Many, if not most of us, began by being influenced first and primarily by other harp players.
Some of us were/are inspired by other instrumentalists, like saxophonists, etc.
I'm wondering if anyone on here has "odd" influences; perhaps a vocalist in another genre, maybe an obscure guitarist.
I bet someone on here is going to say they try to cop the tone and feel of some heavy-metal shredder!
My musical "home" is New Orleans, as it is where I got my first professional job offer after sitting in with a band fronted by a successful soul musician. Consequently, my influences tend toward the sounds of men like Pops Armstrong, Pete Fountain, Sidney Bechet and Kermit Ruffins.
I'm also into the "Kansas City" jump style, especially as represented by Wynonie Harris and Big Joe Turner.
I'm very much influenced by the small-combo/trio work of guys like Nat Cole and Jimmy Smith, and I LOVE playing blues lines over bossa-nova and other classic Latin rhythms. Reggae is another big influence, as I learned to play rhythm guitar while rooming with two genuine Rastafarians and enjoying "breakfast" with them while playing along to Peter Tosh on LP.
World music for want of a better term. Every country/region seems to have their own "blues" tradition, each with a unique rhythmic an/or melodic twist but still expressing the full emotional range of what it means to be human. (which is globally where American blues came from as well, cross pollinated with a host of other influences!)
Great question, BigSteve. I don't believe anybody has asked it before, here, although you're right: there have certainly been other threads about non-harmonica influences.
At one point, when I was busking solo, I worked out a first-position version of Herb Alpert's "Tijuana Taxi." My parents played the hell out of three or four of his albums when I was growing up. In fact, I daresay that to the extent that we had recorded music playing in the house, the largest proportion of it was those Herb Alpert albums, played by my parents at night when they were knocking back a couple of shots of tequila. My mom was from L.A. and she often cooked Mexican food; that was the soundtrack. So when it came time to wrack my musical imagination for melodies that moved me, I quickly found that one.
And of course there was that chick with the whipped cream. When I was ten or eleven, I thought the whipped cream looked tasty. Then something changed.
The song "Whipped Cream" actually lends itself more to an R&B treatment. And of course there's that chick with the whipped cream--the one who yanks all pre-pubescent boys smack into the danger zone:
Last Edited by kudzurunner on Dec 16, 2013 4:57 PM
LOL Adam, I (thanks to my dad's record collection) had the "Whipped Cream" album, too!
I've also been very influenced by the earliest Rock 'N Roll records... the ones that were basically R&B records that were marketed to the white kids. Of course, Rod Piazza has covered "Rockin' Robin" and "Little Bitty Pretty One", as have many others. It's tunes like that, not necessarily the inevitable sax solos, but the overall FEEL, that have influenced me somewhat.
Of course, some of us wear our influences on our sleeve; others have source material that affects us more inwardly, motivating us to play music at all.
BTW, Calvin... I love Nathan Abshire and Cajun and zydeco music in general.
Iceman... Carlos Santana once said that to learn how to phrase, one should learn to play the vocal lines from great singers. He suggested Dionne Warwick (a great choice herself), but I have to agree with you. Ella is simply magical. I've been listening to some of her duets with Louis Armstrong lately. Brilliant.
Komuso, interestingly, it was "world music" as an idea that brought me to my appreciation of New Orleans in the first place. Ernie K-Doe ("Mother In Law") once said he was pretty sure all American music originated in New Orleans.
The idea that (for instance), a German tuba player, a Mexican guitarist, a French violinist, an Englishman who played in a military drum corps and perhaps an American trumpeter might all have been working on the docks together and gotten together for a jam is delightful. Add, of course, the (seemingly) more 'simplistic' blues form, the 'rag' rhythm and a dash of turn-of-the-century-working-man's after-hours rowdiness, and you've basically got jazz.
Oddly, now that the Internet has made sharing of creative ideas so much easier, we begin to see new "world music" forms coming together. White 'rappers' playing guitar over sampled drum loops, Latin dancehall/reggae admixtures, even African-Americans starting to play 'traditional' string-band music without any shade of minstrelsy. All of these things are, in a sense, 'world music', because it takes so many diverse experiences and influences to make any of these new sounds happen.
How, friends, do the desire to "be yourself" musically and the desire to honor musical/cultural traditions work together? How is it that one person heavily influenced by, say, Little Walter, can be considered a great player themselves, while perhaps another player is considered 'derivative'?
How do all these 'odd' influences both ground us in something solid and familiar AND move us to explore different ideas?
Before I recently got interested in the blues my main influence was the diatonic button accordion (You can hear some of this stuff on my soundcloud page). I also started taking lessons from a percussionist from Mali where I play along with him transferring balafon patterns to the harmonica. "Petite fleur" as played by Sidney Bechet is high on my list of tunes to learn. And I just started playing around with Tijuana Taxi too. It would be great if the day had 27 hours (as long as I could reserve the extra hours for harmonica playing ...)!
Adam, you sure took me back with the Herb Alpert! My folks had every album of his I think. I was not yet a player at all. Maybe I'll revisit this stuff though. Intriguing! ---------- http://www.reverbnation.com/jawboneandjolene
I've had tons of non harmonica influences over the years and better players have a tendency to use them to expand their musical vocabulary and I've ALWAYS said that just listening to harmonica alone was not the smartest thing to do because often times it will be quite limiting and you can easily doom yourself to repeat just about every harp cliche in the book.
BigSteve, many of those influences you have also are big for me as well and I've always said that you often tend to learn more from things you DON'T like than from the stuff you do because if you dig deep and be EXTREMELY observant of all the little details, you'd be surprised at how much all of your musical heroes have been influenced by this stuff.
Heck, just with the LW stuff alone, I hear so many players on this forum alone dissing swing stuff, but one thing I've found over the years is that by listening to big band jazz, jump and swing blues, you have the essence of where he got his stuff from and even he had admitted he played harp like a sax because he couldn't afford one and I can hear what his roots were.
I personally find an attitude like "if it ain't got no harp on it, I can't listen to it" or "if I wanted to sound like a goddamned horn, I'd freaking go buy one," or stuff like that so incredibly dumb because ALL of the greats borrowed and adapted stuff completely outside of both their instrument as well as the genres they played and learned to adapt them to the instrument. Many jazz guitarists like Charlie Christian adapted horn lines to the guitar as an example. ---------- Sincerely, Barbeque Bob Maglinte Boston, MA http://www.barbequebob.com CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
My parents played the hell out of three or four of his albums when I was growing up.
we must of had the same parents lol the tijuana brass, and also the baja marimba band i'll toss in carlos montoya i got a chance to see him perform when he was perhaps eighty ----------
i get a lot of request when i play my harmonica "but i play it anyway"
Apart from wanting to sound like various harp players, I've wanted to take something from Bill Frisell, Arto Lindsay, Yello and various weirdo noise bands, though I haven't figured out how to do that yet or what on earth it might sound like!
My dad's record collection also included Herp Alpert, so yeah, I get that too.
When I first learned I wasn't listening to much classic blues harp. I was listening to blues rock guitarists. I later went back for remedial blues education, but to this day I will often think guitar-like lines when improvising. When learning to comp, I listened to horns and organ.
I learned classic riffs and some other techniques including more use of chords and octaves later from blues harp CDs. ----------
everyday the ice cream truck would come up the street playing that tune i can't remember if i figured it out on guitar or harmonica first i would hear it coming up the street, and by the time i could grab a harp he would be gone. i think the tune is...... yellow is the color of my true loves hair.
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i get a lot of request when i play my harmonica "but i play it anyway"
yes gasoline alley also has the same melody rod is from scotland i believe. it's funny i did not hear an asian influence until big steve mentioned it it is now obvious, i was looking on google to see if there is a relationship between scotland and japan some of this stuff goes back further back then i can imagine.
big steve,where are you from? out here in california we have trucks driving up and down the streets selling ice cream they blast away some silly song so the kids will hear them coming. ----------
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i get a lot of request when i play my harmonica "but i play it anyway"
so i go for a walk today at lunch wouldn't you know an ice cream truck passes by the tune so very familar, well of coarse i have heard it a million times. so i go on the internet type in ice cream truck songs and i'll be a monkey's uncle, here is the tune that was playing.
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i get a lot of request when i play my harmonica "but i play it anyway"
Last Edited by 1847 on Dec 24, 2013 10:05 AM
My parents worked the turntable constantly on our house. They met each other in the music department when they were in college. When I started gaining my musical voice with the harp (not just mimicking, but developing my own personality) even as a kid, I thought that I learned my best and held my own interest and attention when I was listening to the phrasing of vocalists. Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Tony Bennett, Johnny Hartman, etc. Ella, Sarah and Lena.....
Later, I copied the charming but oddball phrasings of Willie Nelson.
To this day, I love the vocalists for ideas on where to fit uniquely behind, in front and on top. ---------- ~Buzadero Underwater Janitor, Patriot
My influences were two guys that "played" the harp....but I'm not sure they are considered "Harp players".....Bob Dylan and Neil Young -. I started..playing that of music....then heard John Mayall....he opened the doors to the blues for me. @ Adam - We had those albums too !....I remember them because Dad got them, and Mom (being a pentecostal christian) thought that they were the devils work due to the cover art. She would always stick them in between the other albums so no one could see them ! ----------
