O.K. I did not go to the IBC this year and DID NOT see the winning band play. But, upon learning who won, I checked them out on YouTube. I have to say the videos I found there were okay. They sounded like they would put on a good, fun show in a bar setting. However, the front man, Grady is a really middling harp player. That might be even putting it kindly. If he played harp like I heard in the videos I watched at the IBC (again, I wasn't there but can't imagine he blossomed overnight) – if he played like that at IBC, WHAT GIVES with the judges? Again, he is not TERRIBLE. But, IMO, certainly below average. Decent singer, entertaining and all, but... Check out the stuff online and tell me what y'all think. -Bob
On the strength of the videos I have just seen on YouTube I must say I'm quite surprised as well.
Then again though musical competitions are a strange thing and there are often other criteria that come into play over whether or not someone is a talented musician.
This is why whenever I read in someones PR blurb that says they were for example voted something like "Best UK harmonica player" or "Most promising newcomer", etc. I always take it with a pinch of salt as it doesn't necessarily equate to musical talent.
I hate music as a competition. That being said, it was decided by my band to do the local try-out a few years back for this. Because I played my style and did not play cliched blues harp, we criticized...people like crappy harp playing and great guitar playing. Bastards. ---------- Mike Fugazzi http://www.myspace.com/niterailband http://www.youtube.com/user/NiteRail http://www.twitter.com/NiteRail http://www.facebook.com/mike.fugazzi
I hate music as a competition. That being said, it was decided by my band to do the local try-out a few years back for this. Because I played my style and did not play cliched blues harp, we criticized...people like crappy harp playing and great guitar playing. Bastards. ---------- Mike Fugazzi http://www.myspace.com/niterailband http://www.youtube.com/user/NiteRail http://www.twitter.com/NiteRail http://www.facebook.com/mike.fugazzi
Well,The band fom my area,Big Boy Little Band,the guitarist Matt Kelley won Best Guitarist.Great prize,Gibson ES-335 and Category 5 Amp. And Bret Littlehales(Big Boy)is leaps and bounds, by far a most excellent harp blower. Go Figure.
Yep, never said that he wasn't a decent singer. I imagine he's also a good front man. That means a lot, especially for the unwashed masses who have no idea what they are really hearing anyway. But shouldn't the judges have an awareness of what is passable playing for the instrument that is sometimes called, "The Mother of the Band"? -Bob
What bothers me most about this one is not GC's harp playing, but his status re: the IBC's explicit aim: "The world's largest gathering of Blues acts represents an international search by The Blues Foundation and its Affiliated Organizations for the Blues Band and Solo/Duo Blues Act ready to take their act to the international stage." Grady Champion has been at the festival level for something like a decade now. What is he doing in the IBC? Someone whose first CD on Shanachie was in a big ad I saw in Living Blues a decade ago?
Ooh, new harp player, I thought when I saw that ad, and tracked down a sound sample and . . . which I guess is your answer. The man lacks a sense of shame, apparently. There's no excuse, in this day and age, for not improving your harp playing. If you have Internet access, you don't even have to pay for instruction--just work on through Adam's videos, for example. I guess it's not really a big step from "I'm a singer, not really a harp player" to "I'm not really well known." For shame.
Mind you, I haven't actually seen that GC says he's not really a harp player, but bet you that's what he says about the matter. And how does that compare to the "I'm a singer, not really a guitar player" stance of BB King and Little Milton? Uh, yeah. Or the pipes of Kim Wilson or Curtis Salgado or Mark Dufresne or John Nemeth and other prodigious harp players whom we'd pay to hear just sing?
Can't say I've heard of the Big Boy Little Band by name, though I've heard of Bret, so now I'm motivated to go check them out. Isn't that how the IBC ought to work? I know, I know, the networking in Memphis, the being seen by the industry, those are the real point of going, but the contest itself need not be irrelevant. And I can't believe not winning makes no real difference: you want to talk harmonica, if Collard Greens and Gravy had won as they deserved to in 2001, we'd probably be seeing them tour the States every year. They lost to a guy who's mainly doing cover tunes on the sidewalk in Beale Street (really well, mind you, but still--). CG&G's potential career was materially damaged by that, shot down really compared to being able to put "IBC winner" on the table.
If you're a harp player, you can tell when somebody does not work at their playing, and maybe you're not surprised when someone like that does what was called cherrypicking in my motocross days: drop down from the Expert class to Intermediate at a new track to get an easy win, or Intermediate to Novice. They could usually get away with it once at each track. Like I said, lack of shame. Maybe Billy Branch should enter next year, then at least we'd have a cherrypicker who can really play.
So GC's harp playing is not the real issue to me, just a symptom of what's wrong there. Maybe music contests themselves are inherently evil, but do they really need to suck as badly as this? The IBC did once have a rule that forbade artists who'd had record label deals in the previous ten years or something, but IIRC they threw that out after they actually had to enforce it once and throw a winner out on that technicality. Lord knows you don't want any rules you might actually have to enforce :-D.
Of course harp skill is a minor point: Grady Champion has the front man package going on overall, ready for exposure on the international stage--he's only been doing it for a decade already. For shame.
I'm afraid that's exactly what I mean. CG&G were well ahead of the curve with the North Mississippi-influenced small-band thang, doing serious original material, tremendous playing and singing and live show, ten bleeping years ago. People I turned onto them said it was more like hearing Credence Clearwater Revival, rather than a generic blues band, even though it was stone blues. Fresh, vital stuff.
Grady Champion had the chance to break out around the turn of the century, and didn't. Whose fault is that? Well, consider how hard he seems to have worked on his harp playing. Somebody needs to loan him some Junior Parker records, I guess, even Bobby Rush records: if you do play just a little harp, it needs to be good. No need for GC to be in the IBC if he'd tended to the hole in his game on his own time.
I saw Grady Champion up close on semifinal night in Memphis--he literally walked past me, a foot away, blowing harp--and pretty much everybody here is exactly right. He's an OK harp player, but definitely nothing special; a good singer; an excellent performer, if not a stellar one. He's a soul-blues stylist who growls as much as he sings and doesn't blow harp as well as Bobby Rush. He has some very interesting songs, including one being stopped by a cop. He's a very dynamic and charismatic performer. I videotaped about three minutes of the first song I saw and then left.
The YouTube videos of him are representative of his harp playing: nothing special. I hate to say "minimal competence," but that's how I see it. The bare minimum you'd want from a guy of his apparent stature. Since he's local Mississippi, I was actually considering him at one point for my Hill Country Harmonica thing, but when I saw him live, I lost my appetite. Sunpie Barnes and Wallace Coleman play circles around him.
Charisma counts for a fair bit, as does dynamism, and I suspect that that's what put him over in the finals. Cheryl Renee and Dem Bones, who came in third in the finals, were my favorites. Their first song on semifinals night literally brought tears to my eyes.
Last Edited by on Jan 28, 2010 5:01 PM
Adam, I listened to the song about being stopped by the police too, and it DID catch my attention as well. Not that it is the best song in the world, but I did get the feeling there was something real about it. ? I dunno. All in all, IBC must be a wonderful experience for those who get to be a part of it. Congratulations should go to everyone who gets to be a part of it. It's a labor of love for sure. -Bob
I know this--that there was one hell of a harp player doing his thing that night in that room with a heck of a band backing him. I'm not saying that Sonny Boy Terry should have won, I'm just saying that he has mastered his instrument and would have done blues harp players around the world proud. Now, those that don't know any better will think that what Grady Champion blows must be great because he's a champion. I agree 100% with every word of htownfess' post.
Someone said it right. Winning the IBC isn't the the prize, getting to Memphis is if you have the goods. It has done wonders for my career and I had a blast. The organizers try to counsel the musicians going in that they are already winners but so many get thier feelings hurt, including some in my band. I took Jonn Richardson's advice. He said talent matters but it was all about personality and getting to know the right people. You are there to network and make the most of the experience. It's easy to point out the negatives of these sort of things but hard for us to get past our feelings so we can move our careers forward. Grady had been there several times before from what I'm told, so I can't begrudge him. I spoke with his son on bass and he was a real nice guy.
Memphis was INCREDIBLE!!! I saw many bands and I saw a bunch that should have won and didn't even get past the first round, oh well! The reviews and scores our band got was horrible! Not sure what they were looking for.
Grady just played the Labor Day Blues Fest here in my hometown. When he was out in the crowd playing he walked past me and my wife and she said "you play much better than that". I looked at her and said thank you very much. I was wondering if you had noticed.
Edit to say - I did find him entertaining. ----------
"I have a high tolerance for boredom as long as it has a groove" - Scrapboss
Last Edited by on Sep 09, 2010 9:55 PM
Earlier this year, Grady Champion came to New Orleans and searched me out at a Wednesday Night Jam Session. Apparantly a friend of a friend is his guitar player. I set him up with the host band, and he played a few songs. My thoughts were pretty much what everyone is saying. He was an OK Harp Player, sort of average like me, but he was a much better singer. Where he was the strongest was in his stage presence, which was excellent. He related very well with the audience, and everyone felt good when he was done.
As we all know, some of the best musicians are boring, and some of the most entertaining are just so so musicians. People that do the hiring for festivals and such want their acts to be entertaining. That is the bottom line. Grady is entertaining.
As for whether some one should be in the contest or not, the rules are pretty specific who can not compete. Right or wrong, it is their ball, and therefore their game.
Personally, I prefer to let the audience judge my performance. Thats who I am playing for. ----------
Harvey: I'm glad to know you felt that way. Yes, Grady is indeed entertaining. He has what I'd call a real heads-up stage presence. He looks at the crowd, he works the crowd. In that sense, he's a natural (or at least skilled) entertainer, and that's no small thing. Most of us here can learn from that.
I think it's important not to slam a musician who is just doing his job. But it's also important to make distinctions, and to exert critical intelligence. Specific harmonica players and performers have things they do more well and things they do less well, and when we assess a musician/performer whom we've seen live, one of the things we should probably be doing, apart from simply taking pleasure in their performance, is asking ourselves a couple of questions:
1) Is this person as good as the judgments that others have made, or are making, about them?
2) Does this person have an A-game on all fronts, or are there lagging (and leading) indicators?
3) Do I know people who can play better than this person but aren't getting nearly as much praise/acknowledgement for their skills? Or is the opposite true: Is this person, although less well known than some of the stars out there, actually stronger than them in one or more ways?
As I try to leverage my harp playing into a new "thing" as a one-man band, I'm keenly conscious of the fact that I'm a (cough) better harp player than I am a singer. My singing is improving rapidly, I believe, but it isn't where I want it to be, and I don't fool myself about how good is is or isn't. It is what it is; it's serviceable. But I listen to other singers, and harp players who sing (including our own Greg Heumann, BTW), and I say, "I wish I could sing like that." I keep working on it.
It's hard to know if Grady Champion has this sort of attitude towards his harp playing--i.e., if he agrees with us that he's a serviceable player but a really good performer--and keeps trying to up his harp game, or if he thinks he's great. Maybe he's perfectly happy with what he does on harp andsees no need to deliberately try and up his game on that front. And that's OK. Or at least it's OK until somebody shows up raving about his harp playing and saying he's just this incredible player. When that happens--IF it happens--we're quite right, I think, to point somebody towards the really good players like (for example) Billy Branch and Johnny Sansone.
Last Edited by on Sep 10, 2010 4:57 AM
Like it or not, if you're fronting a band, vocals and stage presence are FAR more important than harp, guitar, or any other playing skills. It may not please harp nerds, guitar nerds, or whateer nerds you want, but for 98% of the audience (and again. 98% of the audiences you play to are NOT musicians, and are NOT guitarists, harp plyaers, or whatever instrument you may think of), that's usually gonna get over first. For audiences as a general rule, regardless of the genre, besides good vocal skills, if the guy fronting the band has the presence of a wet dish rag, that's a flat out kiss of death no matter how good their instrumental skills are. ---------- Sincerely, Barbeque Bob Maglinte Boston, MA http://www.barbequebob.com CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
I'd like to weigh in here. First, I pretty much agree with the CW on this thread: Grady's harp playing is decent but not spectacular (improving, though -- I taught him how to do the 6OB). I think he himself would probably concede that. He's a very good singer, and an outstanding front man. His shows are a lot of fun (and his band is killer).
I'd like to add a couple of things to the list... Grady is a friend of mine, and I can attest that he's a prince of a guy. He's also a more-than-solid songwriter (as Adam pointed out). Put the whole package together, and I think it's legit that he won the competition, and I was happy for him. He did not win it primarily based on his harmonica playing, and I am sure he would say that himself.
Grady does indeed strike me as someone who is trying to improve, but one of the side effects of his higher profile, on the heels of his IBC win, is that he has a lot less time to learn and practice. We were going to get together for more lessons but, between our two schedules, it's been virtually impossible. (But I take the point by htownfess that he's been doing this for quite a while.)
One more thing... Grady was originally set to be the Saturday night headliner for our Downtown Harp and Juke Festival in October (http://downtownharpandjukefest.com). Due to a miscommunication, he double-booked, and we got Johnny Sansone to take his place (and bumped up Billy Gibson to be the headliner, which really should have been the case from the start). My point is that I believe this ended up being a good thing from a harmonica standpoint, and probably a neutral thing from a crowd-pleasing perspective. Not sure what it will mean in terms of the draw.
But with the other acts (besides me) being: Charlie Musselwhite, Adam Gussow, Brandon Bailey, Billy Gibson, Terry "Harmonica" Bean, Greg "Fingers" Taylor, Bobby Rush (who, IMHO, is better on the harp than a lot of people give him credit for), plus a very good local player named Arthur Jones... going from Grady to Johnny Sansone was, I think, in keeping with what I wanted this festival to be.
One last thing... I was friendly with Bret Littlehales when I lived in DC. Great guy and a strong player and singer.
Last Edited by on Sep 10, 2010 12:12 PM
All I know is.... he makes the move that he makes at .52....if you're gonna put the harp belt/bandolero on... you'd better be a virtuoso on the instrument.
