I went looking for this track on YouTube and found that somebody had uploaded it about 10 months ago. It has 14 views. This is from the "Spirituals to Swing" concert in the late 1930s. This is some of the most remarkable harmonica playing I've ever heard. Part of what makes it remarkable is how ST combines it with vocalizations, all designed to create a soundscape from an earlier America: a pack of hounds chasing and treeing a fox.
I'm sitting here with a prewar Bb Marine Band harp from Sonny's estate. Needless to say, I'm finding it difficult to copy this particular song, even with the master's instrument at hand.
I couldn't agree more. Out of the greatest players I think he is number one. I have been playing for the past 6 years and I find learning and play sunny terry's music is hardest by miles, such complex riffs and rhythms. Even when I have worked out what he is doing making it sound good is even harder. He is the ultimate master.
Mark Graham showed me the basic riff behind this type of playing about 20 years ago...
exhale 3, inhale 3 second bend, snap to inhale 1,2,3 chord (and repeat)
It is one pattern that seemed to open up an understanding of what is happening here.
However, I question the need to learn to play like this unless you want to do a pre-war revival harmonica set. It doesn't seem to have any contemporary use that I can find.
I appreciate the talent and work that goes into this type of sound, but do not wish to sound like this...too dated.
However, there is a very small market for recreating this sound amongst archivists. Joe Filisko is one at the head of this pack. ---------- The Iceman
There were not a lot of books devoted to how to play harmonica back in the day, but one of the first I ran across was called The Harp Styles of Sonny Terry by Kent Cooper and Fred Palmer. The book was part biography and part Sonny style instructional with tab annotation of some of his songs. It was the first book that straighten me out on what cross harp was all about. It came with a flimsy, floppy record (which I recorded to cassette) with the songs that were represented. I tried my best as a rank beginner to attempt to emulate what he was doing. i did come away with some blues licks which I still pull out today. BUT, yeah, his stuff was way above me. ---------- Ricky B http://www.bushdogblues.blogspot.com RIVER BOTTOM BLUES--crime novel for blues fans available at Amazon/B&N, iTunes, iBook THE DEVIL'S BLUES--ditto HOWLING MOUNTAIN BLUES--Ditto too, now available
It's an artistic choice to learn this style,not a commercial one. If I thought about what the market would bear when ever I investigated another music style to apply my playing to, and expand my playing with, I wouldn't have learned very much in the last four decades plus of playing.Likely I would have stopped playing altogther. (I realize that some wish I would stop playing for whatever reason, but that's another discussion). Sonny Terry's mastery is simply amazing, and it's understandable why a younger player would want to learn the technique regardless of commericial applicability. ---------- Ted Burke tburke4@san.rr.com
For the last 2 months, I have been studying Lee Sanky's "Contry Blues Harmonica" (sample https://youtu.be/1q5WRB39-aA)
The lessons are about what he calls "Sonny Terry" style of playing. I find that it makes for a good solo harmonica song, as opposed to a harmonica solo.
---------- theharmonicaclub.com (of Huntington, WV)
Last Edited by Jim Rumbaugh on Sep 13, 2015 7:26 PM
Sonny Terry was my first ever influence. I also got The Harp Styles book (with the little floppy record).
As a beginner, no matter how much I played certain riffs "like" Sonny, I could always tell there was some freakish complexity to his playing that I would probably never touch.
Over the years I collected music from throughout his life and, like all of those guys, there were the odd pedestrian recordings. But when you hear him at his peak - untouchable.
---------- My YouTube Channel - Any Likes or Comments appreciated. :)
Oh, I don't know, Iceman. I think that there are always contemporary uses for older styles. Rory McLeod, in this video, is in a direct line of descent from Sonny Terry's whoopin'. (Listen to the stuff around 2:38.) He's using the style to sing about welfare, and he mixes in a little proto-rap. Sounds like an update to me.
Last Edited by kudzurunner on Sep 14, 2015 6:49 AM
I've found that those who study and play Sonny Terry stuff mostly reproduce his artistry. Players specializing in this may find their gravestone reading.."Here lies John Doe. He sounded an awful lot like Sonny Terry". :) ---------- The Iceman
But couldn't that be said about anyone or any style of music? If all you do is copy and reproduce wouldn't that be the epitaph of any of us no matter the instrument? Well with the appropriate Master inserted of course.
Isn't the idea to take what you learn and then incorporate into something distinctly you?
Sonny Terry epitomized the Piedmont style. ---------- Sincerely, Barbeque Bob Maglinte Boston, MA http://www.barbequebob.com CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
Influence is not a thing that can be avoided or defended against, and it seems only natural that someone who is taken with an instrument and a player who excels on that instrument would want to learn how the man they admire creates the sounds they do. It's not a matter of mastering what Sonny Terry already mastered; parts of his playing were doubt from players he heard from who he learned things and blended them with his own ideas and so created something distinctly his. It's worth learning how Sonny Terry did what he did, as it gives a younger musician something else to build upon. ---------- Ted Burke tburke4@san.rr.com
I can vividly remember three occasions were the classic ST style was played in well established music venue's with a mainly 18-30+ crowd, who would come to listen to whatever was on offer and being sent into a frenzy with ST style tunes that was the late 90's and 2000's! That ST whoopin' and hollerin' rhythm style and it's variation's is timeless and has and will like Irish & Scottish jigs & reels always be around to one degree or another.
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"Those British boys want to play the blues real bad, and they do"
