19th Century Harmonica Players

[Winslow Yerxa <winslowyerxa@xxxxxxxxx>]

Do we know what harmonica playing sounded like in the 19th century?

There area few books extant from the 1870s and '80s that describe
familiar techniques like tongue blocking and tongue-lift vamping, but
not note bending, octaves, etc.

Looking at Peter Krampert's website for his Encyclopedia of the
Harmonica, 

http://www.eharmonica.net/

I could find very few harmonica players who recorded in the 20th
century who were not for all intents and purposes 20th century people.

Someone born in 1890, for instance, is a 20th century person, as only
their earliest years were spent in the 19th century. Their youth and
adult life were spent entirely in the 20th century. Even if they
learned to play before the age of ten, their stylistic preferences
would have been formed between the ages of about 15 and 25 and would
have pretty much solidified by the age of 30 if not sooner. Not that
there aren't exceptions who either solidified as children or remained
adaptable through their lives.

So, what about harmonica recordings artists born before, say, 1880?
Could people who learned to play and formed their styles in the 19th
century, then recorded in the 20th, give us an idea of 19th century
style?

The earliest-born I could find in Krampert, leaving aside people who
didn't record like president Abraham Lincoln and outlaw Frank James,
were early blues/novelty singer James "Daddy Stovepipe" Watson, b.
1867, and Dr. Humphrey Bate, b. 1875 of old-timey and early country
music fame. Most other recording artists listed in Krampert were born
right on the cusp of the 20th century - 1896 through 1899.

There is an even earlier individual not listed in Krampert who also
recorded in the 1920s. I speak of Joseph Lalonde, born in 1860. He came
from Quebec, went to Chicago to work in the newspaper business for many
years, then returned to Canada where he made about a dozen recordings
in Montreal between 1926 and 1930 (for him between the ages of 66 and
70). With piano accompaniment, he played a variety of traditional tunes
and medleys, some from Scots-Irish tradition and some with titles
indicating American origin. Using a single-reed richter-tuned diatonic,
he employed an intricate and vigorous rhythmic tongue-vamped style at
high velocities.

What prompted this for me was the discovery that most of Lalonde's
recording, which I had long been seeking, are now available online at
the Virtual Gramophone, a website of the National Library of Canada
that has nearly 10,000 78-rpm records in a database, with most of them
available for listening and downloading in RealAudio and mp3 formats.
If you want to check it out, go to:

http://www2.nlc-bnc.ca/gramophone/src/home.htm

and navigate via either the AUDIO or DATABASE paths to Lalonde.

It would be interesting to find out who else among harmonica recording
artists was born before 1880 and do a comparison among them, looking
for commonalities and taking account of the geographic and ethnic
differences in their backgrounds. Combining this with the surviving
instructional literature, it might be possible to form at least a vague
picture of the stylistic and technical developments in harmonica
playing before the dawn of recording.

Winslow

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