[Harp-L] Rick, Roscoe, Chris and the rest of the family

["Planet Harmonica" <lists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

<< But...um... Rick, FY I -  improvising over the chords to  Body & Soul (I 
think it's Eb,D,Dm,-just about the hardest modulation  to play  on diatonic!) is 
not why I play overbends. It's easy to  set up that kind of  straw horse 
argument to try to make a point, a  la: "The day I hear Toots play a convincing 
version of Roller Coaster on  chromatic is the day I'll accept it as a blues 
instrument.>>

Indeed. One might even be slightly nastier and say "The day I'll hear a chormatic player playing Donna Lee at speed (and not the way Toots plays it) will be the day I accept chormatic as a jazz instrument". Except for some reason everybody knows that's b*shit. And yet Howard Levy plays it at speed. OK, I think it's ugly, but it's not because of the overblows, it's because I think Donna Lee is ugly, even when Coltrane plays it.

Considering the hardest pieces of a genre as representative of the whole genre is silly. But then again I can't even begin to understand how whole genres can be dismissed as "uninteresting". It smacks of either immense pride or great lack of musical understanding.

<< You'd have to listen very carefully to tell where the overbends are on  my 
recordings, which are plain old rock/pop. (Not " freak-out type  material".) No 
one has ever said they sounded awkward & ugly, but it's true  I can't play the 
changes in B&S. (Yet.) So what? How did using overbends get intrinsically 
mixed up with playing jazz or playing in all twelve keys? >>

As to that last question, if you pardon my taking Rick's side for a second (much as I disagree with him on the intent) the boasting of people just like Chris on lists just like these certainly hasn't helped. Saying that if you don't overblow you're not a consumate harp player, that any tune in any key can be played on the diatonic, that because one overblows fluently one is amongst the greatest harp players in the world can't help. Truly, it's overblowing (pardon the pun) the importance of a technical aspect of playing way out of proportion. Not unlike TB-ing often is, indeed. 

<< When you say you haven't heard Michalek yet, well, then, you haven't  heard 
him. Like the other poster who slammed Michalek the other day, how can you  
criticize something you haven't heard? (See my long post #45003, near the end)  
Next to Howard Levy, I would say Chris is the best OB player out  there. His 
overbends don't stick out to me. >>

I agree that slamming Chris without having heard him is silly. I disagree about your last statement in more ways than one, mostly because you're doing the thing you're slamming Rick for : what the hell is an OB player ? Has overblowing suddenly become a musical genre ? A style ?

Furthermore, and I understand you guys are all friends so this may be hard, especially publicly, but I don't think his playing  is *that* good, and I've listened to Monk Alters Chi several times, and to many of the samples he regularly posts. I'm frankly surprised at seeing you all jumping to Chris' defense. I don't think that any serious jazz musician would consider Chris' playing exceptionally good. And if you're going to set yourself up as a jazz musician, that's the standard you need to meet. There's this place on Chris' album where one of his solos follows a guitar solo (I think it's on Minor Swing, or one of the gipsy jazz flavoured tunes) and honestly the contrast in fluidity between the guitarists' playing and Chris' is audible and painful. And the guitarist isn't like McLaughlin or Lagrene, you know what I mean ?

I'm sorry Chris, this feels like I'm insulting you but I'm not. It's not like you don't know my opinion already anyway ;-) I'm trying to be honest here, and I see too little of that on the list especially amongst the more advanced players, as if suddenly, because someone has worked hard and studied long, it becomes touchier to tell him he's not there yet... 

And of course, it's just my humble opinion, but I stand by this : Chris' playing, to my ears, does not meet the standard of any of the jazz musicians in my record collection. And it's all the more surprising (or shocking, depending on where you're looking from) in regard of the serious boasting that he does. 

But the core of my post was not to criticise Chris. I just don't understand this whole "OBs are Evil" / "No they're not" debate. Has anyone on this list heard Don Les ? OK, with Mo Vint behind, his playing didn't sound too much like jazz, but listen to the lines, it is ! And there's not an overblow in sight. And I'd bet that there is not one person on this list (maybe even off this list) who can play like Don Les. Not one. And let me tell you, *that* fluidity of playing would knock the socks of some sax players. So why is everyone judging the "jazz-ness" of a player based on his capacity to OB and not all the other, frankly more important aspects of his playing ? Let *that* be the new standard of *jazz* playing and let's see who passes or fails ?

<< Incidently, I've personally heard  Levy play the s**t out of  Body & Soul. 
Raised the hair on my arms.  Rick, maybe you wouldn't dig  it, but I sure did! 
There are probably a few others who can play B&S. Maybe  even Chris. Maybe 
George Brooks. Maybe one of those South American whiz kids.  Maybe a bunch of 
folks.>>

I just thought you argued it really didn't matter ? I was all agreeing with you and suddenly you pull the carpet off my feet ! 

Who gives a damn whether anyone can play Body and Soul on the diatonic harmonica ? Can it be played on the Bagpipes ? The Harpsichord ? Can Mussorgsky's Pictures of an Exhibition be played on a chromatic harmonica ? No ? Ah, it's not an instrument for classical music then. Can Hendrix's Star Spangled Banner be played on a diatonic ? Popper aptly demonstrated it couldn't (by trying it, gotta give him credit for balls, at least !). The diatonic is definetely not an instrument for rock then !

I know you're mostly agreeing with me, Roscoe, but it seems to me there's a little bit of you that's still half convinced that's where the legitimacy lies :-)

Ben FELTEN
http://harmonica.typepad.com