It's a fun thing to experiment with and it sounds pretty cool. I'm just curious if any of you make a practice of regularly including it in your live playing. I would imagine most audiences would find it amusing.
---------- Be humble for you are made of earth. Be noble for you are made of stars.
Yes! I just did a gig last night with my piano playing friend, Barrelhouse Chuck, and used a shorty beer glass to produce a nice warm echo effect. I'm playing right into a PA vocal mic for these gigs so I thought I would mix it up a little by using the glass on a couple tunes. Big Walter recorded some cuts using a glass or cup--it's a nice sound. Not something you want to hear all night, but it warms the tone and sounds earthy. I've experimented with a few different things...I bought an old Hohner Echophone horn (doesn't really do much at all), I cut the end off of an old Blatz steel beer can (really a deep sound, too pronounced, sounds like playing in a sewer pipe) and eventually settled on using a shorty 6 oz beer glass I bought at the New Glarus brewery. The glass is light and the dimension of the opening is about the same as an Astatic mic, so it's easy to cup. Takes a little practice to get comfortable positioning the glass by the mic, but it's been worth the effort.
Hi chicagobluesman-- "Big Walter recorded some cuts using a glass or cup--it's a nice sound."
I agree. Help me by listing the songs you know of where Big Walter recorded with a glass or cup. I'm interested.
I think he used a glass or cup on two songs nobody has suspected-- Evening Sun and Brutal Hearted Woman.
Tom Ball had this to say about these 1953 songs:
"For my money, the ultimate amplified harmonica tone ever committed to wax would be Big Walter's 1953 recordings with Johnny Shines for J.O.B. Records, especially "Evening Sun" and "Brutal Hearted Woman." Although I've been inquiring about this session for decades, no one seems to be able to supply any information about the recording techniques or the equipment used. Of course it's only my opinion, but I consider this 78 to be the absolute pinnacle of possible Chicago blues harp tone - by all means, try to dig up this recording!" Tom Ball on harp-l, 1998
About the tone, nobody's said this before, but I don't hear an amp, if that's what Tom Ball is looking to discover. My ears tell me this is an acoustic harmonica played into to a glass in a room with hard walls. I'm surprised more people don't talk about this technique-- using a cup or glass to get a beautiful reverberant tone.
I'd be interested in anybody's listing of the songs Big Walter recorded using a glass or cup. I want to learn about this technique.
Cheers,
wolf Kristiansen
p.s. to chicagobluesman-- I love Barrelhouse Chuck. I hear Otis Spann, Sunnyland Slim... and more? He's been listening to the greats.
w.k.
Last Edited by wolfkristiansen on Mar 01, 2015 11:02 PM
i'll have to look it up but i'm sure i read that Walter H was messing with that technique on the sessions for the Johnny Winter album...i think he ended up on only one track (Mean Mistreater), and Johnny was really irritated by it and hated the sound. i think it was that album...i know they worked together again on the I'm Ready album, and it may have been on that session or it may have been mentioned in notes about that session referring back to Johnny's previous experience. whichever, i was left with the impression Johnny really was not a fan of that sound
Johnny is quoted saying"...Mean Mistreater...Big Walter Horton played on that song too. We had a hard time getting just one cut out of him. He was interested in playing with a water glass and i hated it. He'd move the glass around in front of the harmonica to make a vibrato. I had never seen anybody do that and I hope I never see anybody else do it either. It's terrible. He wouldn't let me record anything more than once, so we had to keep on coming up with different songs for him to play on. Finally he got tired of playing with a glass and we got through 'Mean Mistreater' with him playing okay. He laid down one real good track and we were happy to get one track out of him."
One tip if you try this: don't do it with a glass that's holding, or just held, bourbon or scotch. I did it, and when I took a big inhale through my nose, I choked and gagged on the fumes.