Re: [Harp-L] My grandpa, the prewar Blues harp player



Wait, I know this one. Freight Train Boogie, Delmore Brothers, 1946... this is what grandpa would have been playing on the harp right after the war:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQhQbGz3fy4

Had another brain lapse on the other song grandpa played on the harp, realized this after I typed it. The song he played was "Chase the Blues Away."  It's an Ella Fitzgerald tune...  another example of the relationship of Jazz and bluegrass in the early days. Now, just how this number got into grandpa's bluegrass circle, I don't know. But I'll try to find out. Bluegrass and jazz had a close relationship in the early days, Monroe took a lot from Jazz when he created bluegrass. The jazz influence ended about the time the "purists" took over.

Dave
___________________________
Elk River Harmonicas
www.elkriverharmonicas.com 

----- Original Message ----
From: David Payne <dave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: Harp L Harp L <harp-l@xxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, May 12, 2008 1:39:52 AM
Subject: [Harp-L] My grandpa, the prewar Blues harp player

Just got back from a little vacation with the family. Took wife and kids to Hawk's Nest state park in Ansted, WV, had a room overlooking the New River canyon. It was pretty sweet, we rode a cable car down to the bottom of the canyon, had a fine time. 
Visited mom and grandmothers for Mother's Day. Talked to grandpa. 
I'm always talking about what a fine musician my grandpa is.... This is why you ask your grandpa questions, because they never seem to volunteer this info on their own.... Talked to my grandpa today, I DID NOT know this, I knew he was accomplished on the guitar, mandolin and fiddle, NEVER KNEW HE WAS A HARMONICA PLAYER. Serioulsly, had no idea whatsoever. 
He was playing some country too in the 1950s and playing ELECTRIC GUITAR. I would never have guessed his fingers had ever graced an electric instrument, but he told me that today... another example why you need to ask your elders about what they did back in the day while they are still with you. 
Grandpa started playing out when he was about 16.... Somehow we got on the subject of tuning...Back in the day, they just tuned to whatever whomever had the best ear thought the pitch was, but grandpa wanted to be more precise, so he got a Marine Band D (would have been prewar) to tune from.  He said he carried this Marine Band D with him all the time and they tuned from it.
I pass this on largely because this might give folks an idea how cross harp came about. My grandpa came up with cross harp on his own, which is, how I expect most of the early players did it.
Grandpa played the harp and realized on his own  that the D harp had an A chord, plus the four and five chords (although he didn't mention it as four and five), so he played it in A. The result was cross harp blues.
A couple of tunes he mentioned were "freight train Boogie" and "Keeping the Blues Away." If anybody has a link to an audio file of "Keeping the BLues Away" I'd appreciate it.  I suspect, but do not know, that Freight Train Boogie is something he heard DeFord Bailey play on the Grand Ol Opry. Grandpa talked about DeFord some, summed up his success on the Opry this way "He was black, but nobody could see him, because he was on the radio"

So what happened to this prewar Marine Band D grandpa had? He said he gave it to my dad and dad wore it out. I'll have to ask dad about that now, although I'm positive it's gone. It makes sense because dad has always had this unexplained love for D harps. That's pretty much how the Payne family has passed music to the next generation, by giving a son a harmonica and walking away. That's how dad started me when I was five, today I realized that is probably how dad started.

I always figured Grandpa would be the last to drive a nail  into thecoffin of the no-harmonica-in-bluegrass-purity myth, but he did that today.. If grandpa brought the harmonica to bluegrass in the 1940s, then, by God, the harmonica belongs in bluegrass. 
Grandpa is getting a custom D Seydel Solist from me soon... I'm going to mail it to him and hopefully next time I see him I can hear a bit of what he might of sounded like then. Hopefully, it will get some playing time, his finger dexterity  has deteroriated to the point where he can't play the mandolin anymore, so hopefully he can express with the harp. I'd love to get a glimpse of what he sounded like on the harp back in the day. 

I've always been proud of this Payne family music tradition we've got going on, with my six-year-old son blooming musically on his own, me, my father and my grandfather. I asked grandpa today about how far back it went, he said... I didn't know this, that his grandpa and Squire Parsons-grandma (something like that) were brother and sister. That's just a sidenote, this is more important, he said his dad played the fiddle.How well my great-grandpa played, I don't know. Grandpa didn't sound too impressed with his fiddling, but he has some pretty high standards.
Anyway, if David II, keeps up with the promise he is showing, we'll be at five unbroken generations of musicians and we'll be four unbroken generations of harp players. I'm pretty excited about these recent developments of grandpa and the harp, to me, he's the greatest musician who has ever lived. 

Dave
___________________
Elk River Harmonicas
www.elkriverharmonicas.com 




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