Re: [Harp-L] Under the radar

["stephen.schneider" <stephen.schneider@xxxxxxxx>]

If anyone's still interested in this thread, hope the digest doesn't mangle this:

Dave Nevling was mentioned: he is from Bacliff, Texas, I believe, which is the Houston area but down on Galveston Bay near Texas City. As you might imagine, there is an entire coastal club/bar circuit along that coast and Dave works there more than in Houston proper. He owns Meteor serial #1--Dave had dealt with Scooter before and was the first person to take the leap of faith on that amp, is also a Lee Oskar endorsee. A point I would make about the music of Dave and other prominent Houston blues harp players is that it is less Chicago-influenced than you might expect; Chicago blues never penetrated the indigenous Houston blues scene much back in the day, Duke/Peacock Records was here and the locals had their own thang musically, were kind of insular and that attitude persisted even through the white blues period--Johnny Winter didn't go overtly Chicago till later in his career, ZZ Top derives more from Lightnin' Hopkins than anything else. (Dallas/Fort Worth had much more musical interaction with Chicago over the years, partly simply due to railroads.) Not much impact by the later West Coast harp scene either. So harp players who come up as sidemen here, if they're good musicians, tend to be figuring out how to put harp on tunes that didn't originally have it. Dave mixes a streak of Gulf Coast rock & blues-rock into his music and I think his three CDs have been all original tunes, not your standard Chicago fare (not that there's anything wrong with that when done as well as people like Bill Lupkin do it).  www.davenevling.com

Sonny Boy Terry is the most prominent Houston blues harp player. He spent years getting the old Houston cats to accept harmonica on their music before starting his own band, and his Breakfast Dance record on the Doc Blues label shows how he combined Houston blues with harmonica, again with some Gulf Coast rock mixed in.  His name came from the old guys here, who sort of named him after all the harmonica players they could think of, I guess.  www.sonnyboyterry.com

Tommy Dardar has been singing and playing harp in Houston since the early sixties. He mixes a heavy dose of Louisiana/New Orleans music into his blues, along with Gulf Coast rock. As a harp player he was heavily influenced by Paul Butterfield, but he also does a lot of rhythm things live that are based on horn parts he learned from years of doubling the late Jerald Gray, a former Duke/Peacock session sax player. I think Rob Paparozzi would love Tommy's music: they both have the big voice/big heart/Butterfield harp/Louisiana thang going on, only Tommy's actually from Louisiana originally (not your fault, Rob, but listen to the tune samples on Tommy's site, I think they'll really hit the spot for you). Really an extraordinary singer; doesn't sound like James, but something like James Harman in having some strong technical vocal qualities and a distinct, authentic regional accent: someone who grew up with the music among the culture. His CD was produced by Tommy's old friend Tony Braunagel, I believe, and features Tony and some other great West Coast session players who moved there from Texas, and it's still absolutely Tommy's sound.  www.tommydardar.com

I want to put in a plug for Walter Higgs's record on the Doc Blues label, think the title is Just a Few Miles to Go. Walter is from the Port Arthur, TX area like Paul Orta, but moved to Austin in the seventies and I think sort of replaced Kim Wilson as the Antone's house harp player for a while. The songwriting on his record will surprise people, I think, stylistically and thematically eclectic/ambitious and recorded with an Austin blues dream team. I don't know whether you can see Walter performing much, but his all-original CD is remarkable Austin blues, one of those occasions when an artist spent decades getting ready and had something to say.

One place to discover a ~lot~ of interesting under-the-radar artists is to go to the artist gallery at the Hohner USA website and investigate the Hohner harmonica endorsees. Not every deserving artist who applies becomes a Hohner endorsee. But I think most people who visit the endorsee page are going to run across intriguing artists they've never heard of. I sure did. There's a lot going on out there.

Hope the above turns someone onto something.  I don't know that people will consider the above quartet technically dazzling harmonica players, but there is something a bit different going on with their music that might be interesting.

Stephen Schneider