Re: [Harp-L] re: why do you want to play blues (very long)

["steve@xxxxxxxxxxxx" <swebb@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

This, in my opinion, is the most intelligent post on harmonica music that I have read in my 10 years or so on Harp-L. I know that Chris is opinionated and rubs people the wrong way sometimes, but this post shows the real Chris. He helped me at Buckeye years ago, and I know him from when he lived in  Minnesota, so it was good to see him expose the real person that guides the Groovy Gypsy. Buddha has the best vibrato I have ever heard and is a surreal player. I don't understand a lot of what he plays, but I will always appreciate his ability. His points in this post make so much sense.
I've been playing now for a long time, but I have minimal musical talent. Somewhere along the way I discovered that perserverance will help those of us lacking a natural ability. I play music because I can't not play. I'm getting old and I'm going to play as much as I can as long as I can. 
I hope Chris will show this real side of himself more often on Harp-L. We would all benefit from it.
Steve Webb on a late night in Minnesota.

---- Buddha <groovygypsy@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: 
> I started playing the harmonica seriously when I was 17 so as of this
> moment, it's been about 20 years.  Even though I say I've been playing
> for 20 years it's actually been much longer than that.  It seems
> playing harmonica is some kind of life path for me. There are stories
> about me being 2 yrs old and finding the babysitter's harmonica or my
> grandfather's harmonica and refusing to give it back. I can still
> remember my dad saying when I turn 5 years old I could have my own
> harmonica. According to my folks, I've been playing all my life.
> 
> I remember being 14 or 15 and having an incredible passion for the
> harmonica to the point where I collected anything that had to do with
> a harmonica. I recall at time at the mall where I was at the mall and
> ask the record store guy for harmonica music. He pointed me to the
> blues section where I came across that Big Walter Horton w/carey Bell
> album. I was not an immediate fan of the blues. And like Jazz, I hated
> blues the first time I heard it. I couldn't stand the Big Walter LP I
> had and put it away for several years.
> 
> When I was 17 and playing HS football, the moment I got serious was
> when another player had two harmonicas. They were a G and a C harp. I
> don't remember where I learned to bend notes but at that time, I could
> just do it. He was playing something and I was just using my ears to
> match his sounds. That's when he said you're playing the blues. I told
> him I didn't know what blues was and he said something like, "you're
> bending notes and that means you're playing the blues"  Later that
> night he gave me his copy of John Gindick's book. I knew I had a blues
> album so with the book in hand I went home to play blues. I still
> hated it but I learned most of the stuff off that record that I could
> with just a C harp.  "Christine" is one song I still remember.
> 
> Soon after, my father noticed that I was playing harmonica nearly
> everyday and one day after work he brought home 14 of Charlie McCoy's
> records. Now that was music I liked much better, there was melody I
> could follow and understand.  Within about four months, I had learned
> damn near everything Charlie was playing note for note. That's when my
> dad brought home the record that changed me - Beans Taste Fine by
> Minneapolis Native Papa John Kolstad featuring Wild Man Mike Turk. It
> was countryish, jazzy and bluesy all at the same time. It was on that
> album, I learned OBs. This record was recorded in 1967 so that's
> pre-howard levy! Mike played OBs on a couple of tunes, I knew about
> country tuned harmonicas and started tuning up some of my harps to get
> the notes Mike Turk was getting BUT even though I could play the same
> note, my ear told me it wasn't the same sound. I struggled trying to
> figure this out for awhile and even took a couple of lessons from
> Clint Hoover who didn't know what Turk was doing either. On the way
> home from one of those lessons, I had a Key of B harmonica where the
> six hole blow was stuck, I kept blowing on it and then thought if I
> tried to bend the note maybe that would unstuck the reed. BAM!!! an OB
> popped out and I had a Eureka moment...THAT WAS THE SOUND!
> 
>  It was about that time, I started going to the Twin City Harmonica
> Club. There I met Don Allen. I was already pretty good on the
> harmonica and knew how to play all of McCoy's stuff but since learning
> Mike Turk's music, I no longer had that pure country sound.  Don Allen
> pegged me as a blues player. I told him I don't play blues and he said
> "You should" That was also the day he told me about Howard Levy.
> "There is this guy in chicago who can play anything and he sounds like
> a Violin player. He using a technique called Overblowing"  I asked for
> an explanation on OBs to which I replied, " I CAN DO THAT!"  That
> night when I went home I had a copy of Harmonica Jazz. I Hated it. I
> hated Howard's sound because it was "real" jazz that I couldn't
> understand much less play.
> 
> So, because I couldn't play jazz, I started playing blues again. I
> discovered that blues wasn't so bad but what really tuned me off was
> Blues harmonica players so I stopped playing blues again. Now it's
> 1991 and during a trip to a music store, I see an ad from a band
> searching for a harmonica player. I auditioned and got the part. This
> was blues that I could stand... Albert Collins, Albert King, BB King
> etc... stuff with no harmonica and some of it was funky!  This was
> when I was introduced to Bela Fleck and the Flecktones. One of the
> guys in the band has a friend who made Bela's purple banjo - he was a
> Minnesota guy and he came out to see us on several occasions. He gave
> me a tape of the Flecktones because he thought I sounded like Howard
> Levy. I told him I hated Howard Levy but after listening to it, I
> discovered that I like him A LOT. So I learned to play everything on
> that album.
> 
> Back to playing blues, in this band the guitarist always told me I
> sounded to white and I needed to play with more feeling so he gave me
> lessons on playing with feeling and then THAT'S WHEN I STARTED TO
> ENJOY BLUES MUSIC.  I still never liked blues but at least I could
> enjoy playing it because it was a place where I could inject my
> emotions into my playing something that felt out of place when I would
> go to the country or bluegrass jams.
> 
> Currently, I just play music and I don't care what style it is. I feel
> like music is just the cosmic vibrations of the universe and I have
> the ability to hear it. It's fun for me in that it's almost on a
> psychic level that I know what to play and this is where my original
> voice comes in. I know the harp and all of it's sounds so well that I
> am able to play music as I interpret it from the universe and then I
> can color it with my emotions.
> 
> One of my personal highlight at SPAH 08 was playing Cara Cooke's
> original music which isn't exactly country or bluegrass but something
> from the farthest reaches of space but filtered through the depth of
> her personal pain and emotion. When I played with her, I could feel
> what she was emoting which to me wasn't always happy, so always worked
> to bring light to the sounds of her chords. I loved playing with her
> for awhile we had a real connection on a level that most never
> experience. I often feel the same way when I play with Jimi Lee.
> 
> I posed this question because to me, blues and harmonica are nearly
> synonymous. The truth is, while I don't really like ANY KIND of music
> other than what comes to me, I realized that I have a profound
> connection to ALL KINDS of music. I'm going to let the Buddha thing
> out of the box for a moment, I find myself questioning many harp
> players in their choice of music because of the music and emotion I
> feel and hear surrounding them. There are some genuine blues
> musicians, that I saw at SPAH but by in large I was over encumbered
> with the feeling that most players we just playing licks rather than
> music. I felt like most where locked away in the blues based or cross
> harp box because that's all they knew.
> 
> During my sessions at the Teach In I focused on playing music that was
> away from blues and second position and it was there that I saw many
> light bulbs go off. The crossharp box had been unlocked and people
> were more free to play other things. Free to play from the heart while
> interpreting the sounds from the cosmos.
> 
> To me, playing blues and/or playing in 2nd postion locks a person into
> routine patterns and licks. It also stops most people from listening
> to what's real. I recall a moment during one of my sessions at Rockin
> in the Rockies with XXXX.  XXXX is a fabulous harmonica player with
> very advanced skills. But when I removed him from Blues and second
> position he simply couldn't play anything resembling music. Even when
> he played in cross harp but in a non-blues context he could play
> anything resembling music. I'm not talking about a tough tune with
> changes, I'm talking about playing over a single chord. So was this
> person a musician during that moment? In my book, no.  Would I even
> call him a harmonica player during that moment? Ummm....no.  But put
> him in his element and he's badass! So he gets the label, BLUES
> HARMONICA PLAYER and BLUES MUSICIAN and there nothing wrong with that
> unless you're looking for more than blues.
> 
> I hope all of you are doing and playing what you want to play. If you
> suspect you are not then jump away from blues and 2nd position and see
> what happens. I would love to see Christelle jump away from cross
> harp. She maybe able to play blues but I have a feeling her deep
> rooted tastes are elsewhere. She plays very beautiful and very
> non-traditional stuff that to me could be greatly improved by playing
> in other positions.  She definitely has the ability and the ear to do
> it. I love what she does and I find her to be a rare gem in the crazy
> world of "What key harp you got?"
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