Jerry Portnoy and Blocking

[KPGraham@xxxxxxx]

>Jerry Portnoy's playing on "Hootchie Coochie Man" on Clapton's "From
>The Cradle".  This is 1st position.  The fact he is blocking I take
>from Kim Field who describes Portnoy as a 100% tongue blocker.

I don't think so. I have a tape made at a lesson that Jerry gave a little
while back and he describes his style as part pucker and part block.
He claims that he used to block everything, but now mostly puckers
and gets better control on the puckers. On the tape he shows a
pucker style that gives the same sound as blocking. The examples
that he gives are deadly hard to duplicate, but are possible. I am
assuming that he uses this pucker technique on the EC album.

Keith