I thought at first that it was pisstake..was this sold as an instructional video? You'd want a refund i'd reckon.As Greg says some great players don't make good instructors for sure.
ist capcha worked..time for a beer
Last Edited by on Feb 21, 2012 1:21 PM
No disrespect intended and it is a pretty cool video, definitely worth watching but.. Can you imagine back in the day someone dropped some cash for this, probably waited 3-4 wks for it to come in the mail, watched the first 2 mins thinking "hell yeah I'm fixin to jam" then the next words from Mr. Wells are "I dont know how to explain it to you, I dont think you can really do it.." That just seems kinda funny.
Last Edited by on Feb 22, 2012 8:05 AM
Junior had incredible style but, 80's fashion was not kind to any of us. -Bob ---------- http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#!/pages/Bourbon-Bleach/161722307208585
It's about as old school instruction as you're bound to get. That generation of players didn't tell you a damn thing. You learned by listening and paying attention. You tried to recreate the sounds you heard and learned a lot along the way. When they felt you were ready to be on stage, they asked you up. If you stunk you warmed a bar stool until the next time.
The result was there were a lot less players on stages that didn't belong on a stage. They didn't tolerate BS. If you didn't live the music, you didn't last long. It wasn't about the harmonica. It was about the music.
Quite simply, his playing stinks. Starting out an instructional video with that kind of playing only confirms for me what his live concerts in the 70´s said, "I don´t give a f*kh." Pity, ´cause a some point back in time he was a talented guy.
How many of you knew Junior personally, hung out with him, sat at his feet while he played? I did all of them. He was a great teacher. He played from his soul. We never talked about reeds, tunings, positions. He was a master and a master doesn't give it to you on a silver plate like it is done today. He gets you inspired to play and you find things your own way. Today you pay and you get minute detailed instruction from harps to mics, amps, techniques, everything. The old school guys had their own sound because they learned the old way. Now we have a mass generation of cut and paste players. This was clearly a paying gig for him and unfortunately he was in need of money most of his life. He would never give it away like today and played dumb through most of this thing. Still there are moments where he is sharing the gold. His gigs never paid much. Buddy now commands 50k a show. ---------- walter tore's spontobeat - a real one man band and over 1 million spontaneously created songs and growing. I record about 300 full length cds a year. " life is a daring adventure or nothing at all" - helen keller
I got to watch about 20 more mins of it. That is very cool to hear about how he got started. I have a close relative thats an old school musician (learned by ear) that I have learned alot about music from, just by hanging around.
Wouldn't trying to learn harp technique from this video take you maybe 100X longer (or more!) than nowadays from any one of a hundred YouTube videos out there? In other words, as far as teaching is concerned it was pretty much worthless.
To be fair, I have only watched the first 10 minutes and to a real newbie it would probably provoke some desire to recreate the sounds he produces....but instructional and of any real help to a novice.....not IMHO.
@waltertore - I saw Junior a lot. You are 100% right on. Every show was a lesson. Junior was the real deal shit! He was the King of Cool and the personification of soul.
@timeistight - Junior was a fabulous player. He was very skilled. He could say more with one note, than most players could say in a whole night of wanking. ---------- The Blues Photo Gallery
Last Edited by on Feb 22, 2012 4:09 PM
People will always revere "the originals" no matter how lousy they perform. It´s a question of adulation, not listening to music. It´s painfully obvious in this video that he has very little to contribute either as player or teacher. This is simply crap. Pity for those who bought it in the hope that they would get some instruction. The "everybody has the blues" shtick was tired already in the 50´s; that he "needed money" is no excuse at all: people do all kinds of things because they need money, provides no moral justification.
@Martin: The first 30 seconds of this video has more to teach than 99% instructional videos, if you're a seeker hoping to learn what the blues is about. Junior teaches:
1) the beauty of call & response between harp and voice;
2) how important it is to internalize the groove; he knows exactly where he is relative to the downbeat at every moment, and he maintains that precise relationship through very subtle bodily cues
3) that what made the masters the masters was their ability to do 1) and 2) while maintaining full visual command of the audience.
Perhaps you got all these lessons and thought they were trivial. I don't.
Or perhaps you weren't aware they were being taught. In which case, your global dismissal of Junior is misplaced.
I'm one of the new breed of teachers who spells all this stuff out--and CAN spell it out. But that doesn't mean I don't recognize a master player and teacher from the Old School when I see one. I've only watched the first 30 seconds of this video, but I learned three important lessons--and a fourth, which is that if I'd taken your dismissal to heart, I'd have missed a valuable learning opportunity. So lesson 4) is: listen and judge for yourself, and be willing to learn from people you're inclined to dismiss as fools.
I don't think you're a fool, BTW. I just think you rushed to judgment.
Last Edited by on Feb 22, 2012 8:43 PM
I watched the first half, but it sounds like this is geared towards beginners, who are not going to get any of the lessons suggested by Kudzu as they are too heady. They are looking for systematic and explicit instruction, which this is lacking.
At this point, I'd like to suggest that any fans of Mr. Wells check out the Billy Boy Arnold thread from yesterday.
I think part of why the old guard didn't "give it away" is two fold. One, there was probably concern over being overtaken by other acts. Why would they want to create competition? Secondly, I don't think they all had the vocabulary to explain what they were doing. Knowing how to do something doesn't mean you can explain it or teach it to others. There seems to be a lot of machismo smothering that idea, but I don't get why that gives someone street cred.
The most interesting comment on this board in a long while on this board, IMO, was what Billy Boy said about Junior Wells and Buddy Guy taking blues music to white people (the Sonny Boy stuff was interesting too). Maybe I am reading too much into it, but it sounds a little like at least the implication that they sold-out, even if just a little bit.
IMO, this parallels much of what goes on today with blues and harmonica. The irony of it is that those are the acts that fundamentalists put down the most.
I am not the biggest fan of his harp work, but Junior Wells has a ton of my respect. While I think most traditional harmonica players would HATE him if he hit the scene today, he was the definition of cool.
@waltertore: I hung out with JW for about 2 1/2 hours once before he and part of his band sat in at a bar I was playing at. His out door concert scheduled for earlier in the evening had been rained out.
Interesting experience and, of course, JW put on a great show. Besides hawking Lee Oskar harps (for which he had an endorsement deal at the time) the only musical advice i got from JW was a recommendation to join the musicians union, which he considered very important. He very proudly showed me his union card bearing the name "Amos Wells."
From watching him work with his band, it was clear that he was a VERY demanding band leader who knew exactly what he wanted and expected the musicians to play it that way. And he was not shy about letting them know if they didn't.
Last Edited by on Feb 22, 2012 11:46 PM
@HarpNinja: I agree with you on the first point, about old school players not wanting to create competition that might steal their gigs. Absolutely! You'd have to be a fool, in such a context, to "give it all away." We forget that element at our peril.
About them not "having the vocabulary to explain what they were doing," I'm much less sure. Billy Boy Arnold is old school, and he has a remarkably discerning critical vocabulary; I suspect that some of those old guys could be very precise as teachers--if they wanted to. I'm just not sure--your first point, again--that they really wanted to.
Chuck Berry to Keith Richards: "No, that's not what I did." Over and over again, even when KR had played EXACTLY what CB had just played. Keep 'em running.
"The most interesting comment on this board in a long while on this board, IMO, was what Billy Boy said about Junior Wells and Buddy Guy taking blues music to white people (the Sonny Boy stuff was interesting too). Maybe I am reading too much into it, but it sounds a little like at least the implication that they sold-out, even if just a little bit."
Billy Boy is entitled to his opinion, but it's important to remember that Buddy and Junior made their living in music, while Billy Boy had a day job and wasn't very active in music for decades. Buddy and Junior rode the waves of blues popularity. Their musical careers had some very lean times. You've got to do what you've got to do to survive playing music full time. It takes a rare personality type to do that. While Billiy Boy may have felt they sold out, he did the same thing as Black audiences stopped buying Billy Boy Arnold records when he stopped recording for VeeJay Records in the 50's.
As evident by his talk (not explanation) of positions within the first couple minutes of the video, I'd say Jr probably had good procedural strategies for playing harp, but not a complete conceptual understanding.
In other words, he knew his multiplication facts, but not what multiplication really is.
I would think this was common back then as we have more information leading to conceptual understanding than ever, but few people try to move beyond a procedural understanding.
Using positions as an example, many players memorize the second position harp key, but few can explain why it works and how it relates to other positions.
@Walter I hang out with JW before. My friend years ago was a black guy a grew up with and he has pretty big. Like 6' 4" 300 pounds big. We went to see junior at a show and he had his body gaurd at the front door where they were collecting money and his body gaurd made my friend look like a little girl. Actully that is how I got to know Junior is by telling this guy is was so Fing big he made my friend look like a little girl! He didn't say anything to us, but latter he ask me where my girl friend was. I thought was pretty funny. Anyway It's along stroy! There isn't politically correct way of describing Junior's accent. So I'm not going to try! He was a piece of work I'll say that. I think he was funny, but I probaly understood only about half of what he said. WE were giving his bodygaurd shit about how big he was and after awhile he loosened up and starting giving it back. I had alot of fun that night! Junior was a blast!! He was a great BLUES musician in his day. His day was before that video was made!
Last Edited by on Feb 23, 2012 2:27 AM
Billy Boy Arnold's brother is Julio Finn, author of THE BLUESMAN, a pointed attack on the ignorance of white blues commentators. I hear a little of that stance in Billy's comment. Billy knows damned well that 90-95% of the audience for his current recordings and 90-95% of the promoters bringing him to festivals in the US and overseas are white people. It can be satisfying to beat up on the white man and those who "take the music" to Him, but as any blues artist knows, life is about getting paid, too.
If you read Carlo Rotella's essay on Buddy Guy in GOOD WITH THEIR HANDS, it's clear that the one baneful influence white guys DID have on Buddy was in the studio, where they told him to play it safe rather than playing his Hendrix-style stuff. He was playing Hendrix style before Hendrix. But they wouldn't let him record it. They wanted somewhat more conventional "Chicago blues," not that wild stuff. The chapter is called "Too Many Notes" and it is one of the smartest, most original pieces of writing on the blues you'll ever find. Here's the amazon URL:
I love Billy Boy's stuff. He's on the short list to headline HCH 2013. We'll pay him good money to bring the blues to....ah.....er.....Mississippi.
Last Edited by on Feb 23, 2012 12:54 AM
Joe/Adam: Great points! I kind of feel like Billy Boy Arnold. I never reached his level of fame but was on the scene full time and now have a day job that allows me to keep my music any way I want it. We all make our choices with our art. Nobody is putting a gun to your head so for me whatever anyone does or doesn't do with their art is their buisness. The thing that saddens me today is people are forgetting more and more how exciting it is to discover stuff on their own. It may be ancient history to the world but when you discover it on your own it is a high that can't be duplicated any other way. Our world of today is about, hurry up, lack of time the norm, and is ever increasing in the concept of "get it now". We want fast, with little to no self discovery in the endeavor because self discovery takes lots of time. Junior Wells and the players before him took lots of time with self discovery. I am glad I am of that dinasour age. I discover stuff everyday through my uneducated musical playing that never ceases to keep my soul excited and happy :-)
I am glad guys like Adam do what they do with harmonica education because there is a demand for it and I dig technology, but it has widespread ramifications like the lack of guys like junior on the scene today. I have no cell phone, don't text, don't watch tv or read the newspaper, don't own a big screen tv. I make music in most of my free time, ride my bicycle to work, and am very thankful I am able to avoid being involved with all this info age technology craze and for being able to keep the way I learned music alive. Walter ---------- walter tore's spontobeat - a real one man band and over 1 million spontaneously created songs and growing. I record about 300 full length cds a year. " life is a daring adventure or nothing at all" - helen keller
And look: my frustration notwithstanding, part of what I like about Billy Boy is precisely the fact that he's opinionated and that his opinions aren't necessarily congruent with mine--or with anybody's prefab opinions about "blues greats." Some blues musicians were happy to cross over: B. B. King is the perfect example. But others either were afraid to leave their home communities, or had political inclinations--black nationalist inclinations, if you will--that made them spiky about what was being asked of them on the white side of town. Some were freethinkers. Eddie Boyd was brutally direct about saying was he thought about southern whites in their racist aspect. It's not as though bluesmen were all apolitical types until the 1960s came along. But that decade was a watershed, and it's easier to understand the occasional racial statements of guys like Billy Branch, Sugar Blue, and Billy Boy Arnold if you understand them as a response BOTH to those newer political currents and to a longstanding tradition of black blues artists getting political--as in Big Bill Broonzy's "Black, Brown, and White." (Or whatever it was called." All four of the artists I've mentioned (except BB) were Chicago guys, more or less. It's not coincidental that Chicago was where the Nation of Islam, with its talk of the "white devil," was headquartered. Chicago is a place where you're free to say what you think. The Jim Crow South was not. A lot of blues players escaped from there.
Last Edited by on Feb 23, 2012 2:30 AM
@waltertore "Junior Wells and the players before him took lots of time with self discovery."
The reason they could take their time is that they were immersed in live music/blues from a very,very early age.
It used to be like that here in the UK,live music in the house on piano,guitar,squeezebox or spoons. Everybody would have to "do their turn" and perform.
Those days are gone.
All the good and great musicians I've met are very driven and will use all methods at their disposal to better their art.Which includes the internet,computers,and other digital devices.
The old masters were no less driven and would have done the same if they could.
Due to modern living and modern tastes,myself and most other people on here will not even have heard blues or harp till they were in there late teens or older and don't have the luxury of growing up with it............ So, thank goodness for the internet as it lets me preach to and learn from guys like you all over the world. Learn about tongue blocking,positions,overblows etc
Also due to this there are probably more blues harp players now than ever before.
Also, hooray for the great players/teachers of today, who are prepared to give it away. Unlike Jr who even in his video gave us very little that could not be gleaned from listening to a cd. ---------- The Pentatonics Reverbnation Youtube
"Why don't you leave some holes when you play, and maybe some music will fall out".
I have a habit that I've come to realize interferes with my development. When I come across a teacher, I have a tendency to get judgmental, of their playing, of the concepts, of their teaching, etc. I think this comes from ego and fear. Kenny Werner talks fear-based listening, fear-based practicing, even fear-based teaching as things that keep us from reaching "effortless mastery". And looking around this forum, I don't think I'm the only one with this problem.
I'm trying to replace this with an attitude of "what does this teacher have that I'd like to add to my playing or understanding? How can I work to learn those things?"
Junior Wells had a fifty-year career as a blues musician. He learned from Sonny Boy Williamson. He replaced Little Walter in Muddy's band for pity's sake. And in this video, he creates monstrous grooves with just his voice, his fingersnaps and the occasional harp fill.
To pass up the chance to learn from him, because of a flubbed note or because you think his Memphis accent or southside wardrobe is funny, is a terrible loss.
Last Edited by on Feb 23, 2012 2:40 PM
7limitJl: I agree with you on many points. The thing that is undeniable is live music in dedicated listening venues has been dying faster since this new technology boom has hit. People cite DWI and drinking age increases. That happened when I was living/playing in austin. It did very little to wreck the scene. Young people today simply don't go out like they use to see live music. Young people have up till recently, created and maintained american roots music scenes for live performances in this country. The oldest guys in the scene were usually the players a nd owners of clubs but the crowds, and most players were young. I teach High school. Many students never heard of SRV, Bob Dylan. In my youth we knew about performers that were long dead by the time we were born. Today most high school students don't know what a cassette or reel to reel tape is. Their minds are overloaded with all this information via these new technologies and the definition of what is history is being shortened everyday. I sang a song the other day about getting older is getting younger all the time.
Where are we heading? I don't know but the basic need to get out of ones house to survive - food, clothes, etc, is rapidly ending. It all can be ordered on the net. Small businesses are being eaten up by walmarts and walmarts are being hit by internet sales. I think live music is a casuality of this shift in how our culture has done life for so long.
The old guys gave it all away for free. You just had to be dedicated to the life. Back when I was playing only guys that couldn't make it playing live taught. No one sold stuff off the stage. Now even many of the top players in blues have to give lessons to survive. I am sure they love it but I bet most would prefer to be playing 200+ gigs a year and instructing off the stage via their performance and conversations around the gig vs. doing 100 or less gigs a year and not earning enough to survive without lessons. The masters let you in if you showed them you were serious about it. I learned from Lightning Hopkins, sonny terry, louisiana red, bill dicey, sonny rhodes, and too many others to type out here. They openly shared it and I continue to openly share it to ones that really want it. Most will say they want it but are not willing to walk the life it takes to get it. I would much rather carry on this conversation with you in the flesh. This is what I did for 200+ gigs a year for 20 years around the world on breaks, between gigs, before and after gigs. Now there are very few players that are not at thet top of the music scene that get to play more than a few dozen gigs a year and technology has definetly played a role in this phenomenon. Such is my 2 cents for the day. Walter ---------- walter tore's spontobeat - a real one man band and over 1 million spontaneously created songs and growing. I record about 300 full length cds a year. " life is a daring adventure or nothing at all" - helen keller
@kudzu: 'The first 30 seconds of this video has more to teach than 99% instructional videos, if you're a seeker hoping to learn what the blues is about. Junior teaches:'
I disagree. He demonstrates the things that you go on to describe, but there is a big difference between just demonstrating and teaching. Of course one is part of the other, and there is lessons in every demonstration, but as someone who paid for this instructional video, I got much more mileage from listening to his recorded works. ---------- Lucky Lester
@Kudzurunner: Thanks for not calling me a fool -- I hope I didn´t call anybody something like that: let´s separate opinions from persons here, in a good tradition. But I disagree completely with you on the value. The distincton between demonstrating and teaching -- that Didjcripey mentions here above -- is very pertinent. He teaches nothing, as far as I can see. Your three points are certainly not trivial, although even his demonstration of them here leaves quite a lot to be desired, I think, and it would, possibly, have been interesting to hear him say something about it. After all, this is the same guy that played on "Standin´round and crying". However, he´s way beyond his prime here; also, articulating thoughts on music/harmonicas is clearly not his ... -- forte. There are dozens on Youtube that a) plays better b) knows what it means to teach. (You´re one of them, BTW) If this had been a young white guy from, say, Sweden!, playing like this and talking that kind of crap it would have been nothing but a joke. But he´s "Junior Welles" and that´s when another perception enters -- a "false" perception, if you forgive the expression -- but that is the only thing interesting about this deplorable way to make a buck, how we are governed by some blues myths about "authenticity" and so on. Someone saw it fit to relase this. I´ve expanded in a neighbouring forum on his concerts from the 70´s and the enormous disappointment that came with them so I´ll let that rest, just noting that he had passed his zenith with a margin already then. Some people wrote me in concurrence (privately, it´s a touchy thing to critisise blues heroes), using an expression that was new to me: "He (and Buddy Guy) were `phoning it in´" instead of delivering what people were paying for. This is another instance of his´ "phoning it in". Cheers, /Martin PS Thanks for pointing out that Julio Finn is Jerome Davenport, I had missed that. Interesting in a "context of discovery" sense, not "context of justification". (I read his book back in the day and had some opinions about it, but that´s for another time.)
I hate to beat a point but most people on this forum have no clue to as what guys like junior were about. You can intelectualize it all you want but if you were in a room with junior you would be done before you ever touched a harp. His mere presence was all the blues was and is about. Seeing the harp as a thing that produces x amounts of sounds and one is judged by how many perfect ones they do is not what these guys were about. they were beyond that stuff that seems to be an obsession with mediocre players. Guys like junior played live and interacted with the audiences. there music had to be seen in this context. they worked with audience, which is a term that is freely used by so many that don't have a clue to what it really is about. Most plan these moments and pretend they are spontaneous. Check the tension and release, the facial movements, muscles, in his sound that is directly connected to the audience. It wasn't planed it happened-spontaneous. Check when he grabs buddy's guitar. That was a move I saw many times. It pisses the other guy off but then junior gave him another solo next time around and buddy smokes. He also looked at him after doing and conveyed you cool with it? Buddy smokes the second solo and cuts it just short of when he should- getting back at Junior-no way you could cut that solo sucker cause it was too hot to touch! Junior wasn't faking. He was bringing the music to a fever pitch that goes beyond music notes. Tension like this is not happening today that I am aware of. this is the stuff that people fake today after watching these videos and never seen it live. I saw it night after night both as a bandmember and audience member. Once you see it live it so easy to spot it being faked it is embarrassing to watch. That was the blues teaching these guys gave at their performances. Putting him in front of a camera like this is so sterile a set up that guys like him always sounded terrible vs. being in a live happening club. they came alive with energy from an interactive audience. I was amazed at how bad some of them sounded in the dressing room and when they got onstage tore up every techno boy in the house. Here are a couple of videos from the 70's of him. Past his prime?? Another thing is very few people here know about what kind of life guys like junior led. You may have read it but without living it you can't have a clue. Bad food, bad vehicles, bad beds, low pay, long hours, bad sound systems, flat harps, were regular occurances. Most here play once in awhile and sleep in their own bed in a nice home. I knew an old pawn broker from chicago that said he use to give junior a couple dollars when he came in to pawn old flat harps as little kid. Sid knew he was hungry and the money would get him a meal. Junior never came back for those harps. He probably got them from SBW and such when they went bad..... This guy lived the life. How many of his critics here have?? I lived with these guys and witnessed it all firsthand. Sleeping in cars, hungry, broke down with no repair money. This was their life more than you would ever believe. I mean no disrespect to anyone but I will forever stand up when somebody like junior is put under the intellectual magnifier. Walter
---------- walter tore's spontobeat - a real one man band and over 1 million spontaneously created songs and growing. I record about 300 full length cds a year. " life is a daring adventure or nothing at all" - helen keller
Billy Branch tells what is was like learning from Junior Wells, Carey Bell and James Cotton other players of his generation at about 2:00 and it runs until about 4:00.
I guess we all learn different ways. Some people need to be handheld and babied along the way. That's doesn't address the hazing and trash talking that was common.
@waltertore - I saw him in 1988 after I moved to California. He was playing at JJ's in Mountain View. Gary Smith opened that show. Junior's horn section went to the JJ's in San Jose. Junior played that show with two guitars, bass and drums. He blew some of the baddest harp that I ever heard. He played some of the most low down Blues that I heard anyone play. It was seriously deep. He smoked Gary Smith (who is a helluva player).
This was after many of people on the Internet wrote him off. Go figure.
Joe_L: sometimes I wonder why I keep sharing my stories. Its not about the good old days. Its about whether or not the music is happening at a peak level. It seems like a losing battle today.. Most are concerned with the politically correct hustle, not offending anyone, fear of losing a notch on the popularity meter, and it has just about become politically incorrect to do the blues the way they were done that made them what they are famous for. I may die in obscurity but the times I had with the blues greats set a benchmark that I use to judge what is good and not. It isn't about anything but that. Thanks for sharing your stories! Walter ---------- walter tore's spontobeat - a real one man band and over 1 million spontaneously created songs and growing. I record about 300 full length cds a year. " life is a daring adventure or nothing at all" - helen keller
"Check the tension and release, the facial movements, muscles, in his sound that is directly connected to the audience. It wasn't planed it happened-spontaneous. Check when he grabs buddy's guitar. That was a move I saw many times."
If he did it all the time, was it spontaneous then? This makes me think of the live music producer, Tom Jackson (not American Idol Tome Jackon). These guys played a bajillion shows and when something worked one night, they were smart enough to try it another night.
I love Jr Wells, mostly for the vibe and vocals, but these guys know what they're doing. Buddy Guy and his crowd walk, aren't totally spontaneous.
I LOVED THIS VIDEO! I love hearing these guys (the masters) talk, and not just about music, about living.
I was talking with a drummer who worked for James Cotton, James told him, If he didn't know what the words to the songs meant he wasn't playing it right. At that moment he realized he wasn't playing the songs right.
Too many players can make the noise but they don't know what "the words" mean. You can hear it in their own music. Meaningless. Hopefully we will all listen to Juniors advice, "NEVER let anybody pat you on the back". We ALL need to keep searching for the "meaning". We also need to remember we are all at different point in that search, and respect the individual.
Videos like this and any other interviews with the masters help me in my search for the "meaning".
Threads like this are the reason I really love this forum.
Thanks you all for your comments.
---------- electricwitness.com
Last Edited by on Feb 24, 2012 2:56 AM
Just before we go, I'd like to mention Junior Wells We stole his thing from him, and he from someone else Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, he plays the blues like few before May he play forevermore
@waltertore - "Sometimes I wonder why I keep sharing my stories." - please don't think about it Walter, just keep the stories coming. You are a genuine, honest, and perhaps irreplaceable link to a number of 'real' blues musicians.
@shanester - "The more notes you play, the more neurotic and diluted the message becomes, that's just me!" - and its me also!
There are some bizarre comments about Junior above. I imagine it is quite rare for someone to become renowned for playing a musical instrument without: a - considerable skill b - alot of hard work c - an individual sound d - slice of luck For any student (young or old) serious about searching for nuggets of information to help them improve, it is probably best to simply accept/ignore (d) and try and learn from (a) (b) and (c).
Jr. mentioned the sax in relation to the harp I did a little research work after hearing that & came across the name AC Reed. I just picked up some AC on iTunes very cool phrasing
Great Stuff!
------------- "The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires." ~William Arthur Ward
Last Edited by on Feb 24, 2012 11:04 AM
If you listen to Jr's older recordings, you'll note that he was very capable of elaborate playing in the mid-50's Chicago Style. The notion that his notoriety is due to "hero worship" is short-sighted at best. Same goes for Mike's opinion that JW would be discounted today. Sure, for guys focused on the instrument itself, and their own "ideal" of theoretical music coupled with insecurity that they and their instrument aren't being taken seriously enough, Jr Wellsmight be easily discounted. However, it's the subtlety, the nuance, and the attitude that counts for so much in blues music. Jr could play ripping solos, but he chose his notes and placed them creating his own style. People don't create heros out of thin air, or because of some legend. The instructional video; what do you expect? His playing, though? If you don't get it, then you probably don't get IT. ---------- 12gagedan's YouTube Channel
in the 70`s when i saw jr. wells with buddy guy he was mostly ,tuned up,what looked like booze,and he didn`t play more than 30 min. each show,a little harp and alot of jiving around.but when he got serious like doing "viet cong blues" him and buddy would make time stand still. jr. would play one note in that song and it was better than any harp player doing 100 notes...also,when he split from buddy and did his own thing he stopped jivin and put on fantastic shows with great harp playing up intill he died,so i have all the "respect" forthe blues man.......
