[Harp-L] Re: Harp Legacy of young geezers

["Paul Gillings" <deludedarse@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi all,
the name's Paul Gillings and I have been a watcher of this group for a 
while, and apologies for not contributing sooner, but I think Iceman has a 
great thread here and I felt the need to type...

I guess I would consider myself a 'young geezer' at the age of 30. It would 
seem to be true from your stories that when many 'older geezers' started 
playing there was not the help or information available to help them on 
their way towards harmonica excellence. Certainly everyone I have spoken to 
concurs with this analogy and reminses with misty-eyed nostalgia about how 
they bought their first Echo super Vamper for sixpence, after hearing a 
Sonny Terry record.

I am extremely grateful that many people did do that and learnt the 
harmonica the hard way as they have obviously gone on to make the path 
easier for 'young geezers'. The information is everywhere, thank you all.

Myself, I had never heard of a harmonica before the age of 11 (1988) when I 
was a member of a local Scout troup and my Scout Leader, Norman Ives, had a 
harmonica for playing campfire songs etc. I thought this was an amazing 
novelty and asked to be taught how to play campfire songs. 'This old man' 
was the first tune I learnt on a Chromonica 270. There you go, from the 
start, one on one tuition. It then transpired that Norman already ran an 
after school Harmonica club for kids. I turned up to the after school club 
one evening and there were kids everywhere playing harmonicas and swapping 
tunes. Then I heard one lad was playing something different. The blues. This 
was what I wanted to do, it sounded raunchy and I knew my mother would hate 
it, so I had to learn how to play like that!

thanks for listening and thanks for all the info

all the best

Paul Gillings