[Harp-L] re: Pig Pen, ( and Mel Lyman, and Sonny Terry too)

[rainbowjimmy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

It's great to hear people talking about Pig Pen and Mel Lyman. Those two and
Sonny Terry were my high school harp heros.They all were fine harp players and
they all had their own take on traditional acoustic music.

There was no one like the Grateful Dead in the early seventies. Sure there was
folk rock, and sure there was country rock but hearing Jerry singing high
lonesome (and yes out of key) with a mountain of amplifiers behind him was
always a thrill.Pig Pen was the anchor. When the band going way way out into
outer space, Pig Pen brought them back down. Pig Pen was a multi
instrumentalist. He had an extensive knowledge of R and B (his father was a
disc jockey on a black radio station in Oakland). The harp playing was never
fancy, but it always fit the song and his tone was fine. Check out "Operator"
from Working Man's Dead, an original Pig Pen tune. Clearly he knew how to write
a song, had a good grasp on the old traditional music, and was a credible harp
player. By the time I was in high school, Pig Pen was already dead from heavy
drinking so I never got to see him live.

Mel Lyman played harp and other instruments with Jim Kweskin's Jug Band.By the
time I was in high school, Mel had become sort of a messiah in an odd
cult/commune so I never got to see him live. I never heard anyone play quite
like him. Again, never fancy. Real slow, long drawn out and melodic. Very
expressive. Check out "Dark as a Dungeon" from Jim Kweskin's America album.When
I started playing in a bar band and we got requests for country western I just
played Mel riffs and it worked wonderfully.

Of course Sonny Terry was more than merely competent. A virtuoso. He never
played one note when he could play ten instead. I saw him many times in
Cambridge at Passim's. Again, most people thing of him as a blues musician but
he played a lot more than blues. Check out him and Brownie doing "Down by the
Riverside".No one else ever even thought of playing that song that way. Sonny
Terry played on an old Woody Guthrie album with Leadbelly. Excellent harp
especially on "Dirty Overhauls".No custom harp. No designer amp. Just Sonny.

A lot of harp playing now has too narrow a focus. It has to be electric Chicago
blues from 1952 to 1958. That music is cool, but there's so much more. Also
people seem to treat the old music like it was Bach rather than put their own
spin on the music. Sometime when you're in a rut and you're tired of playing
Juke for the millionth time, dig out some of the old jug band tunes and have
some real fun.

Rainbow Jimmy
http://www.spaceanimals.com
http://www.soundclick.com/theelectricstarlightspaceanimals.htm