OK, I've finally rigged up my old tape deck. Using voice memos from my iPhone, I've managed to record some stuff and I'll be posting these up with questions.
First one. As the title says, Pop Quiz. This is a recording of She's Nineteen Years Old by Muddy Waters.
I had it on an old compilation cassette which I transferred to a mix tape, so I have no idea of when it was recorded. Immediately you think Jerry Portnoy, due to it's recording quality and mix, but Jerry Portnoy is arguably a better player than this. The most striking thing to me is the 'wailing' after the line 'she's got ways just like a baby child'. This is something Jerry Portnoy never did in any other recording I've ever heard, and to me adds amazing tension to the song. The tone the harp player has is also phenomenal. I'd love to know who this is, but in the meantime, enjoy. It ranks as one of my favourite all time recordings.
Edit:
Sorry for the delay in posting the song. Don't even ask.. Heh.
Last Edited by on Apr 11, 2011 5:51 AM
George 'Harmonica' Smith...? Carey Bell is good, too. Even Jimmy Cotton...would do. I hear a little of all of em. Watch it be Junior Wells(on steroids)....ha! Do you know? tell me tell me tell me...
Harpdude: Great vid. I've cherished this mixtape as I never thought I'd find this version again. I've looked everywhere for it.
When I suggested Jerry Portnoy was 'better', I was suggesting technically better. The harp playing on this track just completely blew my hair back when I first heard it and just does it for me every time I listen to it.
I agree Steve. This track is just raw, in your face blues.
He breaks the rules but makes it work. THe 4,5, draw warble over the IV chord is cool...not to mention the 8,9 blow bend double stop right before that.
Cotton? Of course I could be totally full of it,but that doesn't seem like Cotton's style. Harpdude--is that an educated guess or do you know for sure? Don't want to start a any arguments,just curious.
Edit: I listened again and I'm not sure. Maybe it's the recording that's throwing me off. It sounds like Cotton sometimes,but sometimes not. Is it early in his career? I think he's switching between first & second position./
Last Edited by on Apr 12, 2011 1:48 PM
It's Paul Oscher. I've never heard this track before, I suspect it's one of the Red Lightin' tracks meant for Harley Cockliss's film in '70? Buddy on guitar?
Jerry better than this? I don't think that you will ever hear Jerry say that, he said, "I had some pretty big shoes to fill, following Paul into the band."...or something like that.
Paul Oscher is one of the greatest living exponents of the blues and blues harp, you should catch him accompanying himself on guitar, whilst playing rack harp on Juke, or Off the Wall.
He does sound a little Cotton-esque at times, have fun trying to pick out the Oscher & Cotton tracks on live at Mr Kellys ;-) But he's perhaps a little more aggressive/direct...intense.
Everyone should have a copy of The Deep Blues of Paul Oscher.
Last Edited by on Apr 12, 2011 3:42 PM
I suspect that 5F6H is correct. While this sounds like James Cotton, some of the signature techniques that are part of Cotton's style are missing. Listen to the stuff Cotton played on the Live at Newport recordings and some of the other recordings from the mid 60's and you'll see what I mean.
I wasn't suggesting it might be Paul Oscher, IT IS Paul Oscher ;-)
I've compared it to the clip at the end of the "19 yrs old" footage from Harley Cockliss' film...it's that same recording (shouts from audience are identical). Apart from Muddy & Oscher, it doesn't sound like Muddy's band, more likely Jr/Buddy's.
Firstly Paul Oscher told me it was him (his face was cut from the footage). Secondly it is Paul Oscher (not Carey, Jerry, Cotton).
It's cleared up, trust me.
Don't know how to post a clip, do what I did, go to youtube & type in "Muddy Waters", "Hoochie Coochie Man (1970)" comes up posted by Lupine22, go to the end of the clip.
Jeez..you kids today, you all want spoon-feeding. Pressing a dozen keys too much like hard work? ;-)
Hopefully Oscher won't wait another 40yrs for his 3rd visit to the UK ;-) Catch him if you can, it's an experience in itself, it's more than just watching someone play some music, the guy is mesmerising, like a shamen.
Though I've never seen him live, there's a fair few clips of Oscher floating around on Youtube, both back in the day with Muddy and more recently solo.
When it comes to playing in a rack - he's got to be somewhere near the top (if not the best)
I'm not surprised to hear that it's Oscher. The first part of the harp stuff is flat--the stuff in first position. Once he switches to cross harp, it does indeed have a vaguely Cottonish flavor, but it's just not as good or distinctive as Cotton's. Paul is a fantastic player now, but the playing here is, for my money, solid and generic and slightly imitative. It's not nearly as original as Buttefield. This doesn't mean that Oscher wasn't a fine player who fully deserved his spot in the Muddy Waters band--indeed, his pioneering spot. It just means that, at this point--and as I see it--he wasn't as creative or distinctive as Cotton or Butterfield. That's why this quiz took a while to solve. If it really was Cotton or Butterfield or Carey Bell, we would have figured it out more quickly. Oscher, Mojo Buford: the next step down the high ladder. My 2 cents.
But these days Oscher is a master--the truly creative artistic master that he wasn't quite back then. No doubt about that.
Last Edited by on Apr 13, 2011 11:38 AM
Adam: Are you saying by 'first position' he was using an A harp and switched to a D, or suggesting he was playing in 1st position by starting on the IV (D)?
I'm happy to be wrong, but I don't seem to have enough range on a D 10 hole to get this. A 12 or 14 hole seems to make sense.
I didn't actually pull my harps out to check, but yes, I heard him start off on a lower harp--an A, I'll assume--and switch to a higher harp (a D, as you suggest). The song remained in the same key. So he began on an A harp in first position and then switched to a D harp played second position.
I watched the whole Mojo workin' Vid. I saw a really young kid hanging tuff with some salty veterans. Why wouldn't he be imatating the harp players who came before him? Isn't that what we all do? Going back to the first video, (19 yrs old) I thought the solo was good. Remember, we don't know what he had to play the song before or what he was faced with for the next song. If we heard the whole set we could make better judements on his creativity.
That's what most young players do. The very best young players, though--Little Walter, Butterfield, Clapton in Cream, Stevie Ray--find a way of stamping their personality so indelibly on what they're doing that people on forums don't have this kind of discussion about whether it's them or somebody else on a particular cut.
OK, I've been trying this. I just can't get my head around the intro being in first position on an A harp. There's way too many bends and to hit them as accurately as what's on this recording.
OK, on an uber tweaked custom harp, with a mastery of totally accurate bending in low keys, someone could pull it off, but it seems far too unconventional for a blues harp player. That's not to say Paul Oscher is conventional in any way, but a 14 holer would seem a more practical option given the live situation of this recording.
I'm gonna get a 14 hole MB. If I'm wrong, I'm happy to be and I'll just have another harp to the collection.
Edit: OK, Hohner doesn't make a 14 holer in D. Just C and G, but they do make a 12 hole in D. Hmm......
Last Edited by on Apr 14, 2011 1:42 AM
Hohner don't make a 14 holer in A, nor a 12. The 12 hole in D is a low octave harp & would have to be played in 2nd position...that's not what is on the recording.
"OK, on an uber tweaked custom harp, with a mastery of totally accurate bending in low keys, someone could pull it off, but it seems far too unconventional for a blues harp player." These are regular bent notes on the 2 & 3 holes that any competant player should be able to hit on a 10 hole diatonic...even a blues player!;-)
The first notes you hear from Paul (V Chord) are 2d full tone bend, 2d half step bend, 2d straight, tailing off to a bend. 4 blow is the root note.
Kudzurunner "The very best young players, though--Little Walter, Butterfield, Clapton in Cream, Stevie Ray--find a way of stamping their personality so indelibly on what they're doing that people on forums don't have this kind of discussion about whether it's them or somebody else on a particular cut." Phew you're a hard taskmaster. I'm not sure the guys you mention had achieved that at 20, like Paul was in this clip...fair enough, he dropped of the radar somewhat shortly afterwards, but I had no trouble identifying him, because I'm familiar with his work...I struggle to see how he could be confused with the other players mentioned. If you weren't aware of Butterfield, Clapton, LW, SRV when you first heard them, you would recognise them either, you can only do that with hindsight, which isn't a "gift/ESP" & doesn't earn you any big wins at the horses ;-). When I heard Bowie's Let's Dance, I didn't jump up and shout, "Wow what's David Bowie doing on a SRV track"...I didn't have the faintest idea who SRV was at the time, I guess that many folks who bought the album still don't.
You can hear John Lee Williamson in LW's early recordings, Hubert Sumlin, Freddie King in Clapton's, Freddie again in SRV, along with Jimi, Buddy, Lonnie Mack....Butterfield, a unique sound, but huge LW influence...none of them appeared on this earth fully formed.
I always thought that SRV sounded more like Albert King than anyone else.
During the mid 60's, I didn't think Butterfield's sound was super distinctive. He sounded like a harp player backed by a veteran Chicago band. I always thought his singing was huge influence on Kim Wilson.
I find Paul Oscher, Butterfield and Charlie Musselwhite to be interesting case studies. It must have been unusual to see Caucasian faces in the clubs in those days. To be good enough to play in Muddy's band in those days, you had to be good. Muddy had a lot of great players to choose from back then.
@Steve - when you're learning that type of stuff, there weren't a lot of custom harps to be had. It was done mostly on easily available harps. The big selection like we have today didn't exist then. Everyone played Marine Bands.
That Chicago Blues film has some of my favorite guitar work by Buddy Guy. That version of The First Time I Met The Blues is absolutely wicked!
My bad. I've been squeaking away on an really badly set up A harp, I haven't been playing anything lower than a C for months and I've never ever attempted to play blues in 1st position.
I've since done a bit of gapping and practiced a bit. Sorry for talking such rubbish. Heheh.
@5F6H: Yea, I'm a hard taskmaster! So we've ascertained that the OP's recording--the "pop quiz" was made when Paul was 20? Or are you/we talking about the "Mojo" video? Two different performances.
Clapton recorded "Sunshine of Your Love" when he was 23 and the live version of "Crossroads" not long after. LW recorded "Juke" when he was 20, more or less.
Stevie Ray was 28 in 1982 when he broke out. So he was an older guy, and not a good example for me to have cited. Yes, he had a lot of Albert King in him, but King didn't play a strat or tune it down a half step, and the combination of those two things, combined with SRV's genius, gave him an entirely distinctive sound--although surely not one, at 20, that we all could have picked out.
At this point the conversation is unproductive and I'm happy to drop out of it. Paul's a great player, as I've said repeatedly, both here and elsewhere. He was the very first blues harmonica player I heard on record--which is to say, he's one of my heroes, somebody whose recorded output I was dancing along to, and copying, when I was 16. (Johnny Young, MISSISSIPPI MANDOLIN.) Is that enough hero worship for you? Thinking critically sometimes means giving heroes A's instead of A+s--or at least distinguishing between the two. And some A students only start getting A+'s later in the game. If Paul and Little Walter both get A+s from you at age 20: Hey, we're having a small disagreement, not a large disagreement. Please don't suggest that it's more than that.
Here's some interesting backstory, for those who don't know as much as they should about Paul:
http://www.pauloscher.com/news.htm
The relevant quote, towards the bottom of the page, is: "Paul was the first white musician in the world to become a full time member of a black blues band of that stature. He traveled the chitlin' circuit with Muddy playing the black theatres and juke joint joints to people who knew the blues, lived the blues and had the blues."
Last Edited by on Apr 14, 2011 4:51 AM
Paul was 20 in 1970 when the Chicago Blues film was made. 18yrs old in the Mojo clip.
You're right it's a small disagreement, for whatever reasons Oscher didn't capitalise on his exposure & scale the heights the other players you allude to did, so in that respect I guess my point is kind of moot. Good to see though that he's getting much deserved recognition now & anything that keeps his name in the public eye can only be a good thing.
Last Edited by on Apr 14, 2011 5:10 AM
I hate to disagree with what harps have been suggested here, but I'll make my case. I have been studying these licks for a good while. This cut is on a CD my son made me.
He plays the entire song on a 10 hole diatonic in "D". Listen to the first 3 notes....1 blow, 1 draw bent, and 1 draw...and he falls off pitch on the 3rd note, 1 draw, on purpose.
The high end solo break starts on draw 8 to blow 9. Too high for an A harp in first.
Please show me if I am wrong and i will eat my hat..
Last Edited by on Apr 14, 2011 5:51 AM
He was only 18 in the "Mojo" clip? Well, then you win this one. I don't know any 18 year old--present-day phenoms excluded--who can play like that. Certainly Butterfield couldn't. Oscher was indeed exceptional to have risen to THAT level at age 18.
Last Edited by on Apr 14, 2011 6:02 AM
Okay 5F6H (how do you pronounce that)...you know more about these things than I do. So he switches harps 47 seconds into the video? He plays 1st position for just that short time?
I won't say 100% for sure, but I can copy those licks on a D harp starting on blow 1. Why not do that and you can play one harp the whole song?
There's a 1 blow on the A harp (A220Hz) at 0:34, a few 1 & 2 Blows (C#) before that. So it can't be played on a D harp (lowest A is 440Hz).
You can hit all the notes with a D harp, just not the same feel, or in the same octave.
Harp switching is a commonly used trick LW used to do it every now & then...many others have followed suit, it's showing off your chops & varies the licks & feel.
@Kudzurunner: 'He was only 18 in the "Mojo" clip? Well, then you win this one. I don't know any 18 year old--present-day phenoms excluded--who can play like that. Certainly Butterfield couldn't. Oscher was indeed exceptional to have risen to THAT level at age 18.'
Alex Paclin is 18 and he's only been playing for 2 years. Teehee......
7...you are getting confused. I meant that I do not hear the one blow on an A harp in the video by the original poster..........so really? I can use the one blow in first position? :)
I thought it was clearly indicated elsewhere that you can clearly tell the difference between distinguished players regardless of gear, etc. How can there be any question who this is? Original voice this, personal tone that, blah, blah, blah.
I am saying this while chuckling. I might be stirring the pot a little bit, but nothing personal to anyone. it just goes to show that, IMO, not all the common stereotypes associated with playing are true.
I will be so bold as to say if this was Sugar Blues, Paul Delay, Carlos Del Junco, Jason Ricci, Dennis Gruenling, etc, there'd be less room for debate. Not sure what that means, or if it is good or bad. ---------- Mike Quicksilver Custom Harmonicas
Last Edited by on Apr 13, 2011 6:52 AM