[Harp-L] Sit-in Story

[Winslow Yerxa <winslowyerxa@xxxxxxxxx>]

Vancouver, BC, about 1974. Muddy Waters has a two-week stint at the
Egress, back when two-week stints were the norm. Mojo Buford on harp,
Pinetop, forget who else - a little too early for Bob Margolin and
Jerry Portnoy.

During a break I approach Muddy and ask him if I can sit in. He says,
Come back on the last night, and prepare a Little Walter tune. 

Cool. (COOL!!!)

Bear in mind, Muddy has absolutely no idea if I can play or not.

So I show up on the last night of the engagement. I tell him I want to
play "Can't Hold out Much Longer." He tells me the tune is in "E
natural" - which surprises me because the record is in G. 

But who am I to argue with Muddy Waters? He asks me my name. I tell
him, "Winslow Yerxa"; he shakes his head and makes a face like he's
getting rid of some incomprehensible buzzing in his ear. He says, I
can't say that.

So he introduces me simply as a "young man" who plays harp. We play
Can't Hold Out. Then he launches into something else all of a sudden,
luckily also in E. I start vamping along, feeling even more over-awed
than before. Then, just as the break happens, I realize that it's Juke.
Oh. OH. So I recover as best I can and finish. 

At the end Muddy holds my arm up like I'm a champion prizefighter and
says, "Let's hear it for a REAL harp player." 

Unhappy as I was with my performance of both tunes, those words
(especially the emphasis on "real") still ring in my ears some thirty
years later.

In the next few years I would meet harp players in my travels who
claimed to have sat in with Muddy. Sometimes they were really awful
players. But I didn't doubt their truthfulness because I had
experienced first-hand something I had always sensed about the old man
- how generous he was in encouraging young musicians.

Winslow

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