[Harp-L] My Stevie stories

[Robert Bonfiglio <bon@xxxxxxxxxx>]

> Iceman writes:

> TV spots will usually play down the serious interview with a harmonica
> player, instead featuring a close up of an old man making silly  
> faces while
> playing the harmonica.
>
> That's the nature of the media beast - pop culture et al.
>
> I'm just glad there are a few Brad Kava's in the mix.

Brad Kava IS the old man making silly faces while playing the  
harmonica!!  Hey Brad, pretty good shot, right.  He took one of my  
Seminars, so he is making faces for sure.

My first Stevie encounter was playing on Chakka's first solo album  
"Best of the West" where I was told the tune was a country thing  
starting with jaw harp which I laid down.  Then Arif Mardin tells me  
to take a Stevie solo on this pure funk tune.  I say, "you've got to  
be kidding" and do the best that I can.  This eventually gets  
replaced by synth but the jaws harp remains for which I get no credit  
even though I get harmonica credit.

Then I meet Stevie at the Song Writers Hall of Fame where we are both  
performers along with Ray Charles, Billy Joel, Keith Richards, Lou  
Rawls, Paul Anka, etc.  Stevie recognizes me at rehearsal by my sound  
and has my classical CD's already which for me is a thrill; he and I  
talk harmonicas about a half hour back stage waiting to go on. Frank  
Huang hand made his harmonica and Chamber Huang designed mine.  I  
tell him that Toots told me that he (Stevie) was his biggest  
influence over the last 10 years.  Stevie is thrilled.  He does Barry  
Gordy tunes and brings the house down.  We talk about doing a  
harmonica night at Carnegie Hall where I play a Harmonica Concerto,  
Toots plays jazz, Stevie plays pop and Cotton plays blues.  He wants  
to do it and when I play the Hollywood Bowl we meet where his manger  
Milton says he is too busy with the Super Bowl halftime.

I played a concert with John Sebastian, Jr.  where I do a tribute to  
his Father at the Grand Canyon Music Festival.  He tells me that  
Stevie heard him playing the high blow bends way back when in the  
Village and wants to know how to do it.  John says it's just a copy  
of Jimmy Reed;  Stevie doesn't know Jimmy Reed's playing.  John shows  
him a lick and then Stevie copies it on the chromatic solo at the end  
of "For Once In My Life."

Ted Spenser, whose recording studio I use to mix down, was working as  
an engineer at the Power Station when Stevie recorded Superstition.   
He said Stevie defined the sound of an entire generation of synths.   
He saw Stevie get a good bass sound on a synth, then lay a whole bass  
track down in one take that sounded like cooking bass all on a synth.

So the reason that Stevie is so hard to copy is that he, like Howard  
Levy, is the consummate musician.  Both can play a variety of  
instruments at virtuosic levels.  So just learning the harmonica is  
not enough, they are bringing so much more to the plate.  As i said  
to Howard who plays harmonica by its relationship to the piano, "Yeh,  
but who can play piano like you plus the diatonic?"

For us in classical music, this is all the score reading,  
composition, analysis, piano, dictation, theory, solfege, etc.  You  
want to play like these people, you have to do the work and then some.

Harmonically yours,

Robert Bonfiglio
http://www.robertbonfiglio.com