I was a few days ago listening to the one and only cd I own from this artist, and found he is a good teacher. He plays rather basically but efficiently, and often slow blues. I used to consider SBW II to be in the same way, but on an upper degree regarding his technique and ideas. Do you have the same feelings about "not-too-complicated" artists and if yes, could you explain why?
I just commented on something similar about Junior Wells on this forum. Not too complicated suits me as I'm still not proficient enough to play like Jason Ricci for example.
to me it's not all about tricks and technique and lots of notes all the time. i have heard for decades that it's more about playing with feeling and soul. Snooky Pryor was not only a fine yet simple player, he was one of the first to play harmonica through a mic and amp or p.a. at that time the transistor let alone microchip were not even a fantasy so p.a.'s and amps were all tube powered. this imho added a lot to the basic tone these early guys gave us and it's part of what we strive for today. whether they were cupping tight to a mic or playing 6 feet away the tube tone was part of their allure. if you listen to your favorite harp players see if you notice which songs hit you hardest. for me it has usually been the ones where the harp player was doing longer sustained single notes and letting them stretch out. of course there are great pieces of music with more complex harp parts and i am a fan of those as well, but usually when i'm on stage people respond to the simpler yet more soulful pieces i do in a given song. ---------- http://www.reverbnation.com/jawboneandjolene
I totally agree with the last part of your post. Now when I hear to Paul de Lay, I'm also delighted! "longer sustained single notes" yes...but which names come into your mind, that's what I'm interested about.
For me the fast, busy, players hold my attention for a minute at most. Then it all just bleeds together into one sound. What I am deducing as the years go by is we tend to gravitate to styles that fit our soul. No way can I, or anyone, say that fast players/slow/simple/ players are soulful or not except if I keep strictly to how it hits me. There is no scientific method that will prove anything out. It is about how it hits you.
Guys like Jimmy Reed, Slim Harpo, Lazy Lester, hit me deep. They mess with time, phrasing, dynamics, in ways that for me, have shown there are endless roads to still be discovered in the simple stuff. I will most likely die playing simple and boring to most speed/technical guys but for me it continues to be inspiring and new. Junior wells does more with what he doesn't play. You hear that a lot and IMO is not really understood by most. Just not playing much doesn't make one a tasteful or soulful player. To me it means Juniors entire being, not just his harp or voice, or moves. It is his complete energy that always caught me.
In conclusion I am of the opinion we gravitate to what moves us but the masses heavily influence that and many get caught up in keeping up with the jones and lose their own direction. It oozes out of their being that they are trying to emulate/fit in. The old bluesmen that didn't want the typical riffs would call you on that and the ones that wanted the signature licks looked for these players. 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
In one of the first of Jerry Portnoy's video lessons he discusses what he believes the blues is about really and what was said to him on the subject by Muddy Waters and Lightin' Hopkins. He illustrates his comments with this live video Blues in a Dream
This too me is about as down in the alley, real deal, take me to church, blues as it gets. He draws so much out of so little. Not to mention his tone is to die for. ---------- LSC
Last Edited by on Apr 04, 2012 10:03 PM
Snooky was a fantastic player. Amazing tone. Fantastic songwriter. Great tunes. Fine singer. I have a long list of harp players in my iTunes library. He gets way more plays than any of the more "modern" players.
LSC: "he draws so much out of so little". Fine expression, whitch IMHO also applies to Snooky Pryor. Joe: "how can you fault this" ????????? If I consider Snooky Pryor as a teacher, it's not to criticize him, don't you think (I hope there's no doubt about this!). I'm on the contrary looking for others like him, others who "draw so much out of so little".
Last Edited by on Apr 05, 2012 4:51 AM
I learned a lot about how to play the harp from Snooky. My goal was to learn how to operate the instrument and to play Blues. His style seems simple on the surface until you listen to it and try to duplicate it.
Snooky's son, Rip Lee Pryor, is a bad ass player in the style of his Dad. I guess he learned something from his Dad.
try buster brown. He is a sort of scaled down sonny terry put to 50's r&b. I first learned of him as a teenager when I was playing with Wilbert Harrison. He and wilbert were both recorded on bobby robinsons Fire label. Buster had a big hits in the 50's with fannie may and Wilbert with Kansas City. Years later while living in santa rosa, ca, on a semi sort of ranch that fronted for a shooting gallery(needles not guns) for the hells angels and recent san quentin releasees, I found a connection between buster and wilbert via my landlady. I took out the trash and let the cows in and out- for $25 a month rent. My landlady lived in the back house and dug my music. I got to play 20 hours a day there. The mushrooms that grew in the cow turds helped keep me inspired....... She gave me the original Fire album by Buster Brown called - the new king of the blues (I think was the name). She was dating wild jimmy spurriel at the time and he played guitar on the buster album and that famous guitar solo on kansas city with wilbert. It is amazing how many times such intersctions have occurred in my musical life. 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
Never heard, thanks. Nor this one:"The mushrooms that grew in the cow turds helped keep me inspired....... " Yeah, sometimes we have to deep dig before digging!
I disagree with Joe L. and Kingsley. I think he's a second-rate player: a solid notch below the Walters, Cotton, Jr. Wells, Carey Bell, Kim, Paul Oscher, Butterfield, Paul Delay. This doesn't mean he hasn't earned his place in the long honor roll of players who are important to a scene, or who have things to teach. (I'd include Good Rockin' Charles and Dr. Feelgood Potts in this category.) In fact, I offer a lesson on this website in which I teach players how to play "Crazy About My Baby." He's a good player for beginners to learn from. "Here's the four chord! Play that 1 blow, baby!" He has a small repertoire of basic moves. He deploys them well, but they're still a small repertoire of basic moves. When he wants intensity, he wails on the 6 draw and lets a little air in. Nice move! Every advanced beginner should have it. Lest we forget, he's got that ragged 34 draw warble: one kind of warble, invariably deployed in bars 7 and 8. And? Nat Riddles didn't have a huge stock of licks, but he played with twice the subtlety, three times the intensity, and a heck of a lot more tone. I realize that aging players begin to narrow the range of what they do, but I'd still rather listen to Cotton any day of the week. In his prime he would have torn Pryor limb from limb and fed his bloody stumps to the Hawk.
Nothing I've heard from Pryor suggests that there's a ghost of an argument to be made for putting him somewhere in those Top-20 All-time lists. The video that Joe L. posted above does nothing, I'm afraid, to convince me that what I heard on the album and in his live performance was unrepresentative.
I hear a good player and a fine blues singer: a good and enjoyable all-round blues performer. We need players like that. But we also need to distinguish that sort of playing from excellence. I don't hear excellence of the sort represented by that list of truly exceptional players I offer above.
I'm always willing to be proven wrong, though, by evidence that I've failed to consider. Joe, please tell me the three cuts I need to buy on iTunes that will change my mind: the Snooky Pryor desert-island cuts. I'll download 'em this afternoon.
Last Edited by on Apr 05, 2012 10:50 AM
"Nothing I've heard from Pryor suggests that there's a ghost of an argument to be made for putting him somewhere in those Top-20 All-time lists."
Kudzu - Why do you feel the need to pigeonhole players into a ratings list?
To me Snooky Pryor is a well rounded package. Good singing, good harp playing, good songs, good grooves. That is far more important to me than simply being "truly exceptional" at playing harp.
Last Edited by on Apr 05, 2012 12:01 PM
@Kingley: I was responding specifically to Joe's claim that he was "a fantastic player" with "amazing tone" and your claim that he was "great." I disagree with you both. I tried not just to attitudinize, but to offer illustrative examples for why I disagree. The Top-Whatever lists are just one way of making a point: I personally can't put Pryor in the same category as guys like Cotton and Carey Bell.
Kudzu - Fair enough. I'd agree that if I were judging Snooky Pryor merely on his harmonica playing that he's not in the same league as people like James Cotton or Carey Bell. As a blues performer though, basing my judgement on his musical performances as a whole. My view of him is different.
Please don't focus on Snooky Pryor, he was in my mind just an example of artist who let you catch good groundings for harp playing. Categorize harp players is a simple but subjective way to know what we are speaking about. It should also make possible to answer my question (whitch was not plainly expressed, I realize): do you know other harp players one can refer to, just to catch those groundings. We all know they don't belong to kudzu's list, but it doesn't involve passing a judgement on them. I personnaly think to belong to intermediate player category, but acknowledge I have a kind of lack of basics and I'd like to get cracking.
Last Edited by on Apr 05, 2012 6:13 PM
A lot of the older players had styles which sound deceptively simple. More often than not though the more you get into them and try to learn those styles, the more you find it's far from easy to do. People like Frank Frost, Doctor Ross and Sam Myers are examples of this. Sonny Boy Williamson is probably the ultimate example of this. Take the intro to "Trust my Baby" as an example. This sounds easy to duplicate, but really nailing it is something else. Hitting the right notes is one thing, putting the intensity and emotion into them another thing all together. Then of course there is that vibrato, the timing, the phrasing.
The hardest thing for many players learning at the intermediate stage to my mind is learning to mess with time (playing behind the beat, ahead of it and on it), in a musical way. Also if doing note for note cover versions is your thing, resisting the urge to add extra notes into a piece to cover shortcomings in ability can often be a problem. This is why people like Bharath Rajakumar are so well thought of in the more traditional blues harmonica playing circles.
We see eye to eye. You'll certainly agree that you have to start from a point, let's say technical, which is not making music but notes. After that comes the feeling, the rhythm, the vibratos, in short the music, the willing to express something: it's part two of the work, not the less tricky. I'm sure you understand what I mean. Thanks for your references, including SBW II.
