I've seen his videos a couple of times before, but I'm glad you posted. He's certainly a virtuoso harp player. It's very much at the intersection of Sonny Terry and Wayne Raney, which is to say the place where blues and country meet. The first clip makes clear that the rhythmic virtuosity of the fox chase is grounded in that weird/wild eephin stuff. It uses a very quick in/out HOOH-hah HEE-hah thing. It's a lost art, but like all lost arts, parts of it are still alive in the music of our own time.
My experience teaches me that if you devote yourself to intensive study of this stuff, it will pay off at unexpected moments. You might be onstage at a pickup gig and somebody asks you to play a funk tune and these rhythms will suddenly turn out to be the stuff you need.
Thanks for the story Adam. I agree that parts of any of the old stuff can be an influence in about any modern music. Not just older music but style. Like this guy...and everybody thought that the rappers of the 80s were the first to wear their pants "saggin". I love getting my harps out to songs like this just to see what happens.
