I came across this live video from 2007 and thought it was worth sharing. The sound seems to be off-the-board sound rather than mics in the audience, so you can hear every note clearly. This is the Sugar Blue style: incredible deluge of notes, but in some ways surprisingly straight, disciplined: end the phrase at the bar line. Not quite as wild as you might think.
And always that incredibly tight and funky band.
I still remember seeing him live in NYC in the early 1990s. There was everybody else, and then there was Sugar Blue. He was a walking apocalypse. There just wasn't any other living harmonica player doing this sort of thing:
Last Edited by kudzurunner on Dec 26, 2015 5:00 PM
Those lightning fast runs in the upper register with 100% tongue blocking continue to blow my mind after all these years. For me they are technically more impressive than just about anything I've ever heard.
It's more than just technically impressive. It's musically precise. The notes in all those runs have defined relationships to the underlying chords.
Note how he avoids feedback by turning off the mic with the VC each time he stops playing. Butterfield would do the same thing using the on/off switch on his 545.
I've seen SB at least a half dozen times, twice this year at Calahan's. The first show I saw this year was the absolute best SB performance I've ever witnessed--more than breathtaking! IMHO he's breathtaking on an average night. A musician's musician.
I first saw him in Ypsilanti in 1991. Wireless mics were not as common back then. This funky hard rocking band started playing...then, out of nowhere, this deluge of sound appeared that certainly seemed to be coming from a harmonica, but there was no harmonica player in sight. Then you saw him, unexpectedly striding through the audience with a bandolier of harmonicas across his body, blowing harp like hell fire on his way up to the stage. Wow! And all that was just for openers.
A completely original approach to the instrument. I think he is in a league of his own.
Last Edited by hvyj on Dec 27, 2015 12:47 PM
Where did he play in Ypsilanti? I was there from 94-2000, undergraduate and grad school after the military. I didn't get out much, full time school and work, but I would hate to think I missed a show like that! I saw a lot of shows at the Blind Pig over in AA in the late 80s, but can't remember much ;)
I dunno. I'd never been to Ypsi before or since. As I recall, the building looked like a train station from the outside. Inside it was open like a gymnasium with a large stage and no seats. But this was in '91, before you started college there.
Last Edited by hvyj on Dec 27, 2015 12:05 PM
