[Harp-L] RE: My Five



I thought I'd slip in before the thread dies. If I remember correctly the original post asked about albums that influenced us and of course by now many of the ones listed would be ones I'd list too. I'm not going to list my overall most influential but for what it's worth, the harp records (and yes, I'm an old guy, I owned the vinyl on all these) I bought first that really made me wear out the grooves were:
1. Fathers and Sons: Muddy Waters (Chess double LP now a single CD) I got this the week it came out and Butterfield with Muddy was just a killer, so passionate. Later I went back to learn the Walter/ Cotton/etc solos when I got the original versions of the tunes redone here .
2. Room To Move: John Mayall (also got right when it hit the stores; of course reissued several times on CD). This got lots of airplay on the underground stations of the day and I know it influenced lots of players even though it's not exactly brilliant playing. It sure was exciting at the time. Incidentally I think this may be the first LP to actually list harp keys in the booklet that came with, or maybe it was the liner notes (it's only been 35 or so years!).
3. Otis Spann "the Blues is where it's at" George Smith is just wonderful in this live studio session recorded when he was touring with Muddy's band, which provides the backup here. I was living in LA at the time I found this in a cutout bin and tracked him down thanks to this LP (never had a lesson, though, but at least I had the chance to talk to George a couple of times and see him with different bands). I recently got the import CD reissue and after not hearing it for decades it still surprises me.
4. Bill Evans with Toots" Affinity"(reissued on CD: Toots was so good on this, made me get the "Jazz Harp" book when it came out (not like I can really play this stuff but I did buy a chromatic and still fool with it). Defines jazz chromatic at least for me, plus I loved the cover art!
5 Paquito D'Rivera "Explosion": good title, I read a review in Tower Records Pulse about some diatonic jazz player named Howard Levy. What an eye opener!
I left out Little Walter, just because he shows up often enough already (and justifiably so); I never had a Walter LP when I got started as "Best of" was out of print and I had to rely on a stack of 45s a local record store had acquired when Chess emptied out it's warehouse. Fortunately my teacher Gary Smith loaned me "Best of" to tape before the various legal and bootleg reissues turned up.
Sorry if I ate up bandwidth on this ramble but now I need to go dig these out for another listen. Thanks!






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