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

["Rick Dempster" <rick.dempster@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I'm a big mothed harsh critic at the best of times, but I'm becoming
quieter, and even a little less critical, as I get older. It's easy for
people to take offence, and I suppose all present are confident that
Tony isn't a silent visitor to harp-l. 
So Richard thinks his book might be the best book on harp? It might
very well be; I couldn't say as there's a lot on the market these days.
Pretty darn good though; saved me a lot of bother writing out arpeggios
and has some v.good excercises, transcriptions. First time I'd seen
anything printed on overbending. I thought I'd invented it though I
suspected I probably hadn't. Dunno about the cover...what about 'Rock
Harp'? Think that was by Tony for Oak. Now that cover was total Rockk
Kiiiiitsch! Eeerrrgh!!(apologies to the artist, his/her mother, friends:
it was probably just the context!)
 I wasn't aware there was any fuss, as such, about Tony; I bought his
book in 1970 and it gave me the basics I needed to understand what I was
doing, positions etc., There wasn't the access to information like there
is today. There was only a couple of record stores in this hometown of
mine that had any blues and there was no internet, few magazines. Then I
find a book that talks about what I can't get enough of and goes a good
way in explaining a lot, and it was a good thing.
If Tony was a big head who gave anyone grief, I wouldn't know, but I
can't see much point in putting the guy down, specially if he's not
around. Where is the big palooka?....bring him on!
What I really want to talk about is this fella who lives in my town who
drives me nuts, but none of you know who he is so I guess there's not
much point..........
Was Tony really the first to write a book on blues harp? How about all
the stuff Wayne Raney and Lonnie Glosson marketed in the forties? Never
seen any of it, but according to Charlie McCoy among others, these guys
sold truckloads of these things. Love to see one. I doubt that it had
stuff about Sonny Boy(s) Walter(s) etc., but I suspect it would have
shown you how to play like Wayne & Lonnie, which is still the blues in
my book, just a whiter shade of pale (like me)
Tony's book was marketed to a different quarter of the population
probably; people like me perhaps - middle class and living in the
cultural wastelands of the suburbs or maybe just busting out of it at
'college' or university or whatever, just discovering the blues second
hand, courtesy in no small part of the British/ European blues boom
which gave a lot of artists outmoded in their traditional markets
somewhere to have a second flowering.

Cheers,
RD
>>> Joe and Cass Leone <leone@xxxxxxxx> 1/09/2006 11:37:19 >>>

On Aug 31, 2006, at 9:12 PM, Richard Hunter wrote:


>>> Joe and Cass Leone <leone@xxxxxxxx> 1/09/2006 11:37:19 >>>

On Aug 31, 2006, at 9:12 PM, Richard Hunter wrote:

> 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."
>
Ok. you said the ability to write WELL. I see the sentences "Genius  
is a f---ed-over word these days, and "What's more, he knows how to  
get you off" to BOTH be rather crude in implication.

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

> I thought his book was humorous with numerous attempts to sound  
> cool. I don't know what the local jargon was like in the area he  
> came from, but the writing corny. Stuff like 'Go now and blow  
> thou'.... how corny

> 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.

Who wrote 'Jazz Harp' ?
>
> So Glover's made his mark on the world, and that's what the fuss is 

> about.

Such a big mark, that when you research this guy, his name is always  
attached to the other two guys he's been associated with over the  
years. I agree with Mr Lempkowski. I don't have eyes for the fuss....
joseph leone (smo-joe)
>
> Regards, Richard Hunter
> hunterharp.com
>
>
>
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