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Dirty-South Blues Harp forum: wail on! >
BB in Australia
BB in Australia
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3 cav 84a
20 posts
Jan 31, 2011
1:50 PM
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G'day, what a dilemma I am facing, I last went to a BB King concert here in Adelaide Australia in about 1975. He had a really great band behind him with a fantastic harp player.
Well he is coming here again but get this he is the support act for Bob Dylan, I personally can't stand Dylan. Yes I know he has written some good songs but I wish he would get someone else to sing them. As for his guitar playing I think is fairly average and his harp playing is on a parr with Alanis Morissette.
BB is no spring chicken and this might be my last chance to see him live, maybe I could slip out the door when the bands are changing over.
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Rubes
225 posts
Jan 31, 2011
5:25 PM
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Surely you can give him a go 3cav? I confess to never actually getting into Dylan for most of my life but these days you can't deny the guys prescence and place in the history of music?? :~)
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Greg Heumann
1029 posts
Jan 31, 2011
9:41 PM
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You saw BB King with a harp player? I used to see him back in the 70's, and I've seen him a few times since. But in all the performances and all his recordings, I am not aware of any that have harp in them. I always wondered if he really disliked harmonica, or it was a conscious decision to distance his sound from so many other blues acts? anyone know?
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/Greg
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htownfess
251 posts
Feb 01, 2011
4:45 AM
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After Bill Harvey signed on as BB's bandleader in the 1950s, Houston became sort of a farm team for BB's band--a high percentage of his musicians came up through the Houston public school system (especially under Conrad Johnson at Kashmere high school), Texas Southern University, and the University of Houston. What those players had in common was that they were all schooled musicians: if you dropped sheet music in front of them, they knew what to do.
There was a serious socioeconomic divide in the 1950s heyday of blues: rural vs. urban, upwardly mobile vs. country & proud of it. The big bands modeled on 1930s-40s jazz ensembles were the elite and apart from drumming or singing, you usually couldn't get into one if you couldn't sight read. Not in Houston, anyway. They played the big ballrooms and ritzier nightclubs and their audience was better educated, better paid, upwardly mobile and had lived in the city longer.
Then there were the small electric groups playing the low-down blues for people without the money and aspirations, often newcomers to the city, in neighborhood bars and lower-class nightclubs, for less money. Today's audience tends to think, "Oh, it's all blues," but there was a real socioeconomic divide in the postwar African American blues scene, on both sides of the stage. You can tell an "elitist" to this day because they'll call a song key as "three sharps" instead of E and the subtext is that if you don't read music, you ain't shit. If you want to understand the hazing of Little Walter when he played the Apollo Theater after "Juke" hit, that's what that was about: You may have a big hit, buddy, but you're just an ignorant lowdown blues player, you couldn't play in our band.
If you were an ambitious blues player and wanted to make more money, you either started your own band or learned sight reading and music theory. Some lowdown ignorant players hit the books as adults; there were informal classes in the rented rooms behind Shady's Playhouse in Houston in the 1950s, for example, schooled musicians teaching those who wanted/needed to learn. The two "levels" of musician did not mix much, either gigging or on jam nights.
Between the sight reading and the music theory and the chromaticism issue, it should be obvious that no blues harmonica players crossed over/moved up during the commercial heyday of blues. Clearly there were players like Rhythm Willie, Little Walter, Big Walter, and George Smith who were ambitious harmonica players, but could any of them really have joined BB King's horn section in 1957? Somebody like Albert King was not likely to carry someone to be "the harp player": only a Chicago-style band or a Baton Rouge one was likely to do so. Most of the top-earning acts had no need for a harmonica player because they regularly played music that was beyond the usual practices of the top diatonic players. Those players might sit in--I think there's some live Geo. Smith with Jay McNeely's band ca. 1960 out there--but not really anyone ever working regularly. Junior Parker was the closest to it, and only able to do it because he was the bandleader: Texas Johnny Brown told me that they used to do "Flying Home" and Junior would play the head on the harp till he got to a part he couldn't play, and hand off to a sax player. Nobody but the bandleader would keep their job with that kind of limitation. There wasn't really a market for a sideman to do it, nothing to make it worthwhile to get the book learning *and* figure out how to play the diatonic chromatically or make a chromatic do it all, decades before Howard Levy or Bill Barrett.
groyster1's ABB thread got me thinking that even the Allman Brothers went through that--they never had a harmonica player who could actually hang with the guitar players on their classic instrumentals, etc., so they intermittently had a guy just sitting in or being "the harp player" on certain kinds of songs.
I think some white players were bridging the gap in the 1970s, Magic Dick, Madcat Ruth, but the issue remained. I remember Trudy Lynn around 1996, saying something to the effect of "We do high-class music, there's no harmonica on my songs." She's gotten past that, but that attitude and the technical divide that spawned it are still around.
I don't doubt the account of BB's Australian show, but I think it was probably a brilliant harp player sitting in, not a member of BB's band. If BB ever carried a harp player in the U.S., I think we'd have heard more about it. I'm pretty sure the socioeconomic divide I'm talking about existed in LA and Memphis and NYC and almost anywhere else there was a substantial community of black blues players, except in Chicago and Baton Rouge; it's not just BB. I don't know if I've explained it very well; read Roger Wood's DOWN IN HOUSTON for a better account of it in one city.
There just haven't been many harp players doing what BB hires people for. BB has rarely carried a featured sideman; I can only think of James Booker on piano and maybe Calvin Owens on trumpet. Remember that for a long time, harp was the featured instrument on Chicago blues, not guitar soloing, the reverse of BB's music. I don't think BB objects to harmonica per se, just not integral to his music; Chicago blues finally foregrounded guitar, but BB didn't add the harp.
Chicago and Baton Rouge blues never made real inroads among the upper-level black blues artists; the latter would just leave out the harp if they covered one of the songs. It's something odd about Robert Cray's early records, I mean having Curtis Salgado on there playing harp is a stylistic departure. And that was something the Fabulous Thunderbirds did, inject harmonica into that harp-free T-Bone Walker derived Texas blues guitar tradition. You can hear William Clarke progressively chipping away at the old-timers' resistance to harp, doing more and more on chromatic and with horns to bridge that gap within the blues world. It isn't and hasn't been just BB, but that attitude is passing with that generation.
Sorry this is so long, but I've never really seen the point addressed and IMO it's a significant historical issue from the harp viewpoint.
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harmonicanick
1077 posts
Feb 01, 2011
4:50 AM
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@htownfess
Very interesting thanks
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silpakorn
37 posts
Feb 01, 2011
5:35 AM
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Three sharps is A, E has four. Yeah, I'm schooled... : ) kidding, never mind that. Actually, I found that of all the long posts that I've read here this is probably the one that I enjoy the most - very interesting story from an interesting point of view. Keep writing, you've got a fan !
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eebadeeb
4 posts
Feb 01, 2011
6:13 AM
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very interesting post thanks htownfess
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shanester
342 posts
Feb 01, 2011
6:53 AM
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Htown, great post!
You continually amaze me with your vast knowledge of Houston and Blues history, and amps and electronics!
Pleasure to know you! Keep those stories coming!
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Shane
1shanester
"Keep it coming now, keep it coming now,
Don't stop it no don't stop it no no don't stop it no don't stop it no no..."
- KC and the Sunshine Band
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Chinaski
163 posts
Feb 01, 2011
11:41 AM
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The album BB King in London features a very short harp break with fantastic acoustic tone on the track Alexis' Boogie that was the inspiration for me picking up the instrument. However, whoever is playing it seems to be uncredited.
That simple passage still gives me goosebumps, and it remains my favourite BB King album. (I chanced upon the LP in my dad's record collection one evening when I was a kid and was never the same again!)
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Myspace
Last Edited by on Feb 01, 2011 11:41 AM
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htownfess
252 posts
Feb 01, 2011
1:40 PM
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@silpakorn: That's exactly my point, I've fitfully tried to memorize the key signatures for at least the likeliest keys like Bb to try to fake it in that situation onstage, but can never remember if my mnemonic starts with one sharp or no sharps :). Learning it just to do that, or learning the equivalent of one-finger-typing just to piece out melodies on staff, are so far from really learning to sight read proficiently that I appreciate some of it meant to be a schooled musician in that milieu.
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3 cav 84a
21 posts
Feb 01, 2011
5:51 PM
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Thanks for the great post Htownfess some great info in there about the music readers and non readers. BB must have brought a harp player with him on that tour, if I remember he was a thin black man not very old and he stood on the end of the brass section. Like I said he could play wonderful harp and I couldn't get over that the thing he was playing was so small you could hardly see it in his hands. I wonder if in his audition he had to read music to make it onto the team for the tour.
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htownfess
253 posts
Feb 01, 2011
10:36 PM
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@Chinaski: Allmusic credits Duster Bennett on that London album, so That Would Explain That, all right--
@3 cav 84a: That's interesting, ought to narrow it down given that it was 1975--an interesting thing that also turned up on Allmusic was that Taj Mahal was on one of B.B. King's studio albums in 1972, and that's someone inventive enough to fit in with B.B.'s band well. I didn't research it yet, but if Taj was at loose ends temporarily, B.B. hiring him for a tour or at least letting him sit in as much as Taj wanted wouldn't surprise me at all, lot of respect there and probably no audition :) I would have guessed Johnny Mars, haven't ruled him out yet.
Calling keys by signature onstage is not always a litmus test, though--it has the advantage of being less confusing than trying to sort out the sounds of B/E/D/G/C from a lot of background noise, and can work as a hand signal with the number of fingers pointing down or up indicating the number of flats or sharps.
And I have to laugh because the last time it came up for me was at a jam with a bassist who tours with a bigtime zydeco band. Come on, you guys only play what, two chords all night anyway, who are you kidding? :) He's a friend and wasn't trying to give me a hard time, he was doing it as a surer way to get the key correctly.
Ask Sonny Boy Terry about this whole sophistication issue if you get the chance at HCH or elsewhere, as he's the guy that pretty much "broke the harmonica barrier" in Houston by making the elite group accept him, especially playing with Joe "Guitar" Hughes for years. Hughes was notorious in that musical community for playing the whole range of blues from lowdown to upscale, and he got away with it because he could hold his own with anyone in town on the sophisticated stuff. It was nonetheless a big deal for Hughes to hire a harp player instead of a horn, but Terry made it stick, not by being a schooled musician but by being effective on the bandstand.
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Greg Heumann
1030 posts
Feb 01, 2011
11:26 PM
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Wonderful stuff, htown, thanks!
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/Greg
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didjcripey
34 posts
Feb 01, 2011
11:51 PM
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Hey, wasn't Bruce Willis BB's Harp player? Look up 'Sinners prayer Bruce Willis BB King' on youtube.
Always the gentleman, BB, what a sage.
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Lucky Lester
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captainbliss
425 posts
Feb 02, 2011
12:24 AM
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@Greg Heumann:
/Wonderful stuff, htown, thanks!/
Yes!
@htownfess:
/Sorry this is so long/
On the contrary. We should be thanking you for an interesting, thought-provoking, well-informed and well-written piece. More! More!
xxx
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Sonny Boy Terry
18 posts
Apr 17, 2011
11:48 AM
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I got the gig playing Joe Guitar Hughes I think because I could play Jimmy Smith by chording on the harmonica and playing a few Cannonball Adderly songs like Funky Mama and Sack o' Woe on blues harp. Joe just seemed to like me because I could wing on club tunes like Ain't No Sunshine by laying back and playing chords like and organ in minor keys. But mostly, I was reliable and enthusiastic. Looking back, it was often frustrating because he also played numbers like Grover Washington's Mr Magic and other instrumentals such as Soul Serenade, two songs I have since heard harp players like Jimi Lee and Pat Harrington do great versions of respectively. With Joe, we played everything and I got tons of experience with an incredible bluesman. I can't say it was ideal suited for me though. I did what Joe called "Marrying" what I did to his style.
After 4 years with Joe, I decided to move on to more familiar territory by fronting my own band and playing more to my strong suit.
Now I listen to BB talk on Bluesville on weekends while driving and he basically explained he used horns as a back up much like Ike Turner used pretty girls to sing back up. And if you notice on BB's recordings, except maybe for a few times he did all the soloing with his guitar anwering in affect to his strong vocal style.
Houston blues was always pretty much a divide. Peacock Records really wanted an uptown sound and avoided the country blues style of Lightnin Hopkins. Therefore except for Junior Parkers occasional harmonica break, it never became part of our blues music heritage.
I've always got the impression once upon a time urban black folks were trying to distance themselves from the country sharecropper stereotype in many cases simply to try and sell records. So harmonica took a back seat to a more sophisticated urban sound. That's my view based on experience. Trudy's comments seem to validate that perpective. But things evolve so depending the situation, we can make anything work. In 2005 I recorded with BB King's bandleader Calvin Owens for a big band record with me talking a few choruses backed by a huge brassy sound.
All the cats here in Houston would always refer to Junior Parker when it came to harmonica. Maybe Sonny Boy Williamson a little bit. As for me, I was just trying to get a get and make something happen.
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