore Fred on a few occasions. He was bad ass. ---------- The Blues Photo Gallery
Last Edited by on Dec 24, 2012 10:15 AM
Growing up in Southern New England was a pretty boring, staid life. For whatever reasons, the area I live in is a sinkhole for Blues and RnB music. The Roomful of Blues use to play the local community center and Johnny Nicholas played at our jr high dances. By the time I was a teenager, Big Walter Horton was gigging around town with Johnny and Ronnie Horvath (Earl) was new to the scene. Add to that mix Sugar Ray Norcia and his Blue Tones and Scott Hamilton and his Blue Flames, the area was loaded with talent. I remember going to Misquamicut Beach one hot summer night when I was 16 and saw Count Basie w/ Roomful at the Windjammer and the went down the block to see Muddy Waters @ Uncle John's Surfside Six. I was hooked!
Last Edited by on Dec 24, 2012 4:32 PM
