besides these two, are there anymore black harp players out tour and recording.seem to me theyre like white guys in the nba.few and far between.oh and please dont say james cotton
Well...Grady Champion and Brandon Bailey, just to start the list off. But, color doesn't matter, as long as you can bring the noise...right? If not, I'm so screwed. ---------- Todd L. Greene
No it doesn't really matter,kind of thinking out loud about how the blues is pretty much dead in the black communitys.also that most of the popular harp players today are white,wondering if there were any black harp players to carry the torch.
Harmonica Hinds is still around. Bobby Rush blows the harp. Russ Green gets out. I haven't seen Steve Bell around in a while but he is pretty bad ass. Rip Lee Pryor is a fine harp player, too.
Many of the guys in the Chicago Blues Harmonica Project are Black artists. Blues isn't dead into the Black community. It's changed since the 50's and doesn't feature much harmonica. You need to buy more recordings.
Most harmonica players are white and it appears that many don't listen to a lot of Black music.
I was sitting in the car the other night waiting for my wife to come out of a 24-hour supermarket and "OPP" came on the radio. I wasn't ready for it when it first came out. But you know what? Older white guys are ready for the latest hip-hop hits about 20 years down the line. I sat there, transfixed, getting it all--every little reference--and grooving to the beat. It's a witty song about what a blues artist might call "back door love." I got that basic idea back in 1991; I just couldn't understand the rest of it and didn't like the sound of those sulky voices. Now the stuff sounds like blues to me--and because it's all voice and beats, it's something I'm listening to with fresh ears as a one-man band guy looking for fresh sounds that I can sample into my blues. Sounds, not lyrics.
Nothing is more pitiful than a 53-year old white guy saying "Hey, I'm really getting into 'OPP'!" Pitiful.
Translation for the even more clueless than me: other people's pu--y.
Little Sammy Davis, Jerry Boogie Mccain, Lazy Lester, Kenny NEal, Professor Harp, Johnny Dyer, Big Chico from Brasil, Keith Dunn ---------- http://www.youtube.com/user/wheelharp
Oh boy Adam - hip hop and blues. I've said it all before, but there is such a huge crossover in the sounds and cultures for those prepared to look/listen for it - especially in the older school stuff (before all that autotuned RnB crossover stuff).
Wow Adam! you really are stirring the pot this week!
Adam-Down my way, OPP stands for Orleans Parish Prison(the capital letters 'OPP" are emblazoned on the back of bright orange jumpsuits)...so I chuckle when I hear it, but for a different reason. I don't recall the video, but if anyone in it was wearing an orange jumpsuit, it just became that much funnier.
'I'm down with O.P.P. (doing 20 to life) Yeah, you know me' ---------- Todd L. Greene
After listening to OPP in the post above, I must say that I have heard worse contemporary music. This wasn't too awful - if you can get past the usual pedestrian grooves. I heard a few piano lines in there somewhere. The problem I see is that young people really think that this is the shit, as opposed to using it as a gateway (damn those drug references!) to other jazz and blues idioms. Somehow I don't see this type of music very musically challenging, and that is where is loses me. And not having any children, I don't feel the need to relate for survival purposes. But hey, it's all good.
Last Edited by on Mar 20, 2012 8:05 AM