[Harp-L] Harp Homecoming DC

["Wayne" <rtonrhythm@xxxxxxx>]

cue the Star Wars Intro Crawl
THE HARP HIERARCHY

A long time ago in a storied music city
In the pre-Nighthawks blues days of Washington DC
Numerous players inspired by the likes of Paul Butterfield (yes white boys could play this music)
began to assemble and share their ideas
of a musical vision that encompassed the roots of all popular music
THE BLUES
The first of these knights gathered in basements & houses exploring this vision
and the North Side Blues Band came to be
And as a young club going audience found and then embraced this music
more seeds were planted for what eventually became known a few years later as the Blue Wave

HOME IS WHERE THE HARP IS
THE HARP HOMECOMING #3

WHO:
MARK WENNER
BRET LITTLEHALES (BIG BOY LITTLE)
DOUG JAY (back visiting from Germany)
PHIL WIGGINS doing an acoustic set with MARK PURYEAR
Backing band for Doug, Mark & Bret
PETE KANARAS (guitar)
STEVE JACOBS (bass)
SCOTTY STUMP (drums)
MC
DAMIAN EINSTEIN
other surprises possible

WHERE:
SURF CLUB LIVE
4711 Kenilworth Ave Hyattsville MD
301-927-6310
http://www.surfclublive.com/

WHEN
SUNDAY JUNE 8 
7:00 TIL...

Friends of a Feather - Jamming Together
Bret Littlehales attended St. Albans HS and was heavily involved in the local DC blues scene through its infancy. Bobby Radcliff (Ewan) attended Beth/Chevy Chase HS two years behind Mark Wenner. Mark headed off to Columbia University in 1966 and would come home for summers and visits. He met Bobby who was playing in a band at a party at the house of a friend in the summer of 66. In the summer of 67 he and Bobby were together in a band named Hunk of Funk that had only one real gig. It was at the P St. Beach which was also the last show of the Fallen Angels. Mark headed back to school and Bret and Bobby with Guy Dorsey (keys) Steve Shaw or Tom Slavin  (bass) & Walter Sheridan (drums) formed the North Side Blues Band. 
Many of the players of today's scene are part of a lineage that traces back to the North Side Blues Band.
Brett Littlehales gave the first harp lessons to his younger cousin Pierre Beauregard and by 1970 Brett had headed off to Cornell where he became classmates and playing in bands with Huey Lewis (yeah the News guy). Brett still sits in with him to this day when he comes around to his annual Wolf Trap gig.
Bobby meanwhile had become totally inspired by (and a disciple of) Magic Sam at the Ann Arbor Blues Festival.
He drove around to the restaurants & clubs of the DC area in his mothers car looking for places that would give him the opportunity to play. Some worked out - some didn't. One that did and stuck for about 3 years was Bobby's engagement at Top O' the Foolery. Burt & May took a liking to the young Bobby and gave him the Sunday night slot. After a bit Monday nights were added as well. Bobby had to pinch himself to make sure he wasn't dreaming to have landed a spot in a storied jazz room that had on its weekly schedule the likes of Nathan Page, Shirley Horn & Andrew White.
Bobby was always pushing the envelope of the boundaries of blues espousing the fact that "the blues ain't no one thing" and this long running gig served as a magnet for many of the aspiring young players of the scene.
In attendance on any given night were Mark Wenner (who had returned from college), Brett (when he was back visiting from college) Charley Hubel,  Pierre Beauregard, Jimmy Thackery Rusty Bogart, Doug Jay and many others.
In Mark's words:
without Bobby's role in the DC blues scene in the early 1970's, there would be no Nighthawks. Without the Nighthawks, I might have ended up teaching freshman English at some girl's school in New England!! 

The Lineage Takes Root
Major cornerstones that cannot be overlooked in the growth of blues in DC were the radio stations WHFS and WGTB. Both provided a heady dose of the music adding to the inspiration of many young players.
The Howard University Blues Festival of 1970 was also a major watershed in the blues scene exploding. Topper Carew organized the festival that included all the heavyweights and was the man responsible for J.B. Hutto moving to DC. Harp players that worked with JB at the time started with Pierre Beauregard followed by Damian Einstein and then Charley Hubel.
Pierre Beauregard became Doug Jay's first harp teacher when the two met in a record store where Pierre worked.
Pierre Sez:
I really learned to play harmonica in the upstairs bathroom of the Foolery while Bobby and band would play downstairs. 
Pierre ended up heading off to Boston with Tom Principato to form Powerhouse which indirectly led to Mark Wenner & Jimmy Thackery coming together (after a referral by Charlie Hubel pointing Jimmy to Mark) to form The Nighthawks
Bruce Ewan as a young teen had the dual inspiration of both Brett & Mark.

Bruce's Words:
You know, Bret Littlehales to my mind was the first harp player to receive notice on the DC blues circuit. As a youth, when I was 10 to 12 years old, I used to sneak into our parent's basement and catch rehearsals of my brother Bobby Radcliff with Bret and various sundry musicians who comprised the Northside Blues Band. (Please note that I wasn't actually playing music at the time, as collecting baseball cards was more of a passion!) Anyway, Bret was the first cat to blow like and grasp the Paul Butterfield thing that was so influential at the time in the late 1960's. I call Bret "the Dean" of the Washington area harp players. You have to remember too, that at this time Mark Wenner was up at Columbia University in NYC and was not on the scene in Washington except for some sporadic jam sessions. So to make my point, Bret influenced his younger cousin Pierre Beauregard who in turn influenced Doug Jay and to a certain degree Charlie Hubel. All of whom are some of the finest harmonica players in the blues world. Bret was the cat to dig and he was the quintessential "front man." Bret left the scene in 1970 to attend Cornell and by the time I actually started playing harp a year or so later, I just remember guys talking about him and so on as having been the first to actually play a Chicago blues harp style in DC.
His playing has taken on a new life with different influences - particularly with chromatic harp. But, I admire him so much for "keeping the flame alive" with his Paul Butterfield exuberance. Check him out with the virtual all-stars of the DC blues scene The Big Boy Little Band.
(I add) "Bruce headed off to college at University of Miami in Florida where he formed a band with another Bethesda native Johnny Ticton (Johnny & the Headhunters)."

Mark's early recollection of Bruce:
Back in the 1960's, Bobby Radcliff and I did a blues workshop/seminar for Bruce Ewan's Junior High School class. We talked some but played more. I'm willing to take at least part of the blame for starting Bruce on his way to becoming the extraordinary harmonica player he has become today. Maybe he steered away from guitar because his brother Bobby was already such a phenomenon even as a late teenager. (Bobby uses his middle name, Radcliff, as a "nom de stage" dropping Ewan - correctly pronounced U - N a challenge to proper pronunciation for music business types!)

Doug Jay
Harmonica player Doug Jay was bitten by the blues bug upon hearing a James Cotton record in 1970 and proceeded to chase down more recordings of great blues harp players. Once in a record store, he met a clerk who said, "Oh, I could tell you about harp." The clerk's name was Pierre Beauregard. Pierre turned Doug on to a great deal of blues harmonica and Doug credits Pierre with helping him discover Little Walter and the basics of the instrument. Doug replaced Bruce Ewan in the Charlottesville All Stars in 1976 and when ex-Muddy Waters guitarist Bob Margolin moved into the area and started a band in the early '80s, Doug was quick to join up. He relocated to California in 1990 where he recorded his first CD, "Til We Meet Again," He came back to DC 95/96 released his Get it While It's Hot disc and then headed off to Germany where he has been since 1999 and issued two more CDs Jackpot and Under the Radar.
Doug remembers seeing Pierre and Brett sitting in with Bobby Radcliff at the Top of the Foolery and was in Pierre's house in DC the night that Pierre and Tom Principato first practiced together. 

Guitarist Rusty Bogart credits Bobby Radcliff as a major inspiration and says Bobby gave him his first chance to sit in. Bobby also hooked Rusty up with Charlie Hubel around 1972. Bruce Ewan had became a member of the Charlottesville All-stars as the DC scene traveled down to UVA with college age kids. Bruce went on to form the Incredible Snakes that included Rusty and Eric Sheridan. When that band ceased, Bruce eventually formed his band the Solid Senders and Charlie Hubel hooked up with Rusty and Eric. They became the Uptown Rhythm Kings and Charlie had added saxophone to his repertoire. In the early 90's the URK's evolved into the J Street Jumpers.

And in A Parallel World:
Harmonica Phil Wiggins grew up in the Ft. Hunt section of Fairfax County and started in on the harmonica around 1970. His first harp influences were all the usual suspects, Walters - Big & Little , Sonny Boy I & II, Junior Wells etc. The Childe Harold was the area club that he often went to see live music. While all the other major area players of this period in the Harp Hierarchy continued down the road of Chicago/Butterfield/Delta styles, Phil took a turn towards the folk side of the blues. His family always headed into DC for church on Sundays and Phil had the assignment of keeping an eye on his younger sister who would be allowed to walk outside when she got a bit antsy. It happened to be near the area that Flora Moulton would set up shop to play downtown and Phil's sister liked to stay and listen. Phil also became friends with Flora who encouraged him to sit in on harp.
He began a long association with Flora and accompanied her at the Smithsonian Folk Life Festival from 1972 to 1976. Through Flora, Phil met and worked with giants of Piedmont Blues, Archie Edwards, John Jackson, Mother Esther Scott. His schooling in the art of country-blues harp was conducted by masters of the country-blues guitar. He met John Cephas at the 1976 Smithsonian National Folklife Festival in D.C. when John was part of pianist Wilbur "Big Chief" Ellis' band, the Barrelhouse Rockers. Phil joined the band and after Ellis' death Cephas & Wiggins began to perform as a duo in 1978. 
By the end of the 1980s, the international blues community began to recognize Cephas & Wiggins as the leading exponents of traditional Tidewater blues. The two recorded their first domestic album, Dog Days of August, in 1987 in John's living room, and it quickly won a W.C. Handy Award for Best Traditional Blues Album of the Year. In 1996 they began an association with Alligator Records that continues to this day.

FFI
Wayne Kahn
rtonrhythm@xxxxxxx
www.rightonrhythm.com