[Harp-L] Re: Tony "Little Sun" Glover

[Richard Hunter <turtlehill@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Joe Lempkowski wrote:
<Forty years later, reading his
<reviews of other harp players, he has no room to
<criticize the performance of others.  I never really
<understood what the fuss was about with this guy.

1.  A music critic needs good ears and the ability to write well. 
Glover has both, whether he's a great player or not.  Here's Glover's 
last sentence from a review of Chess's boxed Little Walter LP set, maybe 
three decades ago:
"Genius is a f---ed-over word these days, but Walter was one for sure.
What's more, he knows how to get you off."

I write this from memory, and I can do so because those words are 
memorable.  Like I said, Glover can write.

2.  Glover's book "Blues Harp" taught a generation of young players the 
basics of blues harp, at precisely the moment when white America 
discovered en masse the roots music of black America. It may not have 
been the best book on playing harp ever written, but it was the right 
book at the right time, and it was good enough to do the job.  It was a 
great inspiration to me, and it was the main reason I approached Oak 
Publications in 1976 to publish the book that eventually became "Jazz 
Harp," which may in fact be the best book about playing the harmonica 
ever written -- at least that's what Pete Pederson told me in 1981.

So Glover's made his mark on the world, and that's what the fuss is about.

Regards, Richard Hunter
hunterharp.com