I'm searching for inspiration. I've just joined a band after a two year lay off. Whilst its a Motown act, they also have a "jazz" set and do T Bone Shuffle.
My job is guitar, but I could drop a nice surprise on them by offering to play harp on this track. I've done a You Tube search thinking this must have been covered by countless players, but I'm coming up short.
Does anyone know of any stellar harp versions of this that I've missed?
That version of T-bone Shuffle is fine, but comes off as just another swing tune. I have always like to do this song, but I'd like to have the harp doing the tag line, preferably on chromatic, like a horn section. That be cool and well, a little more original. But hey thats me.
Jesse Colin Young recorded it on the album "Song for Julie". The player is Richard "Earthquake" Anderson, but there's not much information about him that I can find.
The harp part isn't complex, but I think it fits the song well and gives it a needed edge. Young also recorded the tune (and played it on tour) without harp. For my money the harp gave his version it's life.
I've seen Young live a few times and he never had a harp player with him; I don't find any videos with harp. The link here is the recorded version.
I learned the head, lyrics and groove from the Boz Scaggs verso on his "Come On Home" album. I basically stole the harp solo from the sax solo on that record. ---------- *************************************************** /Greg
I don't have a video to post but I've played harp on a number of T-Bone tunes over the years, including tunes like Two Bones And A Pick, T-Bone Shuffle, and quite a few more and what I've mainly done are horn parts or approach any solo with the mentality of a sax player.
I usually do an Albert King tune done in a classic T-Bone groove, Let's Have A Natural Ball, (sometimes referred to as a flat tire double shuffle, where the drummer has the snare on the 2 and the 4, but all of the upbeats are played on an extremely loose hihat cymbol), and usually play this tune in Bb, using a Low Eb flat and alternate between using horn lines and lines clearly derived from jump blues guitarists like T-Bone Walker, Tiny Grimes, Bill Jennings, Pee Wee Crayton and if you do this stuff, everything HAS to swing or you lay big fat egg on it. ---------- Sincerely, Barbeque Bob Maglinte Boston, MA http://www.barbequebob.com CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
Last Edited by barbequebob on Oct 05, 2015 1:27 PM
Lee Allen used to play for Fats Domino for many years as well as on some classic blues/r&b and rock and roll sides in the 50's.
For an example of playing in a jump blues setting sort of like T-Bone, listening to what saxman Red Prysock plays with Tiny Bradshaw will be good as a model to work with.
All of the above falls pretty neatly into harmonica in you're willing to work on it.
Here's T-Bone's original recording of T-Bone Shuffle:
Even the guitar lines can be played on harmonica given a bit of woodshedding time and all of the horn lines are simple, but you gotta get the groove and the swing of the groove right.
Though I don't do Let's Have A Natural Ball quite as uptempo as this, but Strollin' With Bone is something to woodshed to for both the harp and guitar lines and I even have worked out a way to get that often copied classic T-Bone lick for harp that you hear other guitar players use that's at about 1:19 on this video.
Even learning the T-Bone endings as done by both the guitar and horns is well worth learning. ---------- Sincerely, Barbeque Bob Maglinte Boston, MA http://www.barbequebob.com CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
when I play it on guitar I slide into the 5th on the 3rd string and then play the same note on the 2nd string (I think this is what T-bone does).
I've kinda wondered how to do it on the harp because you don't have that same pitch available in two different places and also I think T-bone slides up from the 4th which is a blow note for us harp players..
How do you do it Bob? A dip into 4 draw and tongue switch to 1-draw might be cool or are you changing embouchure on the 4-draw to mimic the timbers of the different strings?
Got me curious and as a guitar player I'm always thinking of ways to take vocabulary back and forth to and from the harp..
---------- 4' 4+ 3' 2~~~ -Mike Ziemba Harmonica is Life!
Last Edited by slaphappy on Oct 05, 2015 3:46 PM
If you're playing in 2nd position, hit 3 blow and then 2 draw and it's exactly like you're playing guitar. When playing the 5 of the root note in 2nd position (1 draw, 4 draw, or 8 draw), what I do is manipulate the INSIDE shape of the mouth kinda like forming vowel sounds mimicking that because it DOES affect the pitch like going from string to string, but in addition, also slightly opening up a hand at the same time. If you were doing it as a 4 draw to 1 draw, all you'e doing is jumping the octave more than anything else. Most players NEVER mess with their embouchure and/or the inside shape of their mouths or attempt to do vowels sounds like a good vocalist eventually learns to do (especially if they're singing opera) and these things are very subtle, but do have an enormous impact. In addition, when many players go amplified, they seldom make any use of their hands at all and fail to realize how much their hands come to play in amplified harp as well when it comes to coloring their tone, timbre and feel and just use their hands to hold the harp and mic together and little else beyond that.
Two other guitar guitar players who have used that T-Bone lick are Chuck Berry in Maybelline and Freddy King in See See Baby, and just about any guitar player influenced by T-Bone Walker has used that lick at some point in their career.
What I did is a perfect example of listening, learning and adapting by listening to other instruments BESIDES harmonica and then applying it to the instrument. To me, it's not far off the beaten path of someone like Little Walter, who adapted jump blues/big band/swing jazz horn licks to become harmonica licks so that whenever I hear someone say it doesn't sound like a harmonica, I say to people who just listen only to other harp players, "How the hell do you think they got their s**t from??? Just copying the same goddamned cliches yous still haven't learned yet???" ---------- Sincerely, Barbeque Bob Maglinte Boston, MA http://www.barbequebob.com CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
That technique works both acoustically as well as amplified. It even works with a chromatic as well. ---------- Sincerely, Barbeque Bob Maglinte Boston, MA http://www.barbequebob.com CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
