Re: [Harp-L] Custom Harmonicas: Rick Epping's Role

Joe and Cass Leone <leone@xxxxxxxx> · Tue, 9 Dec 2008 11:44:18 -0500

On Dec 9, 2008, at 10:35 AM, Richard Hunter wrote:
David Payne wrote:

<To say Lee Oskar perhaps introduced these things is fine. What I  
am saying is credit

<must also be given to people who have perpetuated and popularized  
ideas and refined

<them. Just because I did not mention Lee Oskar, should not be a  
slight to Lee Oskar.

<Credit ought to be due to Steve Baker as well.

<WHile I've never been a fan of the Lee Oskar harps, I embrace the  
fact that

<LO set the stage for a lot of what is happening today.

<

<I can not possibly mention all the people who have contributed in  
any single post,

<which is precisely the point. The development of anything is never  
as clear cut

<as it appears, it's a usually a play with a cast of thousands.
Indeed.
Charlie McCoy was using country-tuned harps in the late 1970s.   
Charlie is a consummate pro, and one of the things pros don't do is  
show you what's behind the curtain.  He didn't make a big deal out  
of how he achieved his intentions; he just did it.  Charlie had a  
lot of gold records.  Should we say that Charlie is the guy who put  
alternate tunings over the top?  Charlie, by the way, told me that  
he was introduced to the country tuning by some guy at a  
performance in upstate New York.  Should we credit that guy?

I discovered the 'so called' country tuning in 1959, showed it to Jim  
Riddle in Nashville in 1975, and where it went from there is anyone's  
guess.

smokey-joe

How many of the people who hear Jim Conway's music know that he's  
using some pretty wacked-out tunings to play his drone effects?
In 1995 and 1998, respectively, I released two CDs of solo  
harmonica pieces recorded in real time without overdubs.  Many if  
not most of those pieces used alternate tunings, including dorian  
minor, country tuning, melody maker, natural minor, and harmonic  
minor.  Both CDs are still selling today. I'm not claiming to be  
the prime mover either on alternate tunings or solo recordings,  
notwithstanding that other recordings of this type have followed. I  
used so many alternate tunings in large part because I could get  
them from Lee Oskar so easily.
Was Lee Oskar the prime mover for alternate tunings? Certainly the  
easy availability of alternate tuned instruments helped make them  
more widely used. You're not a leader unless you have followers.   
The public focuses on whoever is most popular and says "he's the  
guy who invented it."  But the guy who invents it and the guy who  
popularizes it are two different things.  And many, many players  
are often working toward the same goal in parallel, more or less  
unknown to each other, until one breaks through.
In the end, as Frank Herbert wrote in "Dune Messiah," "History is  
the story of where the money goes."  The story of where the ideas  
come from, and how they play out in the world, is a different story.
Regards, Richard Hunter
latest mp3s and harmonica blog at http://myspace.com/richardhunterharp

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