[Harp-L] Butterfield & Original Voices on Harp Today

[Roger Boyce <wader1@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Greetings
Joining in on the Butterfield exchange. I have been playing amplified 
harp now for at least 40 years. My first and biggest influence was the 
estimable Paul Butterfield. However I do credit Tony Little Sun 
Glover's early harp instructional book for getting me started.  I was 
associated with two of San Francisco's regularly working light-shows 
starting in the mid sixties so I was either up on the light-show 
catwalk  in the Family Dog's various halls - including the Avalon 
Ballroom, or at Bill Graham's  Fillmore(s) or Winterland.  I usually 
got into all the shows free when I wasn't working because I was  known 
by sight around the various establishments. The point of all this is 
that I saw the Butterfield Blues Band many many times ( each and every 
time they played in town + I'd travel to see them ) as well as having 
had the privilege of seeing  James Cotton, Charlie Musselwhite, Howlin 
Wolf, the Muddy Waters Band(s), Junior Wells,  John Lee Hooker, 
Lightnin Hopkins, etc.

The Butterfield Band in its various incarnations always absolutely tore 
the place up. Anyone who says Paul Butterfield can't sing has never 
heard the man in person. As much soul, heart, and emotional investment 
in his singing as in his harp playing. Decent on the keyboards as well. 
Butterfield was a brilliant technician on the diatonic. That his style 
of playing was almost purely single hole is astounding. Tongue blocking 
is something I use but I can't and no one since has managed to do the 
sort of things Butterfield did by improvisationally stringing together 
quicksilver chains of crystal clean notes and phrases - he was the 
Charlie Parker of harmonica. Although Butterfield was a great 
technician there is clearly nothing cold or clinical about his playing 
- it is the essence of soulful from the inside out. As a double threat
( vocals & harp ) few approach him today. Magic Dick is a great 
technician but it is painful to listen to him TRY to sing and at times 
it seems his technical virtuosity is in the service of technique and 
and little else. Del Junco is vaguely interesting but has a paper thin 
voice. Popper, do I need to take a shot at that empty air bag?

I have to say that while there are many fine harp contemporary players  
- Mark Hummel ( also a decent singer ), Carey Bell, Steve Guyger, the 
late William Clarke ( great blues shouter and powerful player ), Junior 
Wells (who could, on a good day, sing like no one else and play some 
heartbreaking harp ) there are few truly great living harp and vocal 
masters out there today.

One that comes to mind is the fairly obscure Michael Pickett ( out of 
Toronto ) who is an accomplished acoustic rack and amplified harp 
player, guitar player, and singer songwriter. If you haven't heard him 
you are in for a treat. He's got a web page with some streaming video 
and sound samples. I saw him in a small house last week as he was 
rolling through New England and he was a musical thunderstorm - a 
veritable force of nature.

Now, as for those who say there are no monumental harp/vocal/writers 
around today - then seriously, check out Portland based Paul deLay.

The most technically proficient, innovative, and astoundingly talented 
harp player, singer, and writer of world class original songs, living 
and playing today, is the monstrously gifted Paul deLay. It is a 
serious cultural crime that deLay is not more widely known both in the 
harp and blues community and the larger world of music .  Paul deLay's 
band is also one of the tightest, punchiest, joyful group of 
professional musicians working today - they've been playing together 
since time immemorial and it shows. The man and his band are blindingly 
brilliant, and are moving the blues into whole new territories of 
sound. If you buy Take it From the Turn Around ( which is a compilation 
CD ) and don't fall in love and  buy everything you can get your hands 
afterward then I fear for the future of the blues in America. deLay 
needs to be booked ( if he's willing ) outside of the Pacific Northwest 
so that more people have a chance to hear him burning. Singing-wise 
think Fats Waller + early Lou Rawls+ Little Willie John. Harp wise he 
is an absolute original and is cutting his own meteoric swath through 
the fields of sonic possibility in both chromatic ( some say he's the 
best in the world ) and diatonic. He is a wise lyricist, tunesmith, and 
unorthodox phraser to-boot. If I had to pick the two greatest 
vocal/harp doublethreats of the past 40 years I would without 
hesitation choose Butterfield and deLay.

'Nuf said.

Wader