soaking harps?

[WYKS@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

 It's been a while, and I'm not sure this will get through, but:
 Who is "Spider John" Koerner?  Was he by any chance living in the
East (Greenwich) Village in the summer of 1967? (Arcane question, to
be sure.)
 I got Tony Glover's book back in 1966 or so--at least I learned from
it that harmonicas come in different keys!  There was not much
available back then.  Recently I got a tape of the instruction that
goes with it...was not initially impressed, but I'd better go back
and listen again.

 On soaking.  I personally never soak.  I use marine bands
exclusively, and like the slight leakage and resistance to bending
because it makes tone-masking grittier and easier.  (Masking is when
you let a little of the adjacent hole slip in, to dirty up the
sound.) I find masked tone much more effective on tongue-blocked
embouchure, though it took a while to get precise bends (especially
the three half-steps on hole 3 draw, and blue microtones between them)
accurate while using the tongue-block.  To me, tongue-block permits a
better tone and fuller vibrato.  Is this idiosyncratic, or something
others have also found?

Back to soaking.  Musselwhite advises against it, of course.  The
hypothesis of reed mass-increase sounds implausible, because reeds
are generally moist, and it would seem any additional water-layer
would very quickly blow/dry off, with all that air rushing around.
But it is an empirical hypothesis, easily tested.  If it is due to a
layer on the reed, not to swelling and sealing, then if you take a
little squirt gun and just get the reeds wet (easily done), you
should get a noticable effect, even keeping the comb etc completely
dry.  Let's all go home and try it!  (Home??  Of course, we've all
got our harps with us at work...)

What is the name and author of that fairly new blues harp songbook
that has Juke in it it?

Hope this gets through.

Steve,
 at Calvin College