I got to meet - and even play with (a little) Will Scarlett the other day when we shared a stage at a small local benefit. He was really nice, - and still has that unique voice on the instrument. He hangs with this circle of acoustic players in the East Bay (Oakland /Berkeley) that I'm getting to know. Hopefully I'll get a chance to 'pick his brain' about technique and approach one of these days. with Marc Silber doing Hesitation Blues
Last Edited by bonedog569 on Aug 04, 2015 10:07 PM
Lucky you Bonedog569. Really enjoyed the acoustic music from two musicians I had never heard of before. This is the sound that always makes me want to play acoustic (Playing amplified at moment)Hope you learn lots.
Will Scarlett has been at SPAH many times. His approach to playing is always very unique and very much worth hearing. He is one of a kind and a harmonica treasure.
He is listed as one of the performers for the pre-SPAH blues blow off show on Tuesday evening at the Soiled Dove Underground.
Will Scarlett is a legend, a pioneer of overblowing, and a damn good musician. His playing on the first Hot Tuna album is wonderfully sweet, expressive, chromatic, and pure acoustic playing. Rumour has it that he played the whole album using just a G-harp, in various positions using overblows. Can anyone confirm that?
Seriously, if you are looking for a blues-folk inspiration that is a refreshing change from the Chicago sound, listen to Will Scarlett playing with Hot Tuna. It may even change the course/direction of your development. It made me stop chasing the Little Walter rabbit, and opened my mind up to acoustic melodic playing.
Last Edited by A440 on Aug 05, 2015 1:04 PM
A440 has it right: Will is one of the unsung heroes of modern blues harmonica whose name and place in the history should be known by everyone who plays harp today.
As A440 says, Will was the very first player to consciously try and play in all 12 keys on one diatonic using overblowing, back around 1970. Everyone who came after and uses overbending should know that, but I doubt many do. Most attribute that mantle to Howard Levy, who unquestionably took the technique far further and more successfully - but Will was the first. He eventually gave up because he could not get the harps to play well enough for consistent overblows.
By then he had another amazing original idea: install extra reeds for extra bending. That was around 1980, but he kept it secret. Others (including me in far-off pre-internet New Zealand), thought of the idea independently later in the 1980s. I have documented the history of it, including the part played by other another very important figure in the history of modern blues harmonica Rick Epping, here:
Others experimented with the x-reed concept in the 1980s (Pat Missin, Richard Sleigh) and recently I discovered another pioneer, the Austrian Christian Sandera:
Amen to everything a440 and Brendan wrote. That live Tuna album fucked me up back in the day - and still does.
"It made me stop chasing the Little Walter rabbit, and opened my mind up to acoustic melodic playing."- A440 - amen once again.
I don't know if it's in the essential Blues Harp albums list - but it should be if it isn't. It could be argued that Will was/is THE original "modern blues harmonica" player.
