like many of you I bought tony glovers book on blues harp instruction-this is where I first learned about crossharp,1st position,3rd position and 4th position,which somewhere along the line was changed to 5th-I bought this book sometime in the late 70s when I bought my first hohner blues harp-what mystifies me that,after over 30 years I have never heard tony glover play-does he still play?what has become of him?
a friend lived near tony about 10-15 years ago. he would see tony in bars and on rare occasions see him play. he said he was going to try to track him down during the past SPAH. i dont know the outcome. maybe tony made an appearance at the convention. anybody know?
His book was of next-to-no value (to me) as a tutorial. But it was worth every penny it cost me. I bought it and a Hohner Blues Harp in C at the local music shop at age 16 or so and would spend hours just looking at the pics and reading the hilarious text. A true classic.
the book I had did not have a record-I really liked the way he told about the recordings by both sonny boys,little walter,sonny terry and jimmy reed-the little diagrams he drew were not much help-but he told what key all the songs on the records were in
Back in the day, that was the only instructional material for playing Blues on the harmonica. I found it very helpful. It should be pointed out that some of the stuff in his book isnt completely correct, but it's good enough to get people started and well on their way.
He was also one of the guys who co-authored the biography of Little Walter Jacobs. He complied a complete discography of everything Little Walter ever recorded.
I grew up in rural CT. We had no access to anything as we have today.
I learned harmonica from the free instruction booklet from Hohner, Mel Bay books and the song transcriptions from Good and Plenty boxes. That's it, nothing else was available.
Tony Glover's book was the door opener, the key to the wonderland called Chicago Blues. The pictures and stories of the blues greats is what captured my imagination and inspired me to play.
I recall there was a flimsy 45 in the back of the book. It was Tony playing. He played in Koerner,Ray and Glover, an acoustic jug band. He didn't play that electrical TB style, but did his own thing.
Last Edited by on Jan 02, 2011 11:38 AM
Both Tony Glover's book, Blues Harp, and the recording (on CD ) that goes with it hve recently been reissued. They are for sale separately rather than together.
I have the book and flexi disc and got someone to transfer the track to MP3. I have never managed to sort out the tabs :^( ---------- "Come on Brackett let's get changed"
Well, I still have the book--never had a record with it. I didn't figure out that much with it, but for about 40 years it was almost the only information I had for blowing cross harp (I didn't study the other positions).
For first position, I had the little booklet that came with my Old Standby (My first harp). That's where I learned to tongue block.
Learning guitar in those days was a lot the same--you had to just figure things out by wearing records out. . . ---------- ==================================== Always be yourself--unless you suck. . . -Joss Whedon
I found that jon gindicks books simplified things about harp playing like using terms such as resolution note,stepping stone note and tension notes-you can only go so far with books
Tony Glover is definitely still playing. He's still doing gigs with Spider John Koerner in the Minneapolis, Mn. area. Their 3rd member, Dave Ray, passed on a few years back. Glover and Koerner are booked into one of the Twin Cities clubs for a 2 week series of shows right now. I ran across it in the Minneapolis Star Tribune's entertainment section this past Sunday.
Yeah, I used his book too, and his live shows in the West Bank clubs in Minneapolis influenced me alot.
I loaned my book out about 25 years ago and it never came back. Classic for its earthy discussion. I live in Minneapolis area and was disapppointed I couldn't check him out at Palmer's on Wednesday, but might be able to try next week.
I'm one of those people who started with Tony's book. He deserves a lot of credit: he actually sat down and created a book--the first?--that tried not just to teach blues harmonica music, but communicate some of the music's attitude. He was a hipster. His language is the language of hip, as Norman Mailer defined it in "The White Negro." It's filled with a range of energies--rising energies, falling energies, quirky energies that take time to recognize and master. It's subcultural, cool, but friendly: a friendly guy reeking of underground knowledge who is actually trying to hip you to the music. You can hear the smell of a guy lighting up Marlboros and coughing in that prose.
For a 16 year old white kid from the suburbs, that sort of thing was intoxicating. Don't underestimate the power of soul-friendships forged through unexpected connections. BLUES HARP by Tony "Little Sun" Glover somehow showed up at the music store in the Nanuet Mall in Rockland County, NY in 1974 where I bought my first harmonica, a Marine Band key of C. I bought a harp and that book. I'll always be grateful for the fact that I brought home more than a harp that day. Otherwise it would have just been me and the harp. These days, kids plunk themselves down in front of the PC and call up Shellist or Gussow or Ricci on YouTube. We didn't have any of that back then.
I met Tony once, years later. I can't remember where. It was a Koerner, Ray, and Glover gig. Nice guy. I thanked him.
Play the preview for this cut from the record. I didn't hear his voice until many years later, but this is exactly what his voice FELT like, reading the book:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000SFX68K/ref=dm_dp_trk2/178-2827013-9005120?ie=UTF8&qid=1294251993&sr=8-2
Last Edited by on Jan 07, 2011 9:12 PM
Tony is also one of the authors of the Little Walter biography as well. When I started, in music stores selling instructional books back in the early 70's, "Blues Harp" was the ONLY real book on teaching blues harmonica available at all and I learned for the first 6 months not by buying it, but reading it in the store and committing everything I read to memory until I finally got around to buying it.
In the years since, I have found that there are some mistakes in his transcriptions and things like saying for certain tunes, you need big breaths, as he put it, were found not to be true, especially when you get to finding these out from the real deal, but with all that, his book was a huge groundbreaker as was my friend Richard Hunter's book, Jazz Harp, would be in 1980.
When I hear some people on the internet say that there's so little harp information, I just want laugh so hard I'm crying because compared to when I started in the 70's, it's serious information overload by comparison.
By the way, hearing what is now called 5th position (based on the circle of 5ths), his book called it 4th position, so if you hear people calling 4th postion (key of C harp, played in E), which is actually by the circle of 5ths, 5th position, it's mainly because of the info he gave in his book. ---------- Sincerely, Barbeque Bob Maglinte Boston, MA http://www.barbequebob.com CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
I met Tony at last year's SPAH. I asked if he would be okay if we had a picture taken together. He said no. That was priceless in itself to me. Michael Rubin
I met Tony at The Towne Crier in Pawling,N.Y. on a gig with Dave Ray-he autographed my copy of "Rock Harp"-Tony "Little Sun" Glover. I just thumbed through,and found an interesting section on chromatic harp and scales which I had previously overlooked.
@JoeL: yer right that Tony's no great technical player, but that observation misses the point about what he does. Just judging by this thread, he's influenced alot of people, and that's not even what he does. He plays traditional country blues, and he was in the forefront of the movement to bring that stuff to the attention of us suburban "whities". He has played with the same guys for over 40 years, and entertained alot of people, and he's an icon in the upper Midwest USA.
Went to Tony at The 400 last week. One one hour set with Spider John Koerner. Koerner was still in pretty good form, still stompin' out his own renditions of classic folk blues and originals while Glover just played around on the harp in the background. It was people young an old comin' out to see some Minneapolis legends. Glover can still play, but there is no fiery fury and no "modern blues harp" overblowin' there at all. Looks all of his 71 years and a few more for bein' a musician too long. But overall it was great to be back at The 400 hearin' some classic tunes from a coupla legends. I gotta get out more.
I just heard tony playing with allman brothers on don't keep me wondering and done somebody wrong in 1971.....his playing was nothing like thom doucettes
Yep, here in Australia when I started on my journey in the late eighties, his book was all that was available and it didn't come with a tape. I remember finding out years later of my confusion with 4th position really being 5th
As a suburban kid in Auckland NZ in the 70's I was thinking ,do Americans really speak like that? ^) His book at least showed me why playing along to records in (say) E using an E harp wasn't working out. His stuff with Koener,Ray was great.Still have the albums .
Mr Glover could play that country blues style for sure.I think he deserves some respect..How many harpists owe their start to him..1000's I'd guess. And he learnt before the internet.Needle on the LP needle off the LP stuff.Whoops cross post
obviously a much better mix with Doucette at the fillmore concerts...his harp makes a good statement whereas glovers drowned out......but yes glover was a pioneer with his 2 books....the songbook is really helpful with the tabs
the best thing off of Tony Glovers harp book for me was ,how to 2nd pos. and the dit-dit [IN] hoo[out]dat-dat[in]that's the base for chugging` and train riff.It opened blues harp to me in 1968 ,and haven't stopped too...
