@Kudzurunner, You asked the question,.....William Clarke, or Rod Piazza?.....Both men on the Blues Harp Great scale are so close! It's William Clarke's Innovation that tips it his way!- Think about it!
---------- The best harmonica one can own, is the one you love to spit on!-Iggy
People that don't think Junior Wells deserves his spot have obviously never seen Junior Wells or didn't understand his contribution to the music. He was a great blues harp player and was a fabulous entertainer.
Howlin' Wolf was a great player. He was also as infuential on modern music as guys like Muddy Waters.
Billy Branch has been on hundreds of recordings throughout his career. He's probably the most recorded harp player alive today. His sound is unique. He's a fantastic player.
Last Edited by on Feb 28, 2010 8:23 PM
I've been a fan of this forum for many months and never wanted to register or post anything here. But this time, in this thread, I got to register for just to say RICK ESTRIN would be my chioce, my reason to play harmonica actually !
P.S. I'm new to this forum so, HI ! from thailand everybody :)
First off, i'm fine with Carey Bell, i'd be fine with a lot of other players to replace him, too. If you want to limit the list to 20 you can't get around excluding players who would deserve to be a part of the list.
Many players have been named, but i'd like to add one who hasn't been nominated before:
Steve Baker
Of course his influence on most blues players is somewhat limited or non existent. This is much because he is a european player and never played much in america. Most of his recordings are not even available in america! You need to go to the blues homeland to have impact on the blues! Still i guess he's a candidate for the to 20 list.IMHO Steve is one the best accompainment blues players ever. His recordings with Chris Jones are monumental! He is an extremly versatile player, pushing the boundaries of blues and mixing with other styles. You can recognize him playing on the first three notes, his tone is uniqe. Finally he wrote the one most important book about the diatonic harmonica, the "Harp Handbook" - If there's a book every serious player should own, it's that one.
My three to consider for the 11 - 20 spots (in no particular order):
Lazy Lester: For me, at least, he has a distinctive sound that I can pick out within the first 4 bars of any tune he plays on.
Rick Estrin: Again, a sound I can pick out as 'original' and a great showman.
Jason Ricci: Representing the next generation. Innovative, technical, soulful and certainly influential simply based on his "status" among the dwellers of this forum.
---------- "Take out your false teeth, momma, I want to suck on your gums."-P. Wolf
Carey Bell is a huge blues influence of mine for sure. He would not be the person I would remove first...but if a position freed up, I'd have to go with William Clarke.
1. You can find his CDs at Barnes and Noble, so he must be at least mildly popular even if out of the harp world...lol 2. He shows up again and again as an influence (how many guys say Dennis G. is an influence, etc?). 3. He gets a ton of love on blues fans not centered on harp. 4. He has an image associated with him.
I am sorry, but there are a lot of great players out there that don't get the props they deserve. Dennis Gruenling is one of them. He is amazing, but in terms of being super influential and a few of the other factors, it just isn't there when looking beyond the scope of the small blues harp niche playing around online.
Jason Ricci is getting too far removed from the blues and I think, although he is super influential, WTF, and the like, his biggest contributions are non-blues related (although he is an amazing blues player!!!). ---------- Mike Fugazzi vocals/harmonica MySpace YouTube Twitter Facebook Album Ordering
Re: Steve Baker and J.J. Milteau, along with Paul Lamb, Greg Szlap, Igor Flach, and John Mayall: I will acknowledge that my All-Time list has a certain US-centric bias built in, since inevitably the UK/Euro players, even the best, will have had less of an influence on American players, and the rest of the world, than the US players have. It would be fair to say that for most of its history the blues have been a US export, and many US blues harp players are relatively ignorant of UK/Euro players. Take me and the players I've named above: when I started this website about three years ago, I had only heard of Baker, Milteau, and Mayall. I had seen Milteau once, live, in the mid-80s when I was a busker in Paris, but I knew none of his recordings; I had two records by Mayall. I knew Baker's name but I'd never heard anything by him. I'd never heard of the other players.
If I was this ignorant, given my very wide exposure to the recordings and live playing of the best US players....well, that's a problem.
I think that Steve Baker and Igor Flach, in terms of originality of approach, distinctive sound, and technical proficiency, are clearly the equal of most of the players in my Second-10 list. (I think they probably can't match Sugar Blue.) Baker is also extremely influential throughout Europe, or at least widely respected as one of the very best, and Flach, as I discovered when I visited Germany, is considered a national treasure of sorts by (East) Germans. Even the handful of recordings that I heard when I was over there convinced me that he was a master.
Perhaps we should create a supplemental list: Non-US all-time Top 10 blues harmonica players? If so, would there be any argument about starting it off with the six players I've mentioned above?
Although Lamb and Mayall are known primarily for blues, I wonder if it's fair to say that the other four are known primarily for blues.
Last Edited by on Mar 01, 2010 11:46 AM
Of all the players video's on YouTube, old or new, the ones that I keep going back to over and over are mostly Jason Ricci vids. Piazza was one of my first big influences. Most of the Clarke videos I have seen have poor sound so I don't have a good reference point. But for pure, raise the hair on the back of your head blues and boogie playing....I go to Jason... for me anyhow.
this stuff about junior wells having a thin tone might be accurate as far as his later years, but at that time junior only had one lung- his earlier recording in the fifties and early sixties were incredible he had a huge tone check out a cd called "Calling all blues"or "Blues hit big town" and there is also an album called "messin with the kid" 1957-1963 and even his later recording with buddy guy "hoodoo man blues" junior tone is fat. Junior kinda of played the harp like miles davis he took short cuts . he didnt play the whole phrase just enough to get his point across with a great sound. carey bells singing was totally influenced by junior wells. 2nd point as far as paul oscher being an influential harp player he wasnt influential for many young harp players today but he was a major influence on harp players like jerry portnoy, rick estrin ,steve guyger magic dick.paul delay, william clark, and bob shatkin "who taught Nat Riddles. As far as what oscher does today you need to check out his show. he plays alone- harp guitar piano bass harp " he was the first to record bass harp in the blues, and melodica through a leslie, his neck rack tone is untouchable . he not just playing the harp its the total use of all the instrument that is so unique and he not copying but what you hear is the real deal, he's playing blues period, his way
id like to see rhythm willie and noah lewis, peg leg sam , in the top 20, i think i would swap butterfield out of the top ten to the second list and replace him with jimmy reed
I didn't know of Peg Leg Sam five minutes ago, but I just fell on this YT and thought I'd share (certainly had the "Wow" effect on me, what a great sound ! And I love the way his playing illustrates what he sings) :
Can I have four? William Clarke Joe Filisko Rick Estrin Grant Dermody
William Clarke is the only one of the four that I have not had the pleasure of seeing live, but his CD's speak for themselves (including the live from Europe CD).
Grant, Rick, and Joe I've seen do acoustic and Chicago style blues and they all have given me a WTF moment in their performances. Rick has everything from a distinctive sound to a bag-o-tricks ala SBII where he plays the harp without hands. Joe is just amazing. If you have ever seen him do Whoopin' the Doop you'd see he can channel Sonny Terry as well as express himself distinctly with some of the most technical playing I've ever seen (and I've seen Jason twice). Grant never ceases to amaze me. Usually you see him doing folk blues such as when he plays with Eric Bibb, but if you could see the man play mic'd up ala Chicago style you'd be amazed. Pitty he doesn't do it more often at this juncture.
Finally, I didn't add Jason Ricci to the list merely because I feel there is much more to come from his body of work and I am not sure I would classify him as a blues harmonica player even though he plays a lot of blues. Admittedly there are a handful of players on the list I haven't heard (especially live) yet, so I guess this kind of qualifies my input. But hey, there is my opinion.
@Snakes: Sure, you can have four. But you're required--as part of this particular game--to tell me which players you take out of the Second-10 in order to sub in the four you've mentioned. You see, I look at the Second-10 list, above, and I just don't see swapping in Joe Filisko for Magic Dick, or Billy Branch, or Rev. Dan Smith. I certainly don't see it when all the other players on the Honorable Mention list--including the six UK/Euro players I mentioned above, but also including Piazza, Clarke, etc., are banging on the door. The four players you mention are all wonderful, although Joe has never struck me as particularly original, just technically and expressively gifted--supremely so--at animating older styles. I can immediately identify the sound Jason Ricci or Dennis Gruenling or Sugar Blue, and I think at this point that I can identify Rick Estrin's playing very quickly. They've got that signature--as Little Walter, Cotton, and Sonny Terry had that signature. I think William Clarke had it, too. What's Joe's signature? To the extent that I hear it at all, I hear it as a kind of fierce intensity with which he animates the Old Stuff. I don't know what the Joe Filisko sound, AS a sound, is. I'm only able to identify him through triangulation and surmise: "Oh, the only guy who could play 'Easy' EXACTLY like the original is Joe, so it must be Joe." That doesn't put him on the list, for my money. But perhaps you can direct me towards original recordings by Joe that will change my mind.
@harpninja: I disagree with your claim that Jason's biggest contributions to the harmonica are "non-blues related." I've already named two of the requisite three cuts to make my claim for his achievement as a blues player: The remake of "Down at the Juke" and "Goeopheny." It's hard to restrict myself to a third cut, but perhaps the video I posted of his performance of "Mellow Down Easy" will do. (Easy to find on YouTube.) These three cuts, between them, take in the whole history of blues harmonica; they throw overblows into the mix--at a very mellow tempo in the first case and at a sick-fast tempo in the latter two cuts. In the opening instrumental chorus of "DATJ" he dances all over the harp with complete control at every moment; nobody--including me, dammit--has ever played a super-relaxed blues like that. In the second chorus he switches to a low harp and shows that he has completely mastered THAT, in a way that signifies on Dennis Gruenling's mastery. Obviously he is expanding his scope to take in other idioms, but that's exactly what Charlie Musselwhite has done throughout his career. Christo Redemptor? Willow Weep for Me? I certainly wouldn't leave Charlie off the blues list because he's shown what else he can do. The point is, Jason has ALREADY completely realized the promise of the overblow revolution, which is that overblows had something indelible to add to the blues harmonica vocabulary. You might argue that Carlos del Junco had already achieved this and you'd be half-right. But Carlos has always been about keeping the volume and passion under control. I love what he does; it's matchless. Still, it was Jason who came along, amped it all up, threw the Coltrane sheets-of-sound thing into it with balls pegged to the wall. One key element that will always sit at the core of the blues harmonica tradition is what you might call the blow-the-back-off-it factor: sheer throwdown bravura wizardry. Jason brought that into the overblow age, creating a completely distinctive sound as he did it. That accomplishment is his and nobody else's. Popper didn't do it. Sugar Blue didn't do it. Heck, I wish I could take credit for this particular development, but I can't--although I got part of the way there. Nor can Howard, crucial as he ultimately was to the whole process.
I'm sure everybody has seen this video, but it's worth posting here:
recently there is two players that have gone on my list of truly inspiration al players who i have caught live , is 1 Paul lamb , he not only is a great showman but you can se he loves playing up to a crowd and always delivers , his band is one of the reasons i wanted to get better as a player myself. 2 west weston. who' is without doubt one of the best players on eht e british and european live circuit , wo also plays with BIG joe Louis and Mud Morganfield on occasion when he is over here , I hope he won't mind posting this up as i have huge respect
Junior Wells had beautiful tone in his later years. I saw one of his shows in the early 90's. There was a mix up and his horn section went to the wrong club. He played his ass off the first two sets of three. I felt like I was back in Chicago.
The last time I saw him, he played the last set with just a piano player. It was in a hall that seated about 750 people. It was sold out. You could have heard a pin drop. It was the most intimate show in a larger room that I had ever seen. This was about 12 or 18 months before he passed away.
People that don't think Junior had tone or couldn't play never saw a fantastic Junior Wells show or they don't know jack about tone.
I had seen Junior several times. Sometimes, he was sitting in with a band in small clubs in Chicago. Nobody could work an audience like Junior Wells. The guy was a true entertainer, singer and harp player. He owned his audience.
SO authenticity accounts for nothing? Lots of people can play the blues.... but there are only a few who reflect the true nuance and essence in their playing. As far as I am concerned Carey Bell was more authentic than most of the people named to replace him. ----------
Talkin' about authenticity... may I insist on Johnny Woods ? His sound (which I'd call "wet" or "swampy") is truly unique to my ear, and fully mastered. The few things you can find on Youtube don't pay him justice. But his recordings are great.
@the Gloth: Johnny Woods has a good soulful sound, but I don't think he's particularly creative or influential or technically gifted. In sonic terms, Howlin' Wolf has everything Woods has and more, plus he's been much more influential. He has a wider range, too, although not much wider. But he did some swing stuff in Memphis, along with his deep blues.
@Nancy: the word "authenticity" isn't one that I find useful in a blues context. It's terribly overused, and in most cases other words are more precise. Robert Johnson, for example, was hugely influenced, in almost all his songs, by earlier recordings. Does that make him inauthentic? Is authenticity connected with blackness when the word is used in a blues context? If so, what do you make of the dobro playing of Spooky Cole. He's an old white guy who grew up in the Mississippi Delta:
I think the word "authencity" is expected to carry too much weight in blues contexts. Does a college education or the fact that one was inspired to pick up a guitar by, say, The Monkees' TV show, make one inauthentic? I guess we need to write off Corey Harris (Bates College), Bonnie Raitt (Radcliffe), and Deborah Coleman (the Monkees), along with Bill Sims, Jr. I hate to do that. They're all good, interesting, important blues performers.
I put Carey Bell on the list for several reasons. I've seen him live about a half dozen times. I was impressed by the way in which he was, on the one hand, completely within, and representative of, the Chicago blues tradition, and at the same time completely original in terms of the sound he actually delivered. He has, arguably, one of the most immediately identifiable blues harp sounds--next to Sonny Terry and Sugar Blue. He uses a Leslie cabinet and gets an organ sound in some contexts. He does a spooky thing with his voice that NOBODY else does. He grooves hard. So he's completely within the tradition and he's intensely original and innovative. I love that. (Since there's been a lot of conversation about this in other threads, it's probably also worth pointing out that he doesn't have a particularly big, thick, rich sound. He just has HIS sound. Sometimes he gets a distinctive whispery edge on his notes, playing diatonic or chromatic.)
I raised the point at the beginning of this thread because I wasn't sure how influential he'd been. I thought maybe I was the only person who cared! I'm glad to hear some people here speak up for him.
As for the Second-20 list: I haven't heard a word on behalf of Rev. Dan Smith, but I still think that's because most people just don't know how good he was--soulful, technically gifted, and completely original. I don't know if he was influential at all, but I think he belongs somewhere in the Top-20, IMHOP.
Lots of people have weighed in here, but very few have followed my instructions: for now, the Top-10 are inviolable. (Butterfield belongs there. At his best, he was completely original--both in his best slow blues and in his fast triplet stuff on the Woodstock album. None of the Chicago players he learned from were playing like that. Just as importantly, Butterfield has been hugely influential on the way that the mass of contemporary players plays. I've heard many, many pros whose approach was molded by Butter, including Rob Paparozzi, Felix Cabrera, and Speedo Jones, to name three NY-area players.) If you want to swap somebody new into the Second-20, tell me who you would swap out, and why.
Last Edited by on Mar 03, 2010 6:36 AM
Adam-maybe a bit off topic,but I'm very curious as to why the Wolf is in your top 10. He's certainly very distinctive,but I'm not sure about influential. Funny,but I never think about his harp playing when you mention his name. At least not like the other 9.
Thank God you said it Adam! I wrote a whole post on my concerns that "Authentic" and "credible" were being used as euphemisms for "old black blues guy" but I ended up deleting it for fear of kicking off a whole new S**tstorm.
Actually, I'll bring things back to where I began: I have vivid memories of being blown away by the Carey Bell of the mid 1980s and early 1990s, but I'm having an impossible time finding anything on YouTube that comes close to what I saw--even clips from that period. Here's one of the better ones:
Still, I'm not sure that I have a good conscience about holding a place for Carey in the Second-10 all time list with some of the badass players who are knocking at the door.
Big Nancy and several others have weighed in. I'll ask others: if you love Carey Bell, please speak up now! Tell me which are his greatest recordings. Tell me who he has influenced. I'm just not quite hearing what I was sure was there.
@verylong: Well, my lists are naturally weighted towards people who have been central to the evolving tradition, and we know who the big guns are. Or at least I do. John Lee Williamson may not strike us as particularly remarkable today, the way that Little Walter does, but his playing was innovative in its day and extremely influential. If you leave him out of the Top-10, you're telling up-and-coming young players that they can safely ignore him. And they can't.
That's the point of the lists: who is absolutely central, absolutely essential, as opposed to somebody who clearly deserves mention but could safely ignored by somebody seeking the HEART of the tradition--the best, most soulful, most influential, most powerful, most original stuff IN THE BLUES IDIOM that has ever been played on the instrument? All those criteria are non-identical, although many of them overlap. We would all agree, every single one of us, that Sonny Boy Williamson (Rice Miller), Little Walter, and Sonny Terry fall into that category. Right? OK then. That's where you start with a young player. And then you add somebody to that list. Who? Big Walter? Deford Bailey? Keep going.
That's all I did.
Last Edited by on Mar 03, 2010 8:59 AM
I have 3 or 4 Charlie Musselwhite CD's. When I was starting to learn harp I enjoyed playing along with them. But now, most of his stuff bores the stuffing out of me. It falls under the category that you can hear it and immediately do a call and response to it...echoing basically what he played as he uses the same basic licks over and over. No wow factor for sure. I have Billy Branch on the Harp Attack CD which I think everyone has. I have another one of his CD's as well. I really like "New Kid on the Block" from Harp Attack. His playing outshines Junior Wells and the others. But I still don't think either of these artists are anywhere near the level that Jason is at now.
I've always had mixed feelings about Charlie. He has an explorer's spirit. His early stuff on Memphis, Tennessee is all over the map in a good way. He's got a lot of chops, but he always struck me as somebody who was a) too patterned and b) didn't bear down hard enough. But I think he's actually had an uptick in intensity and soulfulness over the past few years. I've seen him live about 8 times over the past twenty years, but not recently. I just saw him live in Oxford, MS last year and was surprised by how good he is playing. He was better than I'd ever seen him. He's an innovator in the matter of using high octaves in cross harp. I think you'll get blowback on this one. Heck, there are some people who would scream at me for not putting him in the Top-10. I think I put him where he is for a range of reasons. I see him as marginally stronger than Carey Bell and not as strong as, for example, Sugar Blue or Kim Wilson.
I agree with you about Jason, but it's not just about "level." Check my criteria. Newer players will always tend to exceed older players in terms of technique, "level," etc. This doesn't mean that the all-time lists of, for example, the greatest stock car racers in history, is only about the guys with the fastest times. It's more than that.
As for Carey Bell: check out "Big Walter Strut." He has a kind of whispery attack when he backs off the throttle that is like no other player out there.
Last Edited by on Mar 03, 2010 9:23 AM
Maybe you're making a rod for your own back with the format of a top ten?
I can't claim to have heard much by Carey Bell other than the harp attack album so I'll let others make the case for the defence. It does strike me that the 'evolution' in your top ten kind of stops at Butterfield. I tend to favour putting Jason in the first 10 in the place of Wolf, who I consider primarily a front man. Jason, as you have argued meets your criteria, but putting him in the top 10 would also make a bold statement that harmonica playing is not stagnant and there are players still pushing the boundaries. It is clear to me that Jason has already had a huge influence on a new generation of players. His name is definitely a part of harp history already and I don't even see signs that he has reached his full potential yet. It's almost frightening.
So I know it's not strictly the question you asked, but I think you should have a contemporary player in the top 10. Of course Sugar Blue would send the same message as would a certain Adam Gussow's name (although I understand your modesty precludes it).
If it were my list I'd relegate the Wolf to the second 20 in Carey Bell's place, and promote Jason to top ten in the Wolf's place.
I spent last evening listening to samples of cuts from all of the Billy Branch albums that are available on Amazon. While he is a fine technically accomplished player, I do not hear ANYTHING that is sufficiently distinctive stylistically to put him in the same league with Carey Bell. And, quite frankly, to my ear, a lot of what he plays is downright unimaginative.
Please enlighten us by pointing out some examples of his work that you consider justifies his placement in your second top ten list. Maybe I'm missing something.
If Carey Bell has to be bumped, then imho Snooky Pryor should take his place. if Snooky's claim at being the first to amp up is correct then surely of anyone in the 20 he is the most influental of all, he's got great tone and a distinctive unhurried playing style, maybe not top 10 and there's a little bit of sameness to much of what he does but what he does he does good.
check out Key to the highway on the 'Snooky' album .
---------- My granddad gave me some sound advice on his deathbed. "It's worth spending money on good speakers," he told me.
Last Edited by on Mar 03, 2010 1:14 PM
@kudzurunner, Adding a separate list of european players is probably the worst thing to do. If there is a list of 20 all time greats it's obviously a matter of taste and personal preference why one is in or the other is out. Even if the users of this forum would vote it'll still be just the everage taste of the voters. So it doesn't really hurt if no europeans belong to your list - i don't think there's anyone european who can be considered to be a must be member of your list.
If you make a separate list though it's like setting up a junior league - not good enough to be mentioned with the others but still acceptable by european standards. Thats for sure not what those world class players deserve! Make up a list of possible candidates for the second list and explain that they could fairly make it in the top 20 if another jury would have to pick. That'd IMHO be fair.
@ the good doctor kudzu Well I stand corrected about Joe Filisko given the criteria. Its just that when I saw him he made a huge impression on me with his skill. But true I would more than likely know Rick Estrin or William Clarke without knowing for sure it was them just by their distinctive sound. I am obviously predisposed to Grant as he is my teacher and I've seen him play more than any other professional harmonica player. Maybe it is just me, but I could pick his harmonica voice out of a crowd as well.
So you posed the question who would I remove from the list. Given that I no longer adher to adding Joe that means I only have to choose three to remove so here goes... Carey Bell, Billy Branch, and Rev. Dan Smith. Carey Bell has been discussed by yourself, and Billy Branch merely because I think the other three (Dermody, Clarke, and Estrin) have a more unique sound [to me]. At least I could more readily pick them out than Mr. Branch. I do like his music though and have some of his CD's. I have to admit that my choice of Rev. Dan Smith is mostly due to my lack of familiarity with his music. Perhaps if I heard more of Rev. Dan...
Fun thread.
Last Edited by on Mar 03, 2010 2:51 PM
there is a huge diference between the signature styles of little walter, sonny boy 1, sonny boy 2, jimmy reed, big walter, and sonny terry. each artist being a composer and a father of an entire school of blues playing the same way that muddy waters, john lee hooker is different from bbking and each other. no one on the list besides those has founded a style of blues so radically independent as the foregoing . you might argue that cotton is pretty close but he is too dirivative of rice miller to be called a totally independant master but he definitely belongs in the top 10 as does junior wells and and george smith all the others in the 2nd and honorable mention are off shoots of these styles with the exception of the new wave players like jason ricci which in fact is a conglomeration of all the styles adding some overtones and high speed licks but i do not think that style has yet arrived to any degree as the others ive mentioned but maybe in a few years, i feel that style is still in the experimental stage and too eclectic and in need of more tone and taste. i dont see carey bell as a unique harp player except for his use of the octave pedal.the same goes with all the others in the 2nd 10 and honorable mention list. if i was recomending people for harps students to listen to it would be the great masters than id tell them to listen to the people they listened to. thats what toots theilman said "dont listen to me or other harmonica players listen to the great jazz players", all the players in both the 2nd ten and honorable mention are great players but they are light years behind the masters . the masters are all dead
Adam, ain't it time to drop the top 10 trope and do the dozens instead? Baker's dozens, I mean. Thirteen in each group.
If Howlin' Wolf belongs in the top group, it's because a. he's the harmonica link back to the earliest blues--you don't get Collard Greens & Gravy or Moreland & Arbuckle without the Wolf b. he's historically early, overlaps Charley Patton c. he wrote canonical songs *on the harp*, not guitar d. immediately identifiable and unsurpassed sound e. he's the Wolf--U gotta problem wid dat? f. all of the above--he uses the harmonica toward that hypnotic unity/intensity of vocals/lyric/instruments/groove/persona that the blues must always evoke to some degree, however sophisticated the form it's taking. (See Jason Ricci video, etc.)
Wolf stands for the whole element that Hound Dog Taylor meant when he said, "He couldn't play s***, but he sure made it feel good!" or whatever the Hound Dog quote is. The salvation of every blues harp player, that your level of technique doesn't matter so much if you can get in touch with the spirit of the thing, rather than just the form.
Don't ask me, though: I think "Moanin' at Midnight" is the first punk record and one of the most important pieces of recorded music in any genre.
Junior Wells pioneered funk blues harp, if nothing else. He also mastered three distinct styles: traditional acoustic playing, heavy amplified playing (Blues Hit Big Town period) and the unique style he developed in the 1960s.
Charlie Musselwhite deserves credit for deliberately expanding the scope of the diatonic, especially playing the chords and playing the whole harp better. He picked up where Big Walter left off, in that regard: he owns the space between BW and Sugar Blue, historically. He pushed the boundaries of the instrument as an instrument and inspired others to do the same.
I would elevate Jason Ricci for being the master synthesist of the possibilities of diatonic blues harmonica, same as Kim Wilson has been the master synthesist of the possibilities of traditional blues harmonica. JR tends to do blues-rock, but so did Butterfield in his time; both bust the old wineskin of blues when they do straight blues.
Snooky Pryor: narrow but deep. Has that BB King problem: hard to sound like him without sounding exactly like him. Must-listen guy.
Madcat should be elevated as an active avatar of playing the diatonic to the limits of traditional bending, and using effects. Harp players were talking about him in the early 90s.
I'm for elevating Pat Ramsey: I don't think you get Ricci or Billy Gibson w/o Pat's influence. Ramsey really pushed playing diatonic in the phrasing of other instruments or playing it strictly musically, for lack of a better term. His playing on the Johnny Winter record was a touchstone for anyone who heard it *at the time*: he and Sugar Blue and Kim Wilson all emerged at the same time and raised the bar in different ways. I'd point to "Last Night" and "Take One Step at a Time" off that record, plus something in his late style.
I'd also elevate Junior Parker: Recognizable sound, canonical songs, and pioneered using harp around a horn section. That's an issue we still deal with, fitting blues harp into more "sophisticated" contexts; consider Butterfield's horn bands, and the issue of fitting harp into later trends like soul blues and funk blues. How about "Pretty Baby" (*huge* influence on Kim Wilson/early T-Birds sound), "Strange Things Happening" (that harp break chasing away the horns) and something like "Way Back Home" (doing a Wilton Felder/Crusaders tune on harp is unifying a lot of strains of later blues). Or "Sweet Home Chicago": It's not Junior's fault that his version is the one still beaten to death today. LW kinda did an end run by tossing out the horns and doing it all themselves with the Aces, but Jr. left the horns in and fitted the harp to that.
Jerry McCain: If nothing else, for pioneering rock n' roll harmonica: those Excello demos are insane, Little Richard meets Little Walter stuff. Again, a pioneer on an issue we contend with today. And then there's "Steady": one of the absolute amplified tone touchstones, right? I'd add most anything insane from the demos, "Cutie Named Judy" or whatever, and "Courtin' in a Cadillac".
Maybe the latter two guys also fall into the "narrow but deep" category, but they pursued crucial paths. I guarantee you that all harp players were paying attention to Jr. Parker during his lifetime, and you really don't have Delbert McClinton or the Blues Brothers without Junior. And it's *really hard* to skip around Junior's canon to pick out tracks without stopping to listen to them all, full-length.
Anyway, about forty-four cents' worth of thoughts on where people fit into a putative Big Picture framed by Top Ten lists (or Baker's Dozens :-).
I will say that Howlin' wolf is gotta be there , you don't have to be a master techincian , this the blues and he had the Blues more than anyone ,EV630 said wolf taught him , i think it was the other way round, here's a clip of the wolf in action
Just watched that Ricci clip. If you elevate him to the top 10 then you need to add Harper. He's been doing that wheedley wheedley Sugar Blue stuff for years too.
Must we put players on a soapbox they all have there own niche, each player singer stood alone in there own unique way in the makeing of the history of the Blues,
as do todays modern blues players like if i was going to buy a Album had the choice of 2 Adam Gusso or Jason Ricci who is the best player Adam or Jason who comes first who comes second.
Last Edited by on Mar 03, 2010 9:55 PM
"Must we put players on a soapbox they all have there own niche, each player singer stood alone in there own unique way in the makeing of the history of the Blues"
Nobody came up with Hammie Nixon yet. He may not be the most skilled player of his time, but to me he is central to the tradition. He contributed to the harp becoming an accompaniement instrument rather than just solo instrument ; and he was THE major influence on John Lee Williamson's playing. In fact, when I compare those two, I'd say that John Lee is Hammie Nixon playing better, more precisely and with more chops. But it's essentially the same style (and Hammie came first).
Example : take "Good Morning Little School Girl" : it's a remake of "Airplane Blues" from Sleepy John Estes and Hammie Nixon (same structure, same singing style, similar lyrics and same harp lines, just "refined"). My idea of it is that John Lee brought Hammie's playing to town and adapted it to citadine's tastes and exigences.
I think Rice Miller was much more a revolutionary player than John Lee Williamson, I may be wrong but I don't know of a player having influenced Rice Miller the way Hammie Nixon influenced John Lee.
I don't know either if Hammie Nixon's playing was much original : a comparison with Noah Lewis would be useful, as they both have the same background (coming from jug bands to blues).
Last Edited by on Mar 04, 2010 2:32 AM
I've avoided posting because I simply don't know enough. BUT,
Having seen both Sugar Blue and Jason Ricci live, I don't think they have much in common, aside from playing the harp fast. They both have a very different sound.
Namely, Sugar plays in an unusual tonality. I think Sugar has more in common with John Popper, as far as note choices go. Jason, on the other hand, plays withing the context of the music at most times.
After reading everything here and looking at a lot of videos: I am still convinced Jason should be in the second top 10. He is the by far one of the most influential MODERN blues harmonica players.
