[Harp-L] LW's Influence - sharing info w/the list

[IcemanLE@xxxxxxx]

Hello Larry,
I'm not subscribed the the harp-l but I do occasionally  browse 
through the archives online, and your post (and a couple of others  
on this subject) caught my eye.

When we were working on the Little  Walter book, Tony Glover, Ward 
Gaines, and I spent quite a bit of time  exploring the subject of 
LW's influences.  Of course we'd all heard  that he was influenced by 
horn players too, but none of us knew offhand of  any specific 
examples.  So eventually Tony made a tape of Little Walter  
instrumentals (figuring that's where most of the jazz-influenced 
licks  would be), and gave it to a friend of his who had been a jazz 
DJ for 30-some  years, and was a specialist in big bands and 
jump/swing bands.  This  guy took a lot of time and went through LW's 
music with a fine tooth comb,  and he came back with a list of licks 
that had precedents in the music of  horn players.  But it was 
actually a pretty short list, something like  a dozen examples or 
so.  And within that list, most of the examples  were pretty short, 
like a two bar lick that showed up in the middle of a  much longer 
improvisition.  There were also a few examples where LW  used 
the 'head' from another song to kick off something that then turned  
into his own improvisation (like the opening 12 bars of "Juke", 
which  seemed to be based on a Benny Goodman song I can't recall the 
name of right  now, or the opening lick of "Fast Large One", which 
was from the opening of  "Let Me Off Uptown" by Anita O'Day).  And of 
course there were no  examples of entire songs being copied.

(BTW, I've been hearing people say  that Little Walter copied Louis 
Jordan ever since I started playing harp,  but in all of our 
research, we were unable to find any examples of a LW lick  that had 
a precedant on a LJ record.  So if you know of an example,  please 
enlighten me.)

In the end, we were surprised to find that  there were a lot fewer 
references to recordings by horn players in LW's  playing than we'd 
expected, especially considering that "LW copied sax  players" seemed 
(and still seems) to be the accepted wisdom.   

But if you really study the evidence, the only conclusion you can  
come to is that Little Walter really did invent the overwhelming  
majority of the licks he played.  If there's a another harp player  
in the blues idiom who was anywhere near as inventive as he was, I  
haven't heard of him yet.  

Elsewhere in this thread, someone  wrote that "Little Walter just 
transferred horn licks to harp."  This  is an easy generalization, 
but it doesn't hold up to close scrutiny.   But what he *did* do is 
THINK and improvise like a really creative horn  player would, and 
then transfer his creations to the harp.

This does  not address LW's influences in his lyrics or song choices 
of course, where  in fact there were MANY examples of him taking 
earlier songs and slightly  modifying them.  But as for his harp 
playing, the overwhelming majority  of it seems to have been of his 
own creation.

Scott

PS- Please  feel free to share this with the list if you're so 
inclined.

PPS - if  you do share this with the list: I know there's a lot of 
knowledge out there  that we weren't able to tap into while writing 
the book, so if anyone has  any corrections or additional information 
or examples regarding this  subject, I'm very interested in hearing 
about  it.




************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com.