I'm putting a band together and I'm looking for suggestions for swinging songs. I'm thinking swing era/ jump blues type stuff. So far we've got about 12 songs but need to expand for at least two 45 minute sets. Anyone have some suggestions? Thanks in advance!
A rich vein of blues. Tbone Walker, Dave Specter, William Clarke, come to mind immediately. Louis Jordan as well. Eddie Vinson. ---------- http://www.reverbnation.com/jawboneandjolene
For a lot of the sump/swing atuff, you gotta be listening to more horn oriented stuff and here's a short list:
Big Joe Turner Wynonie Harris Roy Brown T-Bone Walker Pee Wee Crayton Tiny Grimes Bill Jennings Louis Jordan Eddie Cleanhead Vinson Lowell Fulson early Gatemouth Brown Tiny Bradshaw Willis Gator Tail Jackson (earlier stuff) Red Prysock Hal Singer Tab Smith
There's plenty more than just this. If you're gonna learn this, you can NOT just listen to harp players only and all of your harp players often listened, learned, and adapted stuff from this to harmonica. ---------- Sincerely, Barbeque Bob Maglinte Boston, MA http://www.barbequebob.com CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
The choices should be the ones that make women happy, seems like everything else works after that :) Bob's list lines up most of my favorites. Delbert's Live in Austin has some great one's that always light a crowd up. And yes, your current list would help us.
Thanks Bdog...You might like this, here are blues back tracks for the saxophone that I got from the library - the sax is in the right ear and can be removed by using the the speaker controls. When I burnt the tracks to a Cd the Sax was removed automatically :)
Last Edited by Frank on May 06, 2013 11:36 AM
Thanks so much for the responses and keep'em coming if you can.
Here is the short list of songs we've been working on. Abigail Blue- JD McPherson Caldonia,Hungry Man, Teardrops From My Eyes- Louis Jordan I Think She Likes Me- Treat Her Right Let me Explain-Sonny Boy II I Got Love If You Want it, Boogie Chillum- Slim Harpo
This is just a taste but I have been researching some of the suggested listening and this is getting me pretty excited. I'm pretty sure a jump blues type of band would do really well here in Milwaukee. Looking forward to trying it out. Thanks again for the help.
Listen to the last part of this video. Portnoy does a great version of "Misty," and when it starts swinging, it's a winner. I heard him do this live many years ago:
Here are a few swinging shuffles that are a good fit for harp.
Aint Gonna Be Your Low Down Dog - Meade Lux Lewis/ Rod Piazza Roll 'Em Pete - Big Joe Turner Oh Well oh Well - Lowell Fulsom She Walks Right In - Gatemouth Brown/ Gary Primich C Jam Blues Wonderful Time - SBW1 Knock Me a Kiss - Louis Jordan/ Gary Primich Ain't You Trouble - Gary Primich (maybe more soul jazz, but it swings) Ain't Nobody's Business if I do - Jimmy Witherspoon
Great info! Thank you to everyone. Hers a little more insight into what I'm looking for for a set list. Occasionally I sit in with a polka band that plays traditional polkas and ballads and I feel like there is a good in between from the big band swing stuff to modern swing dance music. I guess I'd like to find that in between style. Not quite blues but not quite that Count Basie , Glenn Campbell swing. Maybe this will shed some more light.
Wow. This has been an education. Thanks, Bob, Adam, Frank, Gamblers Hand and of course Lumpy Wafflesquirt. I am really digging this stuff and you all have given my tons of material to work on.
IF you're gonna attempt the jump/swing stuff, it's not just the solos that are important, but even more important is the groove and if you have a bass player and drummer (AKA the rhythm section) who plays more like a rock band, the groove will NEVER jump or swing and for many of these tunes, the rhythm section HAS to be really together, like with T-Bone, many drummers don't have that groove correctly at all, because with the drummer, much of the cymbal work is played on a very loose high hat and I've yet to find a rock drummer who knows this stuff, let alone play it and rock drummers can be far too heavy handed in their approach. ---------- Sincerely, Barbeque Bob Maglinte Boston, MA http://www.barbequebob.com CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
The stuff Roomful of Blues did while Duke Robillard was the guitarist and front man for the band has the band in its original and most swinging and jumping sound ever and that's my first choice for their stuff. ---------- Sincerely, Barbeque Bob Maglinte Boston, MA http://www.barbequebob.com CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
Sugar Ray was the first harp player they ever had in their band and then later Mark Dufresne. Other than those two, they never had a harp player at all. I'e known them since the mid 70's personally, so I should know. ---------- Sincerely, Barbeque Bob Maglinte Boston, MA http://www.barbequebob.com CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
Hey Bob, I wasn't there, having only seen the Sugary Ray and after versions of Roomful but what about Keith Dunn and Curtis Salgado? They may not have played in the band but they are harp players.
From what I've heard Ray was eager to play more harp and the other cats weren't into it. I think he found a very nice spot for his harp amid all those horns in a lot of songs.
Yes, Ryan is correct on Keith and Curtis, but I never saw either of them blow harp live with the band. As for Ray, he did lay down some harp on a Roomful record, but I can't ever remember him playing much harp when playing out.
Charles I was thinking if you're already playing some polkas and what not and looking for some swing I started looking at some bob Wills western swing which led me to Asleep at the Wheel, Thought this might have some potential interest for you or perhaps some other swing along those lines. It's not Count Basie that's for sure..
@Rhartt1234 -- I did forget about Curtis, as he was before Sugar Ray, but he stayed with them only a few months and sang much more than played harp with them. I've know Keith Dunn personally since the mid 70's and back then, his strength was his vocals and his harp playing wasn't very good at the time and only until he moved to Europe that his harp playing improved drastically.
Asleep At The Wheel is a great Western Swing band that's been around for a long time and a lot of western swing is kinda like jump/swing stuff played more on instruments associated with a country band, which means fiddles and steel guitars and old school black jump and swing never used and is played more on top of the beat.
Many of those black jump blues bands during the late 30's to early 50's often didn't have a guitar player in the band with the only chordal instrument being a piano and a few didn't even have any chordal instruments at all and so the horn players were playing lines in harmony that by the 50's became often used rhythm parts for guitar players and learning how to do this would be well worth a harp player's while, which means getting your time straightened out as well as learning basic music theory so that you learn harmony and call pull this off with horns or even several harp players together, and for harp players, that means you can't just riff mindlessly thru everything as you usually see in the vast majority of open jams, meaning you need musical discipline to pull it off.
Here's a sample of instrumentals like that from Roomful of Blues' first album from 1977:
Jump blues is mainly horn based stuff which makes sense why whenever they had a harp player, they didn't play much harp at all, but for a harp player, this stuff is worth learning and can help get you a better idea of the way Little Walter's mind had been working. ---------- Sincerely, Barbeque Bob Maglinte Boston, MA http://www.barbequebob.com CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
So I had a listen and I say,"good job". I was not familiar with :Hide & Seek" nor "Somethhing's Going On", but I may have to work them up for the guys here at home. I wish you and your crew success.
---------- theharmonicaclub.com (of Huntington, WV) ---------- theharmonicaclub.com (of Huntington, WV)
Last Edited by Jim Rumbaugh on Apr 29, 2015 10:41 AM
For a couple years I saw the Sugar Ray lineup almost monthly. Ray would play harp one or two tunes a set. Mostly the tunes from their recent records. On rare occasion the horns would leave the stage and they would do some straight up Chicago stuff.
I was always surprised that Sugar Ray didn't do things more on the lines of what Junior Parker did and actually play harp with the horns behind him, which was something Junior did quite frequently. ---------- Sincerely, Barbeque Bob Maglinte Boston, MA http://www.barbequebob.com CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
@Philosfy -- I've known Dave Howard for a very long time and his vocals were always a lot stronger than his harp playing was, but you gotta remember, Roomful was ALWAYS a horn based band first, which is what jump/swing bands always were.
Here's a few tunes I've done over the years that are jump sax instrumentals showing that a harp can do this stuff, but it takes understanding groove and feel and do something most harp players never seem to learn, and that's don't just listen to harmonica and Little Walter understood that quite well.
This tune below, Joe Houston recorded several different times under a variety of names like Way Out, Goofin', Joe's Goofin', and Rockin' With Joe, I usually do it in Eb (a classic horn key) with an Ab harp:
This Red Prysock classic, Fruit Boots, I also do in Eb as well:
The Gene Ammons classic covered by quite a few blues players, from harp to sax to guitar and keyboards, his signature tune, Red Top, which I do in F using a Bb harp that's country tuned (before those harps became production line models, we all did it ourselves and we called them Major 7th harps). The solos fall in line perfectly with a BbCT harp, and with the ending, you can hit an Fmaj7 chord. Many players would use 5 overblow, but you can't overblow chords at all.
---------- Sincerely, Barbeque Bob Maglinte Boston, MA http://www.barbequebob.com CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
