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



I think it's a common misconception that he copied horn licks. He liked the sound of the horn on the records and tried to emulate the sound using an amp and a mic, but did not emulate the actual music. He just had a musical brain that was able to put notes together in an original and beautiful way that few people have ever been able to achieve on any instrument.

Tom



----- Original Message ----- From: <IcemanLE@xxxxxxx>
To: <harp-l@xxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, May 30, 2007 11:37 AM
Subject: [Harp-L] LW's Influence - sharing info w/the list



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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