This topic was mentioned in another thread, but I felt it needed its own. Special thanks to Winslow Yerxa for this info.
The earliest known recording of the use of an overblow is on the 1929 recording of "Mean Low Blues" by Blues Birdhead, played in first position on G harmonica. The recording is out of pitch, but here it is - the overblow occurs around the :47 mark:
@Todd: Missin writes that it was Toots Thielmans in 1967 followed by Paul Oscher (1969), Will Scarlet (1970, 1971) and Mike Turk (1975). Interestingly, all these players seemed to have given them up in their later recordings, although Will Scarlet has returned to them in the last few years.
The first person to write about them seems to have been Richard Hunter.
Last Edited by on Aug 18, 2011 11:00 AM
Oscher told me that his first recorded OB was in 1968 (perhaps the record wasn't released until '69).
Toots recorded overblows a number of times around 67-68. he played more diatonic then, later letting it go.
I learned about overblows from Will Scarlett in 1974, when he was giving a lecture on an unrelated subject (Helmholtz acoustics) and happened to use an overblow to demonstrate a point. Later he decided that OBs were "unfriendly to the mammal" and cultivated the responder reed idea later used by Rick Epping in the XB-40. As noted, he's recently come back to playing them.
I tend to think of 1968 as the tipping point. Toots, Oscher, and I think Will all recorded OBs that year, and it's also the year Howard Levy started playing (though he didn't figure out OBs for awhile).
Last Edited by on Aug 18, 2011 11:45 AM
Thanks for all that info y'all. It definitely challenges the notion of overblows as something totally modern.
I always thought that surely with all the noises they figured out back in the day (imitating animals etc) that surely someone had hit an overblow at some point.
Who knows who all could play overblows that never got recorded? ---------- Shane,
Yeah, that's the big mystery - why no known OB recordings for nearly 40 years between 1929 and 1968-ish?
You can find them just fooling around squirting air out of your mouth. But it's easy to dismiss these as "noises" without musical value. Even after I learned OB from Will Scarlett, I thought they were too impractical to use in real-time music. Then I heard Howard playing uptempo bebop . . .
Last Edited by on Aug 18, 2011 12:29 PM
Yes I'm starting to get what a mysterious instrument the harmonica is..
There may have been many players who incorporated overblows in one form or another who never were recorded, and who would be able to tell you?
Maybe that is some of the allure of the instrument for me. The physics of it are so difficult to explain as opposed to say a harmonic node on a guitar string.
It seems like the physics are only just now being explored whereas with other instruments there is tons of info.
Never heard of Birdhead before. That's a pretty cool piece. Has that early country blues feel - kinda SB I-ish - but it's some pretty sophisticated playing.
Why would Toot's need to OB ? I didn't think he ever touched the diatonic. ----------
I would not have recognized the OB had todd not pointed it out-the early players like birdhead or deford bailey were very effective playing 1st position
Toots played diatonic during much of the 1960s and 70s, probably because record producers asked for it on sessions, though he played it now and then on his own records as well. He wasn't especially good at it, playing sort of basic blues harp, and you can tell he seems kind of boxed in because he can't get at the stuff he'd normally play on chromatic.
He didn't need to overblow in the sense of playing the diatonic chromatically because he didn't try to do that. he'd just play the 6OB now and then in second position.
Didn't know that - interesting. I spoke with him briefly after a gig of his at the old North Beach Keystone Corner back in the day. He didn't have a whole lotta props for the diatonic. Recommended a chromatic if I wanted to get serious. I never did get serious I guess. ----------
