I was watching some William Clarke video in association with another thread, and stumbled across this video of Little Charlie and the Nightcats. Rick Estrin is absolutely, positively one of the greatest harp players alive. This video shows Rick very typically hamming it up, first amplified, then acoustic - and toward the end playing some pretty impressive licks without holding the harp at all.
Terrrrific! I like seeing through others people's (non harp players) eyes and have been to lot of "Blow Outs" over the years. I've noticed Rick to be a real audience pleaser, as well as Curtis Selgado (with his singing and harp phrasing!) and Lee Oscar. And none of them make your ears bleed either. Rick always has that organic musical rhythm to his playing with those sharp clear punctuations. d ---------- Myspace: dennis moriarty
Totally agree, Greg. This is an amazing performance and his 'Twisted' album is also fantastic.
I love the hands-free playing. Tried it once but ended up swallowing the harmonica. Luckily it was only a Honer Puck. I can still hear it when I breathe.
Rick definately is an entertainer, his shows are always a great nite out,even for non harp players.Not to be missed if he's in your area,and yeah, he is one of the gratest players alive!!!
I agree that Rick is a terrific player and entertainer, nice guy too, enjoyed talking to him at a festival a few years back. Be careful with that "best player alive" stuff though, you'll revive that old "Who's the greatest?" thread again.
@Andrew...doesn't everybody Tongue block ??? LOL - Rick is great. he has great STYLE....both musically and visually. ---------- Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn. They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art. - Charlie Parker
Yep, I saw Rick Estrin's show at the Toad Tavern in Denver a couple weeks ago. He was sensational. His big HarpKing amp sounded great.
At the end of the show he brought up two good local players to jam with him, Al Chesis and 14-year old Nic "Cottonseed" Clark. There is a video of it on Nic's Facebook page. (not on Youtube) You should look it up if you can. They were passing the mic back an forth, and Nic got the best tone of them all!
@TL, In Greg's post click where you see "YouTube". That should take you to YouTube. That would be in the lower right hand corner.
Last Edited by on May 16, 2010 8:03 AM
Thanks... you have to be more than a member. You have to be his friend. I'd sure like to see it. I love Rick Estrin and Nic Clark. ---------- Tin Lizzie
Excellent clip of Rick E. And sticking the harp in the mouth routine was great, It goes beyond the guitarist stunt of playing w/ your teeth or behind your back. Solid technique, phrasing, pace, rhythm, the whole darn package.
As for what amp he is using, I never ever thought of his rig for the length of the 7 min plus clip. To mention it deflates the point of the post.
Here's a question: At 1:06 in the Hurry up and wait video, he does a double take. I am glad to see him do that since I do that all the time when I try to sing and play at the same time and it's good to know that even someone at the top of their game just has work hard to keep the groove.
Has anyone seen a video of Sonny Boy Williamson II where he does a double take like that?
Just out of curiosity...
Last Edited by on May 16, 2010 4:24 PM
OK. In the first vid, he is holding the harp with his right hand and doing his wah stuff withe the left hand. In the second vid...he switched it around.
Greg - The harp playing on that entire tune is pretty much out of the Rice Miller songbook. You're right. He plays that Rice Miller stuff well.
I don't recommend doing the no hands thing. I had been practicing it. I did it on Tuesday night and managed to break a filling. I'm now dentist bound. I won't be doing that anymore.
This is the one you are looking for. First time I wanted to post it I didn't because I thought there were things Estrin did better than Rice. Now I've changed my mind, although Estrin is technically better hands off, but RM is cooler and more musical and deeper.
---------- Kinda hot in these rhinos!
Last Edited by on May 17, 2010 5:51 AM
i saw rick estrin and the nightcats with kid andersen on guitar and that was one of the best blues shows ive seen in thirty years. for years people thought that rick was little charlie , im really glad that hes getting his name out there right and getting the respect for what he does . btw hes got a teaching video which is hillarious he doesnt really teach any licks but he does talk about the subtlties involved in performing the blues . highly recomended AJ
I frikkin love his DVD on showmanship and topics on harmonica playing that don't directly have anything to do with the technicalities behind playing the harp. I highly recommend it.
It's very good playing, but frankly I don't hear anything so incredible in these vids, at least not enough to make me think that Rick Estrin is one of the greatest harp players alive. I saw other harp players doing much more impressive things, this including Jason Ricci, Joe Filisko, and my own "master" Thierry Crommen.
Deep sense of groove, along with style, charisma, and dare I say a talent for playing authentic traditional blues that is no way contrived.
Last Edited by on May 18, 2010 4:28 AM
Twenty years ago I wasn't really a fan of Rick's pink tuxedos and his determination to make the blues into a joke, Louis Jordan style. The comic element in his stage show struck me as of a piece with the Blues Brothers, and I wanted the blues to be a whole lot more than that. It's also true that Rick, in certain moods, seems to want to channel SBW II in "look ma, no hands" style, and that sort of pointedly retro playing bores me pretty quickly.
But I've come to appreciate Rick over the years, and he's got two real strengths, I think: a truly distinctive sound, a kind of yelp that he puts on his notes and that helps him meet the three-second test (you can hear his harp sound on the radio and ID it pretty quickly), and, as Ev360 notes, an incredible sense of swing.
When I stumbled across the chromatic instrumental entitled "Coastin' Hank" (a Little Charlie & the Nightcats cut) off Alligator's CRUCIAL HARMONICA BLUES CD, I was blown away. There is no other harp player who swings quite like that. He doesn't just swing hard, like Piazza or Clarke; he swings fluidly, constantly changing up the displacement of his phrasing vis a vis the beat; and the entire cut, from front to back, is incredibly musical. He's working smoothly through all the jazz changes in that particular blues without every losing the bluesiness. Desert-island cut. I'd encourage anybody who doesn't quite "get" Estrin to check out that cut. He'll getcha.
Last Edited by on May 18, 2010 4:49 AM
Adam, What do you think of James Harman, or even Billy Watson, and what is wrong with delivering the blues with some sense of humor. One of the first things that drew me to Rice Miller was his sense of humor.
Last Edited by on May 18, 2010 4:52 AM
Since you asked: Nothing's wrong with a sense of humor in the blues, as long as you're crying inside--i.e., laughing to keep from crying--and as long as you're not unconsciously recapitulating the "two real coons" routine that Spike Lee dramatizes here:
But we're going off-topic, and I'd rather not make this a thread about comedy in the blues. Rick Estrin is a musician's musician, and I enjoy his stage show.
Last Edited by on May 18, 2010 5:04 AM
We certainly agree on that, but I don't see the correlation I guess. Just like I see no correlation in Rick's style and "the blues brothers", I seriously doubt that Rick was a fan.
Rick obviously comes at it as "show biz", which you coming from a 'street musician' angle may be a bit put off. I still wouldn't make your harsh comparison's.
The whole human race is crying on the inside, the jokester's probably crying the most.
Last Edited by on May 18, 2010 5:47 AM
Actually, I suspect that Rick IS a fan of the Blues Brothers, since his West Coast friend, Curtis Salgado, helped found them:
http://www.markhummel.com/bhb_stars.html
I'm not making harsh comparisons. I'm praising Rick extremely highly for what I like in his playing and I'm noting that although two decades ago I didn't particularly like his stage patter, I'm fine with it now.
It's mostly a matter of personal taste. There's a 100+ year history in American showbiz of white folks blacking up and burlesquing black folks, stretching from the Virginia Minstrels through Bing Crosby in "Holiday Inn." That's just the way white people had fun back then: dressing up like stereotyped black people--a certain kind of down-and-out black people, or dandified black people--and doing a song-and-dance. I didn't make this up. It's a fact.
How you interpret that fact, and how or whether you see the residue of this long and enduring tradition at play in the contemporary blues scene is up to you. Most people don't want to see it. Some people, here and elsewhere, are appalled by the fact that I raise the issue at all. That's fine. People get their jollies in different ways. I love playing the blues, but I don't get any enjoyment from mingling my own blues performances with a certain kind of highly stylized "black" talk. I don't play the blues in order to be licensed to perform a certain kind of theatre. But some contemporary white blues performers do. John Nemeth does exactly that in this video:
John is a terrifically skilled and expressive blues singer, and a fine harp player. He chooses, quite deliberately, to put on a certain kind of old-fashioned, countryfied "black" voice in order to make his audience laugh. This sort of thing no longer bothers me as much as it used to. It just is what it is: a white guy putting on a black voice. Big deal. This sort of thing isn't why I came to the blues, or why I play the blues, but the blues world is big enough that the people who like this sort of thing deserve to be entertained by high-level mimicry, and god knows Nemeth does it well. Great harp, too. But if I want blues that makes me feel something, I'm afraid I've got to head back to Freddie King, Bonnie Raitt, Keb' Mo', Eric Bibb, and Tab Benoit--and Estrin's "Coastin' Hank," which takes the listener on a journey through all the bittersweet, mellow, joyous moods of the blues. People are complex; blues performers are complex. John Nemeth is definitely a complex cat, and the aesthetic choices he's made, along with the talents he possesses, are finding him an audience. He deserves an audience.
At this point, in trying to respond to your posts, I've taken this thread off-topic. My apologies.
I'll reiterate my respect for Rick Estrin as a fantastic harp player.
Last Edited by on May 18, 2010 6:19 AM
Prof. Adam, you remind me of a pastor who introduces a hymn with a little history about the writer and the tune. I think I want to take your class! You ask some good questions, why do I play, what do I play and what influences my selection? I wonder if I play and act differently to different audiences?
What you appear not to realise, Adam, is that Rick learned the shtick (including the wild clothes) playing and mc-ing (and surviving) in black clubs in the 60s. It's been written about in Blues Revue and Blues Access (now defunct I think) and other places. He comes from a real black club scene, rather than drifting into the blues via Butter or whatever.
James Harman was also "turned out" (as we say in the card and dice scuffling community) by black mentors in black clubs.
Just because a bunch of white dentists and academics got into zoot suits in the late 80s, doesn't mean Rick is part of that crowd.
And good choice on "Coastin' Hank". Also check out the title track of the CD that came from, "That's Big". One of the simplest solos in history but just TRY and nail that deep groove a mile wide. I know from chatting to Rick after a gig that THAT is one of the solos he's pretty happy about.
Oh and another thing, it's also well known that Rick had that other habit that Spann and all those other real blues cats had of always carrying a knife or something.
He nearly killed Jnr Watson when he stabbed him in the jugular using a flick knife in the early seventies. Watson nearly died and spent 5 hours on the operating table. Estrin had a choice of prison or rehab for his smack habit. He went into rehab and thank god, because he really is a treasure for lovers of American music.
That's nothing to be proud of, but he really came from the hardcore black club circuit. He was no white blues hobbyist.
id just like to say that from charlie patton through howling wolf, t-bone walker, guitar slim, buddy guy sonny boy,lightning hopkins,muddy waters pegleg sam and numerous other blues musicians -the blues has always been performed with a theatrical element creating a sense of magic in the performance it is part of the african tradition and it goes back all the way to shamans and preachers. rick estrin is just following that tradition and the blues brothers have nothing to do with influencing rick, they were just looking at looking at similar models. i would say that rick originally included a comic element in his blues because he couldn't take the idea of a white person playing the blues with any seriousness, but he is now playing the blues like a bluesman, it was just a matter of time in his evolution.
Darn, Ev630 spilled it. Nonetheless, I'll post this as I wrote it:
Well, Adam, I would make exceptions for some performers for a couple of reasons. The first is a very general principle that I should think people would recognize: Human beings are natural mimics. For our own protection, for the sake of bonding with the community we're in, we tend to unconsciously take on the speech patterns of those around us. Let's see what happens to that New Yawk accent of yours after a few more years in Mississippi, for example :-). One has to realize that there are some artists like Estrin and Piazza who spent a substantial portion of their life immersed in the milieu of the African American live blues marketplace. They developed a verbal style that fit in more there. Maybe they're overdoing it by some people's standards, but in some sense they earned it. I've got more of a problem with performers who didn't spend years in that kind of milieu; I don't know where John Nemeth stands in that regard, but I'd think less of someone who didn't spend formative years there. In other words, if you learned *that* off a record or video, instead of a bandstand and audience and neighborhood and home, it strikes me as faux and is problematic.
For myself, a few years back I decided I didn't like it when white friends shifted into black diction/elocution in the musical context, and have tried to consciously avoid it since. I realized that the African American blues musicians and fans I've met are fine with people being themselves, so I try to stick with that. I yam what I yam. (I sound odd anywhere, anyway.) Doing that in singing, I call that the "dare to be white" approach. IMO a white has to be a very good mimic indeed to convincingly inhabit a black blues voice, and if the white singer has those kind of tools, they're better employed by that person trying to do a better job of being themselves. If you can really feel it and really share it--and there are technical issues like proper intonation and phrasing involved--I believe the blues audience will accept you bringing your own accent. It seems very much a corollary of what I've seen while teaching English as a second language--if a speaker gets the rhythm and emphasis right, they'll be understood even though they still trip up on sounds that aren't used in their language. There are some core elements of blues singing that anybody can learn, though African Americans developed them. If I hear someone from Britain or Romania or Japan trying to sing blues and it's not really working, there's usually a stiffness in the phrasing or a failure to master the nuances of intonating blue notes that's making their native accent stand out even more.
It does bother me when an artist adopts the shuck and jive diction that was the style of stage patter for some black artists in front of whites during the blues revival. Peter Guralnick singled out James Cotton and Junior Wells as offenders back then, IIRC, and pleased Howlin' Wolf very much by praising him for not going there. I'm afraid Piazza tends to put me in mind of that. Rick Estrin makes it a lot funnier and maybe even deconstructs the put-on by going so far with it: it's a put-on of a put-on, yet it's not a put-on IMO opinion. Ev630 spilled the beans, but here's how I put it more diplomatically:
I'd grant Rick a personal exemption for a reason specific to him: If you know his personal history, which he neither covers up nor shouts to the world, you know that he spent some time in his life as a guest of the state. I haven't, but I've seen people claim that one way to get through it is actively to create a persona to hide behind. If that's true, then IMO Rick Estrin's persona is very hard-earned indeed, is authentic in an important way, and really *is* him in a way that most of us are not entitled to criticize. Twenty years ago, despite his utter politeness he struck me as a very wary and guarded individual, and I think the beautiful thing about him taking over the band is how he is finally free to display more of his natural graciousness and friendliness as audiences show him how much they love what he does, and love that goofy, yet emotionally deep persona of his. Reading his account of how he was a troublemaker/rebel/outlier as a schoolboy, his adoption of the trickster/court jester archetypes to survive seems logical, and let's face it, vaudeville was still around when he was a kid, look at the remnants of it then on YouTube. Rick is an anachronism, and proud of it, and entertaining about it. They don't make them like him anymore, any more than they make them like Howlin' Wolf or Rice Miller or B.B. King. They never made but one of Rick, that's for sure, and he wouldn't claim to be Rice Miller's equal, as has been observed already in this thread.
Rick Estrin isn't going retro. He was there. So was Piazza. Nemeth's adoption of a late 1960s martinis-and-stingy-brim-Vegas-hipster persona seems like an attempt to craft a unified aesthetic using a period that's got some retro appeal nowadays. I like the songs he is writing in that mode and I like the way he and his band put them over live and I think he spotted a worthy musical niche that no one was exploiting well. If he's really getting the feeling and putting it over to the audience, is it really ironic at that point? I don't think so. One could argue that it's not moving blues forward, but I don't want to get into that one now. I don't think everybody should do what he's doing, but I think it's valid enough for him to be doing it. There's no doubt that he can really sing it and for some reason I didn't notice affected elocution on his part when he played my town. It is something like my opinion about James Hunter or Amy Winehouse: they seem like they could have held their own back in the day if they'd been there, and if artists like that write good new songs, then they are keeping music alive rather than enbalming it.
you're dead right rick he is not no blues hobbyist he has lived his blues, oscher , rick ,steve guyger are not playing at retro blues, thats the same blues they learned they dont know how to play any other way , its real.
Little Charlie and the Nitecats rekindled my love for the blues after a 20+ year hiatus. I've seen them many times and have fond memories of all of their shows.In my top 10 of live shows I've seen.
Before Muddy asked Portnoy to join the band ,he asked Rick. Don't know the details of why he turned it down.
