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Dirty-South Blues Harp forum: wail on! >
black to white
black to white
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yogi
24 posts
Jun 17, 2010
8:55 AM
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Iposted this an a different thread and was advised to start a new topic with it. So, i paste it below. The previous post was the one about face pictures.
''Strikes me every face is a white face. Go back 40 /50 years the players we talk about were black. Now we talk about portnoy, greulling, fillisko, budha, gussow, ricci, wilson, hummel...all white.
when did the harmonica cross the shade of the skin divide and why has it been such a definite cross over? ''
It just got me thinking. The harmonica players, the more i think about it , are mainly white players. I can think of some contradictions, wiggins, mars, dunn but they seem to be in the minority.
I am sure many can list black players, not really getting into that. just wondering if it is a misguided observation i have.
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Buddha
2075 posts
Jun 17, 2010
9:02 AM
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I'm not white. I'm yellow
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"Musicians are the architects of heaven"
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Joe_L
390 posts
Jun 17, 2010
9:06 AM
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"Strikes me every face is a white face. Go back 40 /50 years the players we talk about were black. Now we talk about portnoy, greulling, fillisko, budha, gussow, ricci, wilson, hummel...all white."
Many players do nothing more than scratch the surface. Those guys are as deep as some people will ever dig. It's too bad for them, because they miss some great music.
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Tuckster
608 posts
Jun 17, 2010
9:10 AM
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Yogi-thanks for starting a new thread. It could end up being a long one.
I attend lots of blues events and there are as many black faces there as I find here. I don't really know why,but I'll hazard a guess that a lot of blacks associate blues with the bad old days. I would like to hear Brandon's take on this.
If you wade through the long meandering thread about " why don't pros post on this forum",you'll find a very good post by Adam about how blues has become a white dominated thing.
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Tuckster
609 posts
Jun 17, 2010
9:25 AM
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Copy and paste Adam's post:
One of the first things that would become indisputably clear is the remarkable transformation of the blues scene in the past 50 years. Blues has become, in some profound way, white people's music. The great majority of members of this blues harmonica forum are white--or, more precisely, non-African American.
And yet things weren't always like this. In 1952, when "Juke" was released, blues harmonica was a black man's thing.
So that's interesting. A huge cultural shift, with an indisputable racial element. Nothing wrong with that--we're not judging. It's just a fact. One worth noting.
Why and how did blues harmonica become important to white people--and white guys, in particular? Another interesting question. Maybe if we suspend judgment, we could examine it and learn a few things.
Even as this massive cultural/racial shift took place, a modest number of black guys were still playing the instrument. Billy Branch, Sugar Blue, and Phil Wiggins come immediately to mind. Did their experience as black players seeking to inhabit a musical tradition undergoing such a radical shift in racial makeup differ from the experience of white players? Since younger blacks, as B. B. King and others have told us, were disowning the blues in favor of soul between 1960 and 1970, even as whites were embracing the blues (and the blues harmonica, led by Butterfield and Musselwhite and Tony Little Son Glover), what was it like for Billy and Sugar to come along during the 1970s and seek to inhabit the tradition? Did the older players (Junior, Cotton, Big Walter etc.) treat them differently than they treated the younger white players?
As the racial makeup of the cohort of blues harmonica players and the audience for blues harmonica playing shifted radically from black to white over the decades since 1960s, as blues harmonica playing became, in effect, "white culture" more than black culture (and this is a debatable point that needs clarification), did cultural understandings about the role of the blues, the proper way of playing blues harmonica, and so forth, also shift?
These are all interesting and valid questions.
Here's one theory I've had for a long time, based on wide reading cross-fertilized by my experience in Harlem: one central value held by black blues harmonica players of that earlier period was individuation: precisely because the world wanted to view you generically (boy, n-word, etc.), you needed to make the world take you as YOU, not to be confused with anybody else. That's also how you made a living: by being the one-and-only, original, the guy with HIS name on the record. That's why Little Walter left Muddy, for example, the moment "Juke" made him a name.
This drive for individuality, which had an economic component, meant that you had to develop some constructive aggression vis a vis the other players in your vicinity (you didn't want them to steal your s--t) and especially vis a vis the older men of the previous generation. They may have trained you, as Sonny Boy trained Cotton, but you needed to push away, too, and modernize, find the hip sound of today. Cotton was an innovator in that respect; he's always had bands that push the envelope towards rock and funk.
I call this constructive Oedipal aggression: a willingness to push back at the fathers, the aesthetic fathers. Or the mothers. In August Wilson's "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom," the character of Levee, a younger trumpet player, keeps characterizing Ma's stuff as "that old medicine-show shit." He's determined to find a new sound that will capture the public's ear.
Within racial communities, it's nothing special to find sons rebelling against their fathers. But the moment you're talking about cross-racial dynamics in the context of America in the 1960s and beyond, things get very strange. Blues in the 1960s, was a way in which younger whites manifested their interracialist bona fides. Liking blues was akin to saying, "I'm one of the good guys, not one of the racists." The same was even more evidently true for white blues players who crossed the tracks and actually lived and worked there--guys like Bloomfield, Musselwhite, Butterfield. The "fathers and sons" theme was big in the late 1960s: black fathers handing off the blues to white sons. The Muddy/Butterfield album, FATHERS AND SONS, was the most visible example of this, but there were others. The metaphor consoled the older black guys (even as younger black men were running away from the blues, white stepsons had shown up to take their place), but it also validated the younger white guys (if a black bluesman is your father, and accepts you as a son, that relationship testifies to your "right" to play the blues). The key thing here, though, is that the (black) fathers and (white) sons theme completely dissolves the normal element of constructive, individuating Oedipal aggression. Blues playing becomes an interracial, intergenerational love-fest. What younger white bluesman could possibly say, as Little Walter essentially did, "Fuck you, Muddy! I've got to make my own way!"? None of them could. None of them wanted to. To say that would have seemed racist, in fact. Much, much too much interracial aggression. For a young white blues player to say of Muddy's music, "That shit is old-fashioned! I'm going to update" would have run that white player the risk of falling off the blues bandwagon and playing......rock.
Interestingly enough, white blues players--harp and guitar--in the 1960s were nervy enough, or maybe just uncultured and ignorant enough, to break away. Butterfield's EAST/WEST, early J. Geils, and the stuff Clapton did with Cream are, in retrospect, as transformational as the sort of stuff Jason is doing right now. But something happened during the 1970s, in the aftermath of the collapse of the Black Power movement. I think that white people decided they were going to REALLY learn how to play the blues, and they went back to the source: Muddy, Jimmy Rogers, George Smith, and the other players of that generation. Kim, Rick Estrin, Rod Piazza, were all part of that generation of white blues players. I think they settled in, with love and dedication, and decided to get down into the blues for real, mastering all the nuances of style, tone, and showmanship that characterized the blues of the 1950s.
I think that some Oedipal aggression is necessary in order for art forms to remain vital. But I think it's possible to argue that the second generation of white blues harmonica players have, by and large, foregone it. Rather than say, "What the old guys are doing is old-fashioned; I'm going to update it," which is what Cotton and definitely Junior Wells said, the white blues players said what Kim Wilson literally said in an interview in Kim Fields's book: "I really think I'm one of them. In fact, I KNOW I'm one of them....They made me one of them." The black fathers made me one of them. That's an amazing statement.
I'm not judging, now. I'm seeking to understand. I think that the interracialism that undergirds the contemporary white blues scene--the desire, if you will, to sing black, play black, style oneself in a black-derived style, eat soul-food, like the juke-joint life--can be understood as a process of racial healing, a decades-long apprenticeship in embracing black culture, or "black culture" as it manifested when blues was still black music.
When guys like Billy Branch and Sugar Blue come along in the aftermath of the Black is Beautful and "Roots" period, they ended up modifying and Oedipal aggression that I'm talking about so that it becomes, instead, "embracing the ancestors." Billy, spending his entire adult performing career in Chicago and hanging out with Junior, Big Walter, Cotton, Carey Bell, views his mission as a "carrying on of the tradition" that is arguably somewhat different from the way in which those earlier players understood THEIR role earlier in their careers.
When I speak about over-stylization in some parts of the contemporary blues harmonica world, what I think I'm sensing is what feels to me like too much embrace of the (black) fathers--and now, at this point, the white fathers like Kim, Hummel, Rod--and not quite enough Oedipal aggression in the service of individuation. Somebody standing back from this forum and taking a dispassionate view of my positions might argue that I'm engaging in an Oedipal struggle with my own white blues fathers, or (more correctly) big brothers. Maybe that's true. Maybe it's time for that.
In purely aesthetic terms, I'm cheered by Jason's presence on the scene because his own rebellion is pointedly clear, even if he might not describe it in so many words. Whatever he learned from the time he spent in Junior Kimbrough's juke, it's impossible to imagine him saying "They made me one of them." Lipstick and a blonde wig definitely is NOT part of the prevailing Hill Country blues style! Jason is a decisive next step in every respect.
But maybe I've been unfair to the traditionalists. Maybe I've mocked the hats and suits when, as Waltertore has noted, they're a way of saying, "Hey, I was trained well by the old guys and I'm going to carry on their style." Maybe a healthy blues scene needs a healthy dose of ancestor-worship. And god knows Kim, Hummel, Rod, and Rick can play hell out of their harps with every audible subtlety, all the cultural inheritance intact. (I've never said, or even suggested, that they couldn't.)
Or maybe every vital scene runs the risk of devolving into a Baroque period unless iconoclasts come along and manifest some necessary Oedipal aggression.
But what's not to like? It's all good. White people--including me, I might add!--have worked extremely hard over the past 50 years, with indisputable and soulful results--to master the blues harmonica and to make blues harmonica culture part of the broader American and world fabric. Not just white people: Asian people, Native peoples, all the world's peoples. (Modern Blues Harmonica gets hits from more than 120 countries.) This is a great t
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Joe_L
391 posts
Jun 17, 2010
9:27 AM
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I think it depends on the event and the location.
Some places I go have more black people in attendance than white people, e.g. if I go see Southern Soul artists like Bobby Rush or shows in Oakland, there are way more black people in attendance than white people.
When I visit Chicago, I usually drop into a club on the South Side to see Billy Branch. The audience is mostly black or tourists. The Blues that black people tend to listen to is different than what white people like.
If I attend a festival which features no black artists, black people tend to stay home. I guess they don't dig the deep Blues stylings of Joe Bonamassa, Jason Ricci or Walter Trout.
If the only Blues shows you ever see feature white harmonica players, many of the black people in attendance tend to be musicians.
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Buddha
2076 posts
Jun 17, 2010
9:33 AM
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@buzadero
"Sometimes, I'm blue."
playing David Carrdine games in the closet doesn't help your music.
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"Musicians are the architects of heaven"
Last Edited by on Jun 17, 2010 9:33 AM
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5F6H
197 posts
Jun 17, 2010
9:34 AM
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40-50yrs ago? What 1960-1970? There were plenty of white harmonica players back then. There were also still proportionally more active black players in the earlier days of Oscher, Butterfield, Piazza, Estrin, Portnoy & Wilson's careers. You have to consider timelines as well.
Earlier, up to the 60's, before the blues found a new audience in the white population, it could only mainly be found in the black community. As the 60's rolled on, African Americans & the R'n'B charts drifted away from the blues, just as it grew amongst the population at large (which just happens to be mostly white in the countries we are discussing).
Black/African Americans make up 15% of the population in the US. Black/African/Afro Caribbean make up less than 10% of the UK population...so if the blues (which is the only genre you seem to be talking about) was proportionally as popular accross the ethnic groups, we would still expect to see a much larger proprtion of white players. However, blues is not as popular as it was prior to the 60's amongst the African American population. The black population in the UK largely came from the Caribbean, where other genres were more popular than blues.
There may be many more African American/black/African/Afro Caribbean harmonica players active, than "we" are aware of, but just not in blues. Perhaps Hohner might furnish you with sales figures for countries with a predominantly black population?
The harmonica has been very popular in China/Asia...yet you don't seem to think of that as "crossing a racial divide".
The harmonica never crossed the skin shade divide, as I put in a recent thread, you are thinking "micro" not "macro", you are only considering the question with regard to the US population and blues players.
So yes, no offence (genuinely), but I think you are misguided.
Last Edited by on Jun 18, 2010 1:23 AM
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MrVerylongusername
1082 posts
Jun 17, 2010
10:16 AM
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Why do we always assume that the people who post on this forum are a representative sample of harmonica players?
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Tuckster
610 posts
Jun 17, 2010
10:27 AM
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I have a memory that haunts me and I hope it's pertinent to this thread:
Our local blues society hired Fruteland Jackson to do a "Blues in the Schools" at two schools. I had the great pleasure of accompanying him.
The first school was a high school for the performing arts.You walked in the front door,walked to the office and signed in. Very new school with a modern auditorium with state of the art A/V equipment.The kids were extremely attentive and enthusiastic.Fruteland was reaching them and he was happy.
The second school was in a predominately black neighborhood. You walked in the front door and encountered 2 security guards and a full blown airport type walk through metal detector.The school was old. It looked exactly liked the junior high school I attended 40+ years ago and it was old then.Clean and well kept,but old. The kids there were not nearly so attentive and enthusiastic. Fruteland tryed his best,but you could tell by watching those kids,he wasn't reaching many of them. He wasn't speaking their language. It depressed the hell out of Fruteland and I wasn't feeling too good about it either. As much as I'd like to think things have changed,that was a rude awakening for me.
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Buzadero
461 posts
Jun 17, 2010
10:47 AM
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---playing David Carrdine games in the closet doesn't help your music.---
Couldn't hurt (you Yellow Bastard)
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~Buzadero
Underwater Janitor, Patriot
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MP
476 posts
Jun 17, 2010
1:09 PM
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i'm part hawaiian.
i have a kindergarten class photo and there are five white kids.(wierdly, poster MojoKane is one of the five).
i live up the street from the high school obama attended and the apartment where he lived and the university where his parents taught.
i never wondered why he is rather pragmatic.
i am pragmatic too. whatever works. we're all just trying to make a living like everybody else.
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nacoran
2164 posts
Jun 17, 2010
2:45 PM
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Buddha, I was just writing a joke song the other day with a Carradine reference. "I don't know the etiquette/for my esophageal tourniquet/hanging out like David Carradine"
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Nate
Facebook
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Nastyolddog
942 posts
Jun 17, 2010
6:26 PM
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Strikes me every face is a white face.
Go back 40 /50 years the players we talk about were black.
the artits we talk of where mostly uneducted came from a poor back ground there music was there Bread
and butter they where doing what ever they could do to make a buck Playing Harp Guitar whatever:
the white folks didn't need to go all over the place trying to survive they had good working jobs at the Gerneral store,factory workers and such,
some white folks had a good job exploiting the Black musicians, thats why they where thrust in your face:(
Now we talk about portnoy, greulling, fillisko, budha, gussow, ricci, wilson, hummel...all white.
times change now not all Afro Americans have to follow ther pears foot steps they are the GEO's
company directors,Store owners or record company owners:)
these fancy white Boys are doing it for fun you could say or to keep the Music alive:)
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waltertore
673 posts
Jun 17, 2010
6:35 PM
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white culture has been the dominate one since day one in the USA. So, when the black blues players had some white guys come into their gigs wanting to play in the 60's they jumped on it because those kids brought more white kids in with money to spend. Soon the white audiences started buying blues and the industry saw a small goldmine with recording white players interpreting the blues. this small gold mine turned into a huge one - cream, allman brothers, etc... The same thing happened with rock and roll. Elvis copied the black players moves and grooves and the rest is history.
Money drives all aspects of the music business. Sales on a charlie musselwhite, paul butterfield album in the early 70's destroyed any black blues players numbers. Ticket prices, audience sizes, and sheer number of tour dates, made booking white blues based bands a much more profitable venture. A cream tour vs. a muddy tour? No contest in net profits..... This trend has evolved to the point we are at today. A SRV tour vs. a james cotten tour- again no contest in profits generated. Simply stated, the industry puts very little effort into marketing the black blues and tons of effort into the white blues.
My friend, Jeff Konkell, owns broke and hungry records. He has put all his energy into this label and barely survives. yet his artists get great aclaim worldwide and play for nothing in Miss and most live in terrible conditions. When white players get such attention it usually results in tours with guitar techs and roadies. Jeff is the roadie with his artists. Walter
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walter tore's spontobeat - a real one man band and over 1 million spontaneously created songs and growing. I record about 300 full length cds a year.
" life is a daring adventure or nothing at all" - helen keller
2,000 of my songs
continuous streaming - 200 most current songs
my videos
Last Edited by on Jun 17, 2010 7:45 PM
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wolfkristiansen
5 posts
Jun 17, 2010
11:17 PM
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I'm posting a lot right now because I just joined the forum. This will taper off once I've said all the things that are important to me.
Black to White. Yogi has touched on an issue I've thought about a lot. I'll say what I think, once, and not defend it, because none of us are going to change each others' minds about this perennial and controversial topic. Feel free to jump on me, I've got thick skin.
I'm white, like probably 90% of the posters here. But--if I'm in the mood to listen to blues, I almost always prefer listening to black bluesmen/women, not white. Even when I'm not listening to blues, I prefer black music to white.
Things I like in black music (I know this is subjective, but this is what I hear): Funkier, organic rhythm. Real emotion. Instrumental and vocal pitch control that more conistently and accurately hits those microtonal "blue notes" that reside in the cracks between the piano keys. A depth of feeling that tells me the singer/musician has reached into his or her soul to bring you their music.
You're right, I can't read minds or hearts, and I don't truly know what any musician of any colour is actually feeling at any particular moment. And I acknowledge the irony of me, a Danish born, Canadian raised pure white Viking, playing blues on my harmonica for almost four decades while thinking I'm not as good as the black originators. So be it, I love the music, always will, and I will always play it. I've played paying gigs with John Lee Hooker and Albert Collins back in the day, and didn't get fired, so I must have been doing something right. And I mean in their band, not in the supporting act. I've got recordings if anyone's interested. This was long before YouTube.
Two years ago, I wrote a little piece entitled "My Love Affair With the Blues", to introduce myself in another forum. I'd love for anyone whose curiosity has been piqued to read it, because I do explain a bit more about why I prefer black blues. If you're interested, go to http://tinyurl.com/5czz2v.
A year ago, I wrote piece entitled "What Happened to the Blues?", bemoaning the fact blacks had forsaken blues. It stirred up a long running dialogue, without any further help from me. Most of it stayed civil. If you're interested, go to http://tinyurl.com/26dc3wg.
Cheers,
wolf kristiansen
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5F6H
198 posts
Jun 18, 2010
1:38 AM
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Another important thing to consider that harmonica players are people who want to play the harmonica. There is absolutely no reason to assume that in the US & Europe, that as many black people (proportionally) actually want to play the harmonica, especially as it is not very prominent in current popular music. The well known pop performers who pull out a harmonica are often white (& not blues players). Much music favoured by the the current urban youth market can be generated electronically & from loops & samples...there's not as much impetus to actually learn an instrument to any level...why bother spending a couple of years learning to play a harmonica when you can make a track in few hours in your bedroom?
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5F6H
199 posts
Jun 18, 2010
3:13 AM
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Wolf, in your piece you discuss blues as if it is still the music of choice for black people (not African Americans specifically), it isn't.
You might be Danish born, Canadian raised & white...but then, you would still be in the same position as a Danish born Canadian raised black person...if they wanted to play blues, they would have to learn just the same way that you did...there's no "hard wiring".
You may not be as great a player as LW, BW, SBW1, SBW2 et all...but then today who is? Who of any colour? There were undoubtedly many African American players that you have never heard of, who didn't cut it...the vast majority of players are not "great", irrespective of skin colour.
Blacks haven't "forsaken the blues", music popular with African Americans just evolved...some people like Johnny Guitar Watson & Hank Ballard moved with the times, into soul & funk...the core traditional blues players didn't...as they slowed down there were simply fewer players from their communities carrying on the tradition. The rest of the world largely got into blues retrospectively.
As a kid I was massively into 60's/classic/Northern soul...we pretty well assumed that all the artists were black....there was no Youtube, 45s were often rare/relabelled by DJ's protecting their discovery & no picture covers...the music spoke for itself, once in a while I'd discover/realise that some of the singers were white.
Do you think about the "Three Musketeers", "Count Of Monte Christo" any differently because the writer was black?
These music genres were originated by African Americans, they defined it and the greats still do, but subsequent generations are not obliged to listen to the music that their fathers & grandfathers, great grandfathers did...frankly it would be odd if they did.
Last Edited by on Jun 18, 2010 4:54 AM
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kudzurunner
1602 posts
Jun 18, 2010
5:16 AM
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@5F6H: You're quite right to pounce on the 40-50 years-ago figure. There's a huge difference between those two dates.
40 years ago was 1970 and of course there were quite a few white blues harmonica players, including some very good ones, along with a lot of pretty bad folkie/amateurs.
50 years ago was 1960. Please name me a white player, of any nationality, playing amplfied blues harmonica in 1960. It gets much harder to do. I suspect there were a couple of guys in the UK at part of the skiffle movement who did that. Lonnie Donnegan, perhaps? I don't believe Butterfield and Musselwhite were yet into the game.
My point was, in 1960, blues harmonica wasn't white culture yet. Or rather, since the acoustic wing of the blues revival, the so called "folk revival," was about two years old at that point, UNamplfied "folk-blues harp" was just beginning to become white culture. Folkies were buying records by Sonny Terry, attending concerts by Sonny, and some of them were buying harmonicas and trying to get that sound. That's when it all started. The overwhelming mass of white blues fans in 1960s weren't the slightest bit interested in what Muddy Waters' harmonica players were doing. They didn't care about Big Walter, Little Walter, James Cotton, Junior Wells. That all began to change in the mid-1960s--in the UK as well as the US.
There are actually quite a few more black harp players around today than most white harp players realize. If you're a regular reader of LIVING BLUES, you'll find them featured from time to time--like Little Sonny, Wallace Coleman, Harmonica Shah, guys who don't tour like the Hummels and Kims and Jasons, but who are out there.
But it is also true that the main audience for blues harmonica in the contemporary world is non-African-American. I'm talking about the people who buy the records and go to the shows. And 50 years ago--OK, 53 years ago--the situation was reversed. In 1957, blues harmonica was an African American thing. But the American Folk Blues Festival (in Europe) and the Newport Folk Festival (in America), between 1960 and 1968, helped change things in a huge way, as did the British blues revival (in 1965) and Butterfield's emergence at Newport that same year.
What's fascinating to me is what happened between 1970 and 1980. That's a sort of latency period when the blues, in the US, drifted back into subcultural status, and when guys like Kim, Rod, and Rick E. really began to dig down into the music, the style, and the attitude. Our contemporary scene takes much of its shape from what happened in that decade.
Last Edited by on Jun 18, 2010 5:20 AM
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5F6H
200 posts
Jun 18, 2010
6:11 AM
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Kudzurunner, I was looking at it as a decade '60-'70.
Cyril Davies had passed by '64 & had been playing for years & there must have been many more players in the skiffle/jazz movement, whether they went on to prominence or not is another matter. Duster Bennett was playing in the early 60's, as was Paul Jones. Brian Jones was into the blues in the late '50's (as was harp player Shakey Vick), whether he was specifically playing harmonica "in 1960", or not, seems a bit pedantic. I have met dozens, if not hundreds of guys who were active in the early 60's at least, on the skiffle, folk & emerging blues/British invasion scene.
Sure it's not a huge list, but to be fair, well known (to the population at large) names in the 50's US blues harp scene were reasonably few - Jacobs, Horton, Williamsons 1 & 2, Terry, Wells, Cotton, Reed, Wolf, perhaps Arnold. Sure there were other guys who have garnered more recognition in blues harp circles in recent years & deservedly so, but the core remains relatively few.
Charlie Musselwhite's father was a harmonica player. I'm sure that contemporaries of Elvis & Johnny Cash (depression era white share croppers/dirt farmers & the like)knew what a harmonica was, given the instrument's cost & portability.
Amplified, or not, is irrelevant, it's still harmonica.
Jerry Murad's "Peg o' My Heart" was a harmonica smash in the late 40's...not blues, but I don't see why these threads always come back to such a limited focus.
Chris Barber brought over Muddy to the UK in '58, there were discussions regarding bringing over Little Walter the year before.
I don't know whether I agree with the statement "blues harmonica/white culture", blues is accessible to people of any nation/community/ethnicity these days, on this forum it seems that race is reasonably representing (if not accurately tracking) ethnic trends by population...again, it is also highly dependent on who exactly WANTS to play the harp & join this forum (I know black harmonica players who are not on this forum)...no one is obliged/forced to, thus we're not going to see a truly representative sample demographically. The sample is already skewed by only comprising of people who choose to join this particular forum.
VLUN was bang on the money with his earlier post.
I really don't see that race & the harmonica are an issue, any more than they are (or more likely aren't) with regards to saxaphone, piano, or guitar.
Last Edited by on Jun 18, 2010 6:36 AM
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kudzurunner
1604 posts
Jun 18, 2010
9:39 AM
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@5F6H: You're making at least three or four different points, and they don't necessarily agree with each other. One, implicitly, is that the British scene was different from the American scene. I'm a scholar of both, to some extent, but I'm not quite as conversant with the British scene. I have read the definitive study of the subject, HOW BRITAIN GOT THE BLUES: THE TRANSMISSION AND RECEPTION OF AMERICAN BLUES STYLE IN THE UNITED KINGDOM, and while I can't remember every last detail, I do know that country blues, as it was called, became popular in the UK after Big Bill Broonzy's pioneering visits in the mid-1950s. He was a guitar player, of course, not a harmonica player. There was, as I need hardly point out, no indigenous black blues scene in the UK. There was the occasional black serviceman, lots of records, the occasional visit by African American blues performers--and that was it. The rest was white guys--the guys you've mentioned--who worked hard to create a blues culture from scratch. This lack, if you will, of an indigenous black blues culture radically distinguishes the UK blues scene from the American blues scene in Chicago, New York, Central Avenue in LA, Deep Ellum in Dallas, the fourth ward in Houston, the ghetto in Detroit, and so forth. So factoring in race is critical if you want to speak accurately about how "white" blues culture in the UK and in America actually emerged. I don't bring in race because I've got race on the brain. I bring in race because I'm trying to speak accurately about how specific musical cultures actually work, and because there's a critical difference between the British blues scene and the American blues scene. British blues came from America--and it came specifically from imported black Americans, both live and on record. It didn't come from somebody dredging the bridge at Tintern Abbey.
It's also true, however, that the Brits who brought that blues BACK to America helped introduce white Americans to electric blues. To that extent, it might be argued that the British blues guys got there before the (white) American blues guys did.
Harmonica per se has of course been a part of American musical culture--white American culture; white ethnic American culture--for a long time. I'm certainly not suggesting that it hasn't. And white Americans have, since blues became big in the 1920s with the "race records" boom, been interested in learning how to play it. In a book called TERRIBLE HONESTY, Ann Douglas describes how, in the early 1920s, pianist Porter Grainger (Bessie Smith's accompanist) put out a booklet entitled "How to Play and Sing the Blues Like the Phonograph and Stage Artists." Wayne Rainey and Lonnie Glosson were playing some fabulous harmonica stuff in the 1940s and 1950s; it would have been called country and/or rockabilly, but it was pretty bluesy.
Still, if you read David Whiteis's book CHICAGO BLUES, and if you read Living Blues magazine with any regularity, you'll understand that there's a difference between the sort of deeply-rooted blues culture that flourished in black Chicago from the 1920s up through the 1970s and still lingers arguably, into the present moment, on the one hand, and the skiffle movement and what followed it in Britain on the other. There's also a difference between that Chicago culture and versions of black blues culture in other American cities and the--yes--white American blues culture that emerged out of it beginning in the late 1950s. Sociologists consider race and class to be important analytic categories when they're trying to understand social phenomena and speak intelligently about them. To say that race isn't a valid factor to consider when one is trying to understand the history of the blues harmonica--not harmonica per se, but BLUES harmonica--is silly.
The argument about whether white people CAN play blues harmonica is an entirely different argument, and I don't even consider it an argument. Of course they can. But they can precisely because in the last 40 years or so they've created a culture, with the help of huge infusions of cultural capital from African Americans and an awful lot of sweat equity, that values strong, subtle, powerful blues harmonica playing. That culture simply didn't exist among white Americans in 1955, the way it existed among African Americans. Paul Oscher started playing with Muddy in when? 1968? There was no Paul Oscher in 1955. Was there one white guy in America in 1955 who could have actually kept up with Muddy, blowing amplified harp? But there were dozens of good black harp players in Chicago alone, and Muddy had the best of them in his band. Blues harmonica was black culture. Now, in 2010, that has changed. Harmonica culture per se, however, has always been more of a white thing in America: country, harmonica quartets, comic groups, virtuoso chromatic stuff, including jazz. I'm sure that there are some great black jazz chromatic players, but I can't name any. This doesn't mean white guys have a jazz chromatic gene! But the sociology is interesting, and race is a part of it. Maybe it just wasn't hip in black jazz circles to play the harmonica. Maybe you had to be a horn man. I really don't know. Interesting question, though.
As for saxophone, piano, or guitar: race is relevant, to be sure, if you're talking about the way in which blues and jazz styles have developed on those instruments. Or at least many smart and thoughtful people, including LeRoi Jones and Ben Sidran, have thought so.
Last Edited by on Jun 18, 2010 9:54 AM
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yogi
25 posts
Jun 18, 2010
9:59 AM
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The 30 - 40 years i mention is not too important. Time passes quickly and i forget that.
Perhaps more accurately i was refering to the players i listen to from yester years and those around now. And I guess 40s'50's60's would be about right.
Ang, it seems to me, in general the formative players were black and the current players are white.
Is that part of the drive to have 'modern blues'. A need to create a way of playing distinct to the formative playing of black players. Nothing racial about it, just a need to move to a new patch of ground to avoid comparison/contrast.
Is there really still a race barrier prevent black players getting the exposure of white players?
@5F6H
''The harmonica never crossed the skin shade divide, as I put in a recent thread, you are thinking "micro" not "macro", you are only considering the question with regard to the US population and blues players.
So yes, no offence (genuinely), but I think you are misguided''
Not really. Based on my experience here in the uk and around europe.
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kudzurunner
1605 posts
Jun 18, 2010
10:16 AM
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@yogi: You've raised an extremely important question, as I see it, and my answer is yes. Weird as it sounds, I think that the non-African-American players who numerically dominate blues harmonica playing worldwide these days are ready to make an aesthetic leap away from a mode of playing that is essentially indebted to the amplified Chicago and West Coast styles pioneered by Muddy Waters, George Smith, and the fairly big cadre of harp players, black and white, associated with those two guys. I think we've honored the fathers long enough. We've worked long and hard to learn from them, master the subtleties of their craft, and honor them in every possible way. We've earned our way into the blues--and we've earned it deeply enough that we've now earned the right to try something new, different, and dangerous, which is precisely what THEY did when they plugged in, cranked up, and beat the blues into, for example, the stop-time choruses of "Hoochie Coochie Man." That was new. Thank god for Willie Dixon. But also, I believe, thank god for Sugar Blue. He may not be to everybody's taste, but the fast, funky way that he's remade Chicago blues, entirely apart from his harp playing, is what I'm talking about. He's raised the bar. That's a good thing. I'm not trying to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Tradition is a good thing. We've mastered it; we've earned our way into it. But the blues have evolved through the years when people came along and placed the tradition in constructive tension with the modern moment, with the way life actually feels NOW. And that is today's sermon from Satan's apprentice. :)
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5F6H
202 posts
Jun 18, 2010
10:36 AM
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Kudzurunner "To say that race isn't an issue when one is trying to understand the history of the blues harmonica--not harmonica per se, but BLUES harmonica--is silly."
I don't recall saying, or implying that. I decided to focus on the question that was asked, "when did the harmonica cross the shade of the skin divide and why has it been such a definite cross over?"
My contention is that it probably never did, in a worldwide/non genre specific sense. Manufacturers have sold them to anyone who wanted them. If the manufacturers furnished you with worldwide sales figures for the last 50yrs then you could guesstimate the ethnic demographic, but never know for sure because I've never bought a harmonica with an ethnicity q'aire in the paperwork.
Pre 1960 (outside of Yogi's original perameters), I totally agree that the focus of BLUES harp was totally on the African American players (only a fool would disagree, it's the irrefutable reality of the situation). But I think that given the broader subjects of "race" & "harmonica" that we have to look at the world, not just at a narrow view of what specifically interests you or I. If we focus the sample by including "Race" and "harmonica" and the "US indiginous blues scene up to 1960" is only a small part of that. Less that 5% of the black people in the world live in America. Only a tiny proportion of them have ever been blues harmonica players.
I appreciate that it looks like I might be taking a blinkered view from your perspective, but then perhaps we need a different question to be asked. To get the answer to a question, you have to ask the right question in the first place. Yogi didn't mention blues specifically (other than indirectly via some players names, not all of whom would call themselves blues players) so I didn't "assume" that was the question.
You're looking at it from the perspective of an acedemic & social historian (that's what you do) & shifting the focus to your area of expertise - I'm just looking at it from a "units/region vs demographics" perspecive (it's what I do).
My main point has essentially been the same one all along.
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5F6H
203 posts
Jun 18, 2010
10:48 AM
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Yogi: "So yes, no offence (genuinely), but I think you are misguided''
Not really. Based on my experience here in the uk and around europe."
So Yogi, based on your experience in the UK & Europe, who were the prominent black harmonica players that dominated the UK & European scene in the 40's & 50's? The harmonica had been around for the best part of century prior to the '40's, I think you're overlooking that.
"Is there really still a race barrier prevent black players getting the exposure of white players?" In a time when black artists are selling music accross the world in vast numbers, as they have since the of days of Motown, that's an odd question...as to how that pertains to blues harp players specifically, I think various ideas have already been put forth on that matter.
Last Edited by on Jun 18, 2010 10:53 AM
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yogi
26 posts
Jun 18, 2010
10:49 AM
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The question being asked on a blues harmonica forum ( all be it modern ) was the clue.
Sorry for the complete inaccuracy of my question when i was asking what i wanted to ask. I was submitting an essay to my teacher and my thoughts evolve. Thge replies above made me think more, change my thinking and have further questions. thats how i find things out. I dont have an aswer to my view of things other than my experiences.
This seems the place for me to ask this question. My post man ain't interested in this stuff.
Adam, kind of makes sense what you say. Reminds me of Dick fosby moved away from the stradldle jump.
Do you feel there has been a sense of having to pay a debt / prove worth by white players now to black players of the past? Or to white blues fans holding up the past players as the benchmark?
Never really thought too much about this stuff. Understand the basics of blue evolution but the middle ground seems less obvious.
Went to see eric bibb recently. 100% white audience ina very multi ethnic/race/culture city. At our local blues festival here, one of the biggest in the uk i can pretty much guarantee the audience will be white middle aged bald men with beards, some dragging wives around, being bluesmen. Many of the headliners this year are black players.
I know anybody can like anything but on the percentages game, it seems out off beam.
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