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Dirty-South Blues Harp forum: wail on! >
Little Walter "freed the harmonica"?
Little Walter "freed the harmonica"?
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Reverend Jimmie Jive
38 posts
Dec 13, 2011
2:41 PM
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What fasteddie said !!!! DITTO !!!!
I don't think I ever met a preacher who knew the BIBLE as well as you guys know what Walter had for breakfast on such and such a day in 195*
Last Edited by on Dec 13, 2011 2:43 PM
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MagicPauley57
116 posts
Dec 13, 2011
6:01 PM
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i had to get involved didn't i ?
this is my opinion on the matter anyway .
Instead of argueing who started it , be it sonny terry etce etc , what you have missed is that it's just a statement , to merely say that Little walter kicked open the door to raise awareness that the way he played and the equipment he used embodied what was happening with blues harp at the time , to give the chicago blues harp sound a face !
it's like , we all know there was blues guitar before robert johnson , or
that when Jimi hendrix used a strat and a marshall stack and did what he did with it , at the time ,strats were not the hot ticket , then later on , Stevie ray vaughn embodied modern blues in the 80's .and so on
and when you listen to whatver artist , they usually wear thier influences on their sleeve , to hopefully make people dig deeper to find what had gone before to shape the sound .
when i started to listen to blues , it was the rolling stones , animals , pretty things , and john mayall , without them i would never have known about all the great music that went before .
ther's no bible saying do this ,or do that and you will see the light , you have to go look for it on your own , that's why Blues for me is such a rich , and deep form of music ,history and culture that will never be stale .
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Frank
74 posts
Dec 13, 2011
6:12 PM
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Hear ye, hear ye, read all about it for only $12.00 + Shipping...Email me your interest, thank you!
Last Edited by on Dec 16, 2011 4:10 AM
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Joe_L
1664 posts
Dec 14, 2011
5:07 PM
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Hi All,
I received the following message from Scott Dirks and thought I would pass it along:
"I'm gratified that almost 10 years after the book was published, people are still discussing and debating it! The forward for the Little Walter book was mainly my work. The point I was trying to make is that the generally accepted language of blues harmonica had a relatively (by today's standards) limited scope in the first half of the 20th century. To whatever extent there were such things as popular blues harmonica recordings, those recordings mainly utilized a standard vocabulary and stayed within the patterns I described. There are exceptions to every rule of course, and I'm familiar with many of them - Blues Birdhead, Rhythm Willie, et al. But these guys were not especially popular, well-known, or influential, even within the relatively small universe of blues players. The guys who *were* being relatively widely heard - John Lee Williamson, Jazz Gillum, Sonny Terry, and before them people like Noah Lewis, Will Shade, Jaybird Coleman, DeFord Bailey and a few others - were for the most part playing as I described. And most of the lesser-known players who were coming along behind them were emulating these guys. I haven't seen any evidence presented that would refute these observations.
I suppose I assumed that this should go without saying, so I didn't include it in the forward, but it looks like it needs saying now: none of this is intended as a judgement of the importance, skill, or quality of any pre-LW harmonica players. It was meant as a general assessment of the blues harmonica landscape prior to Little Walter's ascendance, presented to give the layman some idea of how much he changed the game. When I was writing it, I tried to consider whether that assessment would be fair and accurate if it *wasn't* being used in the Little Walter story for contrast and context. I believe it was and is. My esteemed collaborators in the Little Walter book project, Ward Gaines and Tony Glover, obviously agreed, or they wouldn't have signed off on it. We argued and debated at great length LOTS of details in the book, but this wasn't one of them."
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The Blues Photo Gallery
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chromaticblues
1094 posts
Dec 15, 2011
12:12 PM
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Basically I read: are you dumb asses argueing about that again! Maybe if you buy another book and read it backwards you'll understand the underlieing relevance.
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groyster1
1638 posts
Dec 15, 2011
12:38 PM
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@Joe L
this thread should with your post and chromatics-scotts message was very convincing to me-I loved his book
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J-Sin
84 posts
Dec 15, 2011
5:24 PM
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Thanks Joe for making the effort! It really cleared my mind. Especially the part about the players with a distinctive sound not being that popular – I didn't take that into account. Maybe I am concentrating too much on individual sentences.
On a more general note: are there any other people on the forum besides me and Gussow doing academic research on the blues? Reevaluating, problematizing and questioning every source is what we are URGED to do in that joint – and Adam seemed to be one of the few to find my point interesting and somewhat accurate. Just saying.
Then again, I really can't see my posts representing a "tradition of pop-journalism" or any journalism for that matter. I don't urge anyone to read my message board posts like periodicals. It's a post in a message board, that is, thinking out loud in an unofficial context, to raise discussion, to get new ideas. I'm surprised how mean the undertone on this forum can sometimes be.
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Reed To The Beat!
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groyster1
1639 posts
Dec 15, 2011
7:06 PM
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@J-Sin
yes sometimes thick skin helps on this forum-adam is far more knowledgeable than most on this forum-I admit Im just a diehard fan of blues
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Joe_L
1666 posts
Dec 15, 2011
10:22 PM
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J-Sin - if it makes you feel better, I consider you a serious blues academic.
However, since you're an academic, you know that other people may not always agree with your conclusions and you should be prepared to defend your position.
Congratulations. Best of luck to you.
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The Blues Photo Gallery
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Jehosaphat
138 posts
Dec 16, 2011
12:56 AM
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J-Sin I feel that you came in as a genuine researcher/scholar of the Blues especially as per the harmonica aspect re Little Walter.
And English is not your 1st language?
You brought up some very pertinent questions that deserved serious answers from like minded people..it has mostly been a great thread and very educational to the majority of us who don't "know what LW ate for breakfast in 195*"
I'm sure that your Thesis will be a great addition to the Scholarship of the blues lexicon
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5F6H
1042 posts
Dec 16, 2011
1:26 AM
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J-Sin, my intention was not primarily to be mean to you, I have no underlying agenda (yes, I'm a LW fan but the subject matter itself was pretty moot in this case) nor any personal feelings, one way or the other, towards you. It just struck me that your editing of the preface reflected your personal bias. I didn't think that it gave a full and true reflection as to what Scott was saying. Your OP seemed designed to inflame indignation.
Apologies if that was not your intent, as you say, perhaps you were "concentrating too much on individual sentances". I have no intention or desire, nor the energy to start a feud with you (or anyone else). You can look through my previous posts, I don't tend to get into "I think so & so, I like it so I'm right" type debates, I'll only contradict anyone if I think I can provide a robust & objective counter claim (...at least that's my intent). It's good to question so called "conventional wisdom", I do it myself often, because all too often on the net & in real life, I see many many instances where innacurate translations of what somebody has said/wrote get repeated to the point of becoming "accepted fact" (when in reality there was NEVER any basis for such acceptance). Adam agreed with you, because he also likes to query accepted paradigms & taking your OP as verbatim appeared to give adequate scope to allow that. I'm sure that the intent behind yours & Adams contributions to this thread were nothing but healthy.
I am pretty sure that in the academic world, you will meet much more vigorous & vehement calls to substantiate your position that you did from me. ;-)
All the best, Mark.
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www.myspace.com/markburness
Last Edited by on Dec 16, 2011 2:06 AM
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