[Harp-L] Carribean Harmonica

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

Hi Winslow;
                  Hope you don't mind the direct inquiry; if anyone else on the list has anything to add, I'd be pleased to hear.
                  A few years ago, if my memory serves me, you responded to a post I made regarding a Jamaican harmonica player called Roy Richards, who worked with Baba Brook's band and had a hit in 1967 (probably a hit in Jamaica and UK) called 'Contact'.
                 I've since tried to track down something else by him, but there is nothing out there, apart from the odd bit of accompaniement.
                 Chances are that everything I want to here from Roy is encapsulated on that one track anyway. But it has caused me to wonder what kind of status the harmonica had in the West Indies.
                I have heard the odd track here and there, one on a chromatic, played in first position (Richards plays a tremolo model)
                I wonder that there isn't more. You'd think a cheap instrument would have found popularity in the Carribean.
                I seem to recall you had some names, but I may be confusing you with someone else.
                If the harmonica (being  British colonies they might have called it 'mouth organ' in Jamaica & Trinidad) was not popular in that corner of the world, I wonder what the reason was. The music of the old Calypsonians might have been considered the preserve of more sophisticated players who could play 'proper' instruments, but the area of music occupied by steel pan players ie more 'street' style would have suited harmonica, and Roy Richard's playing falls into that camp in my opinion.
               Woddyareckon?
RD