[Harp-L] Civil War

[Jonathan Ross <jross38@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

All quotes are from Smokey Joe, first:

"Who IS Alan Bates?"


Others have answered, but I felt like pointing out that a simple  
google search of "Alan Bates Harmonica" turns this up as the first  
entry:

http://www.usd.edu/smm/Batespage.htm

The bare minimum amount of looking things up before dismissing  
someone's lifetime of work would seem to be not beyond the scope of  
civility, IMO.


"I consider myself a fair hand at history. Certainly no expert, but  
well read nonetheless. In my life time, I have many times seen cases  
where what we were lead to believe about history, turns out to be  
bogus. It's all in the hands of the writer and it seems that the  
winner gets the opportunity to write as THEY see it, while the looser  
can only sit there discredited. After all, they DID loose, didn't  
they? so why should we believe THEM?"


Because they know more than you.  Because this is their life's work.   
Because they actually understand the concepts behind the study of  
history that have lead to the rethinking and rewriting of traditional  
history.  Much like why we should listen to an actual economist on  
matters of economics rather than someone who watches CNBC.  Or an  
actual chemist rather than someone who runs a meth lab.


"I have never heard of 'many', but there ARE remains at Gettysburg.  
Gettysburg was very late in the war. BTW, no one has ever proven who  
made them OR what country they are from. The importation of  
harmonicas was stated as being early 60s. That means 61, 62, & 63.  
Gettysburg wasn't till 65."


No.  The Battle of Gettysburg was in 1863, smack dab in the middle of  
the Civil War and before the second Presidential election and the  
Emancipation Proclamation--it is widely considered as being pivotal  
to both those events.  I didn't remember the exact dates, but that's  
another thing Google can find very easily--it was July 1st, 2nd and  
3rd of 1863.

That said, Smokey Joe does have a good point about not being sure  
when harmonicas found at the various battlegrounds are from.  In part  
this is because it would take a level of archeological diligence  
rarely seen amongst amatuers (and nothing wrong with that) to  
properly authenticate most of these items.  As he says, a harmonica  
which has been buried since 1883 is going to look quite old,  
essentially as aged as one buried twenty years earlier.  That's why  
further research into areas of availability (through both sales  
records and written evidence via letters, newspapers and such),  
design (if the instrument is of a design not made in 1863, for  
instance, that pretty much rules it out) and so forth.  I don't know  
if that's been done with the Alan Bates collection, but I'm willing  
to defer active skepticism as Mr. Bates knows a lot more about the  
specifics of harmonica model history than I do--by a wide margin  
(again, that's why we should listen to what he has to say more than,  
say, me).


"I was never convinced that the harmonica WAS a German invention  
anyway. It seems quite possible to me that 49ers in the gold fields  
could have dropped harmonicas in Sutter's creek that were CHINESE.  
No, not made IN China, made by an Chinese man (for his children)  
after he had just done his 16 hour shift in the laundry."


?  The Western free-reed bears little resemblance in terms of  
construction to the East-Asian free-reed (one is heteroglottal, the  
other idioglottal--assuming I'm not butchering the words; one has the  
reed cut from the same material as the plate, the other the reed is a  
separate entity mounted on the reed-plate).  Given that, I think it  
no more likely that the hobbyist (usually people with spare time and  
money to spend on materials) would be Chinese than any other  
ethnicity--actually, I think it less likely based on the nature of a  
labor and time intensive hobby like making harmonicas in one's spare  
time--more something for the middle-class than the very downtrodden  
Chines immigrants of the time.

The Western free-reed spread very rapidly in the early 19th century  
throughout Europe and America, though origins of this design are very  
hard to pinpoint.  It's very hard to find any real evidence as to who  
made the first mouth-blown instrument we might recognize as a  
harmonica, but it seems like a fairly simultaneous development of the  
free-reed principal can be seen in many countries (including the  
various central European German states, France, Britain and the US).   
Single-country origins, and a Germanic one at that, might have more  
to do with the nationalism of the 19th and early 20th centuries and  
the subsequent dominance of German manufacturers than actual history.


On the National Music Museum and the Alan Bates' collections ending  
up there:


"Oh, ok, that's cool, BUT suddenly I am now struck with the question  
South Dakota? I suppose it was a monetay consideration, but I don't  
really see SoDak as a Mecca for harmonicas. Seems pretty far from the  
general population."


To quote from the museum's web page:

"In about 1997, Alan decided the collection was too important to  
break up by selling the harmonicas individually, as he had done with  
the coins and tools.  Then began a search for the best museum in  
which to house them.  National Music Museum came out far ahead of the  
other candidates and the commitment was made.  In late April 2000,  
museum director Dr. André P. Larson drove to Delaware in a University  
van.  He and Alan loaded scores of boxes and several large display  
cases.  Off went the collection on a 1,300 mile trek to South Dakota."


When collectors give donations to museums there are many criteria.   
This museum has a very good reputation for, amongst other things,  
displaying their collection rather than storing much of it.  Many  
more prominent museums location-wise (the MFA in Boston, the Met in  
New York--to name two with significant musical instrument  
collections) would at best display one or two items and store the  
rest--occasionally rising for an exhibit once every fifty years.  I  
haven't been there, but it sounds like a decent showing--they list 60  
instruments on display.  That's a tiny fraction of the total, but  
orders of magnitude more than the two museums I mentioned would be  
showing.




 ()()    JR "Bulldogge" Ross
()  ()   & Snuffy, too:)
`----'