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.
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