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Happy 2015: Paul Oscher interview page
Happy 2015: Paul Oscher interview page
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kudzurunner
5206 posts
Jan 01, 2015
2:24 PM
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There's a new page on this website, active as of this moment. It features a terrific interview with Paul Oscher, conducted by Margie Goldsmith and first published in the most recent issue of Harmonica Happenings.
Many thanks to Winslow, Paul, Margie, and the HH folks for making this possible. Paul has quite a story to tell and I'm delighted to help him share it.
Paul Oscher interview
Last Edited by kudzurunner on Jan 01, 2015 2:25 PM
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JTThirty
262 posts
Jan 02, 2015
9:36 AM
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Yes. Yes. Thanks for sharing. I saw Paul play at a small listening room about a month ago. He put on a killer solo show. I got a chance to visit with him before and after the show. I'd heard that he could be quite testy about sharing his unique one man band stage set up, but found just the opposite was true. He seemed excited to discuss his guitar and harp rigs. He regaled the audience with his stage patter about playing with the greats and told some of the same tales that are in the interview. Great ambassador for the blues. ---------- Ricky B http://www.bushdogblues.blogspot.com RIVER BOTTOM BLUES--crime novel for blues fans available at Amazon/B&N and my blog THE DEVIL'S BLUES--ditto HOWLING MOUNTAIN BLUES--due out early 2015 ---------- Ricky B http://www.bushdogblues.blogspot.com RIVER BOTTOM BLUES--crime novel for blues fans available at Amazon/B&N and my blog THE DEVIL'S BLUES--ditto HOWLING MOUNTAIN BLUES--due out early 2015
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Goldbrick
814 posts
Jan 02, 2015
10:05 PM
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Super musician and great storyteller too
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CarlA
644 posts
Jan 03, 2015
9:28 AM
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Nice interview! Very informative. The low keyed harps was an interesting story. Entire interview full of good stories, etc
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barbequebob
2806 posts
Jan 05, 2015
10:51 AM
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Paul's the real deal and he was the very first white musician Muddy ever hired in his band. ---------- Sincerely, Barbeque Bob Maglinte Boston, MA http://www.barbequebob.com CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
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JustFuya
677 posts
Jan 05, 2015
3:55 PM
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There is gold in the story. Nice to hear of blues success sprung from Brooklyn. These days, breaking music down to the subcategory of ethnicity is for historians tho I have proper and due respect for the roots of all musical genres.
Note for note reproduction of legendary music from the greats is good practice but I'd rather hear it on the original scratchy 78 than live on a stage by an artist with all the latest electronic effects. And singing it with the original dialect is blasphemy regardless of who and what you are.
I agree that Paul is the real deal but being the first white or black person to do anything is a non musical note that should be buried in the bibliography.
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kudzurunner
5219 posts
Jan 05, 2015
3:58 PM
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I disagree with you, JustFuya. As somebody who writes and teaches about the cultural history of the blues, that detail, foregrounded by BBQBob, is important for a specific reason. I've just been poking around in old issues of Living Blues, and it's fascinating to look at the W. C Handy Awards finalists and winners from those years.
1983 is the last year when every single finalist--ten in each category--for every award was black. In 1984, Stevie Ray Vaughan won two awards: Blues Instrumentalist of the Year (he beat out Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, Albert Collins, and Buddy Guy, in that order) and Blues Entertainer of the Year (a BMA decided by an executive committee, not the full voting membership). But Stevie also came in #2 out of ten (after Robert Cray) for Contemporary Male Blues Artist of the Year, and Johnny Winter and John Hammond, Jr. came in second, respectively, for Contemporary Blues Album of the Year and Traditional Blues Album of the Year.
We all know what has happened since. In racial terms, the W. C. Handy Awards (now the Blues Music Awards) have turned upside down. At least 75=80% of the nominees are white.
Key thing: Stevie Ray was mentored by Albert King. (King told the crowd at the Mississippi Delta Blues Festival in September 1984, where Cray, Vaughan, and King all played, "He may be white, but he has a BLACK father!") Part of the wholesale whitening process of the mainstream blues world is that interracial mentoring process. Paul Oscher stands as an important early example of that process.
Muddy Waters died in 1983. 1984 was the year that the awards ceremonies (both the Handys and the Grammys) began that shift from black artists to white artists. It's a stunning transformation. The breadth of the change becomes much more obvious when you look at those old issues of Living Blues.
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JTThirty
263 posts
Jan 05, 2015
5:21 PM
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Since you brought up Living Blues Magazine. I do believe that you, Adam, are one of the few white fellows ever pictured on the cover of the magazine. Of course, it was due to your partnership with Sterling and the relationship you had with him playing the streets. Hard to ignore the importance of that collaboration. Paul Oscher grew up on the road with the Muddy Waters band. It don't get much heavier than that. ---------- Ricky B http://www.bushdogblues.blogspot.com RIVER BOTTOM BLUES--crime novel for blues fans available at Amazon/B&N and my blog THE DEVIL'S BLUES--ditto HOWLING MOUNTAIN BLUES--due out early 2015
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JustFuya
678 posts
Jan 05, 2015
6:48 PM
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I'm not all that sure we disagree but ... maybe. I think name dropping and painting a black & white picture is not musical. History is to be embraced and understood but the music you make is personal. Good or bad I love that sharing. Now that stew is melding and I think singling anyone out by appearance or association is a backward step.
Edit: to remove irrelevant personal journey.
Last Edited by JustFuya on Jan 06, 2015 9:21 AM
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JTThirty
264 posts
Jan 06, 2015
2:58 PM
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Paul has a legacy which will always be a part of who he is and will always be. His musical chops come directly from the SOURCE. The deep blues is all he knows and all he plays, and it IS personal. I don't think Paul gave a second thought about being a white dude in a black band and I'd say that Muddy didn't give a rats ass what color Paul was...it was about how well Oscher blew the harmonica. ---------- Ricky B http://www.bushdogblues.blogspot.com RIVER BOTTOM BLUES--crime novel for blues fans available at Amazon/B&N and my blog THE DEVIL'S BLUES--ditto HOWLING MOUNTAIN BLUES--due out early 2015
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kudzurunner
5230 posts
Jan 08, 2015
11:35 AM
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I suspect that Paul gave a whole lot of thought to being a white dude in a black band back in 1967-1970. That was period when segregation was still residually in force in some of the Deep South places the band toured through, and it was a time when in the urban North talk of Black Revolution and "the destruction of the white thing" (Larry Neal's phrase) was all the rage within the black communities where Muddy's band still played a fair number of gigs. Paul would have been treated differently than his black bandmates in many social situations and in ways that could have disrespectful and/or violent outcomes. That differential treatment--the curiosity that he represented, as the one white member of an all-black band--was hardly something he could just ignore, although I'm sure he tried to.
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kudzurunner
5231 posts
Jan 08, 2015
11:41 AM
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JustFuya, what you call a backward step I call historical consciousness. I don't blame you for hoping that blues music can be something that completely removes you from history. Many black blues musicians and fans wanted precisely the same thing: some juking-good music on a Saturday night, with a drink and cigarette in hand and a pretty girl to dance with. But that was because History loomed over them the moment they stepped out the door, as legislated civic inequality and disrespect from whites. Some blues artists, of course, speak directly to the problems posted by history.
I happen to feel that knowing the social and cultural history behind the music enriches and deepens my understanding of, and feeling for, the music.
Last Edited by kudzurunner on Jan 08, 2015 11:41 AM
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barbequebob
2812 posts
Jan 08, 2015
12:24 PM
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Well, on some gigs that were in the "chitlin' circuit," Muddy sometimes had to sub out for Paul for Paul's own safety because, at the time, being white and playing blues, in many ways mirroring the very early days of rap/hiphop, was something whites weren't supposed to be doing at all, and the racism came not just from whites at the time, but by some blacks as well.
Tho many racial barriers have clearly come down, there are many racist things happening even now that some just don't want to acknowledge, and for me, being someone born of biracial parents who got married in 1942, and in many states, especially down south, interracial marriage was absolutely illegal.
Sure, you may not want to be bothered with the history, but it IS history that cannot be ignored and Adam has a post that is telling you a cold, hard, brutal truth that is seemingly being ignored by some, even tho it is damned ugly but dismissing it is absolutely total BS like a someone who's hooked on alcohol, drugs, or nicotine and says the single most LAME statement in the world that automatically says that they're totally in blatant denial, and that's "I can quit any damned time I want."
From my own personal quest, learning from the source often times is FAR different than learning 2nd, 3rd or 4th hand from other sources because there often times an experience you can't truly duplicate and you can give all the ration of s**t you want, but I stand by every word of that.
If you were born a generation after the original civil rights movement, it's all to easy to ignore far too many hard, brutal truths about what was happening at the time Paul became the very first white musician ever to be hired full time as a member of an all black blues band and he was one of the very first white musicians to truly master the REAL sound of Chicago blues and it was more than just the actual notes themselves, but also the REAL understanding of how to PROPERLY play any and all of those grooves, and it's something you have little or no chance learning this in 99% of the open jams anywhere in the world today. ---------- Sincerely, Barbeque Bob Maglinte Boston, MA http://www.barbequebob.com CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
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