Carey Bell and train sounds

["Charles Williams CS" <CWILLIAM@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Fellow, harpers I have been lurking for too long but have finally caught up on
reading all the my harp-l digests. First I want to say thanks to Chris for to
doing a great job of setting up and moderating a super and one of the politist
(IMHO) lists on the Internet. So much great information and the SPAH event in
Detroit sound fantastic.

I just purchased the Larry Adler tribute CD and although he does not play alot
on each song - he is very tasty and the CD ends with his 8 1/2 plus minutes of
Rhapsody in Blue. Pretty darn good and yikes he is 80 - pretty humbling for
this harp guy. I am always surprised at the variety of sounds, bends-blow and
draw, chords and octaves he uses. Now if I could only get Elton/Cher/Robert
Palmer/Meat Loaf etc for my next project?

Second I have finally accessed the WEB home page and revisited the gopher page
and wow - alot of great stuff. More pictues/info/and good information. Plus
really nice to see pictures of people from harp-l. Kind of puts a cyber-FACE
on our harp musings. Nice to see pictures of fellow harp-l ers having fun
together. Kudos to Randy on the amp primer and Jack on the harp primer too.

BTW Steve Levine recently did a very nice overview, which was published in the
DC Blues Society monthly, of blues related Internet sites including harp-l.
Steve, this might be worth sharing with all of us harp-l ers or perhaps even
added to the web page (Chris your call).

Re: Recent threads on Carey Bell and train sounds.

The Yazoo harmonica album has some great cuts from artists with both country
and blues backgrounds. You hardly ever here current harpers play in first
position what these players did - tongue blocking, percussiveness, seamless
high and low bends and never missing a beat.

For those who don't know him well, Carey Bell came to Chicago as a teenager
and learned bass in order to start playing out and learned alot of his playing
from Big Walter.  He, James Cotton and Junior Wells are the three Chicago
harpists with strong links back to Big and Little Walter and Sonny Boy II.
Carey recorded the London sessions with Muddy Waters. Carey is also related to
boogie pianist Lovey Lee who was a major influence on many latter day piano
players including Marcia Ball.

Carey also plays alot of chromatic-normally in third position. Every time I
have been with him the button on his slide had been broken off. He plays one
of those tranlucent plexiglass body 16 hole Hohner chromatics. He sometimes
also plays through a leslie type unit but sometimes gets carried away using
it. Carey also usually plays through a Shure 58. On a good night his
tone/phrasing and singing is excellent. Carey is very accessible but has not
had an easy life. He plays in the Balt/DC area a fair amount in part due to
his agent (Lips Lackowitz - also a harper) living in this area.

Kurt, is Carey playing on Thurs. June 15 or Friday June 16? If Thursday
I will be in a studio session that day in Virginia so I may stop by to see him
if it is not to late when we finish. Hope to see some of my fellow harp-l
folks at Fleetwoods.