Hi everyone, long time/first time here. Just wondering if anyone had any insight into Sugar's playing style. As an intermediate player, much of what he does is just baffling. Is he usually in 2nd position? Is it largely his fluency in the upper range that gives him that distinctive sound? Any advice is welcome.
I haven't watched the videos above, but I can tell you from HCH 2011 Sugar Blue tongue blocks everything he plays. This was something he stated during his Q&A with Adam.
He plays in second and third position, and he uses some of the same licks in both position. He told us at HCH 2011 that he does indeed TB everything--a fact which amazed me. He said that what changed him from part time to fulltime TB was playing with, hanging out with, Big Walter Horton when he moved to Chicago in the 1980s.
One element of his style is his choice of slightly nonstandard notes at specific moments. Like Paul Delay, and unlike the great majority of other top players, he'll sometimes throw in a blow arpeggio while playing cross harp. 3b 4b 5b 6b 7b, for example. In effect, he's doing what Charlie Parker did: playing the extensions of the chord: root, 11th, 13th, root, 11th. That's a bebop thing, adapted to harp. And he'll sometimes make upward octave leaps on the upbeat--again, a classic element of the bebop idiom, although it has a slightly different flavor when you throw it into blues songs.
When he plays amplified, he uses a lot of compression on the harp--a lot of distortion--which facilitates his fast, upper-octave style. He also uses his tongue to do fast repeated riffs. He uses a lot of straight, unswinging scalar riffs and patterns: 1234 2345 3456
Here's an excellent video. Listen to the long cadenza beginning around 7:00.
He's certainly not to everybody's taste. But it's hard to imagine a more perfect exemplar of the "modern" in modern blues harmonica. Part of that is his band: Rico McFarland is a hellacious guitarist--one of the wildest shredders in the country. I'd put him up against any metal shredder in the world. His final solo here, around 9:00 or 9:30, is crazy. Not every fan of the blues likes that sort of thing. But I see this video as an excellent example of contemporary Chicago blues, with the accent on contemporary. Rock and heavy metal have happened. Funk has happened. Jazz fusion has happened. All those things have happened since Little Walter. Picking out a classic of the Chicago blues repertoire, "Messin' With the Kid," Sugar Blue and his band acknowledge that, and ride with it, rather than resisting it. "It's one of those classic tunes," he says at the beginning, "and we did a little revamp on it." That's what it means to modernize.
Last Edited by on Jul 21, 2012 5:57 AM
Not to hijack the thread, but in searching for some video of Rico McFarland, I came across the following. RM is an all-around threat. (The larger point is that in choosing him as his sideman, Sugar Blue is doing what Jason Ricci did: bringing out the best in himself by pairing himself with a killer guitar-guy who drives him very hard.) Rico plays great contemporary blues rhythm guitar in the Matt Guitar Murphy style; he can play something closer to the traditional style of West Side lead, but he always eventually goes into shredder mode. He picks every note and he's got truly monstrous technique. But ultimately he's playing a modern blues style, not metal or jazz or rock. He's got a heavy attack, and he's always in the pocket. Here he's teamed with Carlos Johnson, another madman, and CJ takes the first solo. You've got to be one of the big boys to keep up with these two, and that element, too, is a part of what has always driven the urban blues scene: you've got to have SOMETHING that sets you apart, something that you can throw down in the jam session and cut some heads with. Buddy Guy is was, and is, a head-cutter. These two guys are post-Buddy-Guy head-cutters:
One last thing: the "thing" that Rico does starting around 3:00 is his "thing." It's basically an extremely fast run up from the tonic to the fifth. On harp, second position, it would be something like 2d 3dbend 3d 4b 4dbend 4d. Repeat ad infinitum as fast as you can, doubling and tripling each note. He's been doing this for twenty years. It's his signature riff.
EDITED TO ADD: I think he's just doing the major third (3 d) through the fifth (4 draw)
Last Edited by on Jul 21, 2012 6:18 AM
Both of those guys, Carlos Johnson and Rico Can play anything from very traditional Blues to more modern styles.
Carlos is a long time member of the Sons of Blues. He was on one of their first recordings after Lurrie Bell left the band. Very traditional stuff. His recordings are fairly traditional, but he is comfortable moving into more modern Southern soul material, too. One tune, he may sound like Otis Rush, the next might be Latimore tune. After Otis Rush had a stroke, he did one final tour of Japan. He hired Carlos to play his guitar parts. He is bad to the bone.
Rico does a lot of traditional playing, too. He has a large recorded legacy. He's adept at soul Blues styles backing singers like Cicero Blake. He can do the traditional thing, too. He has worked on and off with James Cotton for years after the departure of Michael Coleman. When Rico plays with Cotton, there isn't a lot of shredding going on.
Another guitar player in that style is Carl Weathersby. Those guys have a "take no prisoners" attitude, which is really prevalent on the Chicago scene. When they let you on stage, you had better bring it or they might just let you know.
A couple follow-up questions from a blues neophyte: Am I hearing a lot of Hendrix influence in the first video Dr G posted, or just Hendrix's antecedents like Buddy Guy? Second, can y'all give me any contemporary harp players to listen to who are strongly indebted to Sugar Blue (besides John Popper)? Lastly (and this may warrant/already have its own thread), as a LPer learning to TB, the concept of using one's tongue to play fast repeated licks is tripping me up. When I move my tongue, I get multiple notes. The Rick Estrin harp-in-mouth trick seems like witchcraft at this point. Any tips or resources on this?
Earl Hooker more than Hendrix. Earl Hooker was hugely influential among Chicago guitarists. Who did Rico McFarland learn it from? You'll have to ask him.
Two immediately spring to mind. Russ Green and Billy Branch.
Keep practicing. Your patience will be rewarded. If you can't get one note clean via tongue blocking, you are trying to run before you walk. It's not easy to play like Sugar Blue.
I would say that I'm indebted to Sugar Blue. I use a fair bit of compression in my tone, I spend a fair bit of time in the upper register, and I like to play fast up there. But I'm not solely or heavily indebted to him; I spent a fair bit of my time arguing in my head with his approach when I was watching him and learning in the 1990s. His machine-gun style didn't always to it to me; I wanted more swing, and more space within the phrasing. But that's fine: he cleared a lot of space for guys like me to play around in.
I'm pretty sure that Jason Ricci has cited him as an influence, but he should speak for himself.
If you've ever watched Sugar live, up close, it's quite an experience. He doesn't mess around. He's a very powerful player and you can't beat him at his own thing. In the early 1990s, there simply wasn't anybody remotely as fast or loud/powerful as him out there. Guys like William Clarke--who I also saw during that period--or Kim Wilson were strong, amazing players, but they didn't come close to the whirlwind, dizzying approach that SB threw down. Not even close. You might not be able to play as well (as beautifully or logically, with the great tone) of those two players, but you could hear what they were doing. Sugar Blue was indecipherable. Then Popper came along and there were two guys like that. (Well, there was Howard Levy, of course.) Later Jason Ricci came along. Those were the days before the amazing slow-downer, when even if you had open ears, you knew that a guy like Sugar Blue was doing something different. Paul Delay had a little of that, especially in his chromatic playing, his really fast stuff.
The point is, Sugar Blue was way ahead of the curve. He didn't overblow--he occasionally throws one in now; several of us heard an overblow or two from him at HCH--but he seemed to pull notes out of the air that weren't simply familiar licks speeded up, but genuinely new combinations of stuff.
Last Edited by on Jul 21, 2012 6:18 PM
Here's a chestnut! Sugar Blue playing with Willie Dixon in 1981. Every great player starts out playing basic stuff, as he does here. But he was still working to find something a little different, even here.
Sugar is a huge influence of mine. I was actually jamming to one of his albums today. The closest thing to Sugar might be Pat Ramsey...although he doesn't play the top as much.
Both default to a lot of Mixolydian based patterns when playing fast. Sugar can kill the blues...just insane stuff, but his high end work and third position stuff is ver pattern based and NOT blues scale based.
I spent two years studying this sorta stuff with Clint Hoover and relearning those patterns as blues scale patterns with overbends. Just crazy hard!
Jason Ricci is able to get more blue notes in there in comparison.
i keep hearing the term compression what exactly is that? are you using a compressor pedal? do the reeds have to be set top dead center while you check with a compression gauge. rumor has it if i change out to an after market custom comb i will get better compression i am perplexed to say the least. can you help a fellow out?
1847, I think the compression Dr G is referring to is tube amp sag. Since he cranks the gain more than most players, the signal will clip slightly at the onset of a note, similar to the 'attack' knob on a compressor. Of course, he could be using a compressor and have custom super-tight combs too, but that's outside my wheelhouse.
how do you crank the gain on a bassman there is no gain knob on an old fender just volume. i can get mine to about 3 1/2 before it feeds back i do have a kinder pedal i can get more gain with that. not sure either adam or sugar blue use one of those?
By compression, I mean something like sag. A lot of sag. Compression refers to the loss of dynamic range in a signal. The interpersonal equivalent is somebody who yells all the time, rather than whispering some time and yelling some time. Loss of dynamic range. But loud and imposing--and annoying, perhaps
Not a great analogy.
Here's a better analogy: NEITHER SUGAR BLUE NOR I USE A BASSMAN. That's precisely why I use small amps rather than big amps: because the particular kind of dynamic mic that I use can't get much signal compression, much overdrive, much sag, on a Bassman or other big amp. But it does really well on smaller old tube amps.
Sugar uses a Mesa Boogie, and I assume that he tweaks the master volume to get his overdrive sound. He can play through an amp that doesn't have much sustain/compression/sag/overdrive, but that doesn't give him "his" sound; it doesn't let him hit his sweet spot. When he plays without amplification, right on the vocal mic, he plays an entirely different style that is much more adapted to that sound. Much more percussive; much more dynamic range.
Please don't confuse compression with a compressor. You can get compression of the signal in many different ways. I just know what it sounds like when it's created by driving a tube amp really hard. It's a more "liquid" sound, and the even harmonics are boosted, shifting the tonal quality of the amp so that the sound has a "shine" in the 6-8K range. This helps the harp cut through a loud band--one reason SB has no trouble cutting through his band--and it doesn't require as intense an attack from the player in order to produce a compelling sound. In fact, you can create dynamic range by backing way off the intensity, and it significantly changes the sound of the harp but things still sound nice.
Here's Little Walter using a small overdrive amp to get that sound. That was LW's MO, according to Richard Hunter: turn a small amp way up, then back off the intensity to change the tone. LW doesn't really stomp down here--play at maximum intensity--at any point, but he begins to approach a hard attack only right at the end, in the last few seconds of the song. When he does, the tone gets bright, more animated by the harmonics. For most of the recording, and certainly when he's doing the fills, he's holding back. But the sound is still good, because the amp is cranked fairly high.
The phenomenon is maybe a little more obvious in the following video. At the 1:20 and again at the 1:50 point, LW stomps down, in intensity terms, and get the note he's playing to jump out a little more boldly. That's not just a question of volume, but a question of tone--the tone produced by the increase in even harmonics when you overdrive a particular kind of amp.
In a sense, the tone I'm shooting for is THAT tone. When I'm playing as a OMB, I don't utilize the tonal shifts that LW uses; I tend to just hammer. But when I play slow blues with Sterling Magee, I come closer to the LW approach. In my case, the tone is produced by a small (4 watt) Kay 703 turned way up and miked through the PA. The sound we're talking about, with the even harmonics boosted to give a sheen, is noticeable every time I do the signature riff, 34d....2d....36b. The first time is around the :14 point
I'm using a Boss DD-3 digital delay pedal here, I should note, so of course I'm getting some "hang in the air" from that. But the pedal also tends to shift the tone slightly upward, in frequency terms; the "delay" portion of the signal, added to the sound, consists more of the upper frequencies. And the pedal itself slightly compresses the signal, whether it's on or off.
Last Edited by on Jul 22, 2012 4:37 AM
I was on Pat Missin's harp page last night and read that Sugar played an overblow on "Cold Blooded Man" on his "From Chicago to Paris" album, released in 1982. So apparently, he's known about and been able to execute the technique for at least thirty years, but has pretty much never used it. It also occurs to me that if he started TBing in the '80's, then all his sessions with the Stones would have been LPed. Dr Gussow, is there any chance you'll do a review/lesson for Sugar's newest album, "Threshold", like you did with "Code Blue"?
For the Sugar Blue signature lick sliiide into six blow using the tongue block. But slide over 5 blow when you do that. So, you have hit the six blow, then a quick bent six draw and slide down, and off that bent six as soon as you hit it. Try a E flat harp to play along to the Messin with the Kid video above. The next part is sliding into the seven blow in the same fashion- tongue block and sliding audibly over the previous note before stopping dead on the desired note (7 blow). Then 7 draw and then a super quick 8 draw and then slide back to 6 over 7. End on six blow. This is a great lick to learn, but to those with any ears they will say, wow- he is playing the Sugar Blue lick. This is Sugar's signature lick. It is like when you play a slide solo in the style of Muddy Waters, it will always scream Mud. Sliding into notes is a big part of Sugar's style.
Last Edited by on Jul 22, 2012 3:40 PM