There are other blue grass players that accept harmonica. Jerry
Douglas, Tony Trishka, Mark Schatz to name a few.
I played with Tony in the sixties and seventies. A brilliant, kind cat, and
one of the funniest people I've ever encountered. He was part of Breakfast
Special, an incredible band that also featured Andy Statman, who I grew up
with, Kenny Kosek who is still the first-call bluegrass fiddle guy in NYC
from what I hear and Stacy Phillips, who is always mentioned in the top
tier of dobro guys. Those guys all studied the classic bluegrass records
in a most profound way, and could tell you if a trill included three or
four notes, and who played on what recordings.
But they all wanted to make something new from what they learned. I loved
sitting in with those guys always. All they wanted to hear or play was
something new.
Speaking of bizarre tunings - Andy Statman worked for Vassar Clements in
the mid-seventies, playing both mandolin and tenor sax. He didn't feel
like getting an apartment in Nashville, which was the band's home
destination, so he would crash at my place. He kept much earlier hours
than I did, so I'd be puttering around and he be sleeping on my couch. At
least once a night he'd wake up and tell me he had just had a dream about a
new mandolin tuning, and did I mind if he monkeyed with it?
Well, of course I didn't mind. He'd tune the eight strings, sometimes to
eight different notes, and instantly achieve a sound I had never heard
before. He'd then start working on a theory of the tuning, with chords and
arpeggios and melodies, all of it total brand new on this earth. He'd do
this for about a half hour, at which point he'd have invented a brand new
music. Then he'd go back to sleep and in the morning he'd have dreamt up
another new tuning.
For that guy, putting harmonica in a bluegrass setting was as natural as a
running brook.