Re: [Harp-L] Bluegrass chromatic harmonica

[Winslow Yerxa <winslowyerxa@xxxxxxxxx>]

David - 

You playing reminds me a bit of Jimmy Riddle, who played harmonica with Roy Acuff in the '40s (later he switched to piano while Onie Wheeler took over harmonica) and made a couple of his own albums in, I think, the 1960s. He sometimes took an entire chorus on chromatic (Freight Train BLues and Tennessee Waltz with Acuff for instance), or else switched back and forth between second-position diatonic and chromatic played in either 1st position or 8th position (C# on a C chromatic). Sometimes his choice of keys seems to be based on the slide-in blow chord position of the chromatic he's using.

I think your approach is a little closer to Riddle's than to Naiditch's. Naiditch sounds like a mostly single note player with a bit of a jazz background who isn't really digging into chordal playing or into using the slide as a source of licks and ideas (or even phrasing; I don't hear him exploiting the E#/F or B#/C enharmonics to smooth out his phrases) as much as just a way of simply accessing the notes he wants to play. Your playing (and Riddle's) seems to proceed more organically from the harmonica itself.

Winslow

Winslow Yerxa
Author, Harmonica For Dummies ISBN 978-0-470-33729-5


--- On Sun, 10/26/08, David Payne <dave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> From: David Payne <dave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: [Harp-L] Bluegrass chromatic harmonica
> To: "Harp L Harp L" <harp-l@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Date: Sunday, October 26, 2008, 5:14 PM
> O.K. I found a starting place. David Naiditch. His Web site
> says he took lessons from Sonny Terry and Cham Ber Huang,
> chromatic harmonica bluegrass. The stuff he's playing
> isn't really the stuff I'd be playing, I'm more
> into that embryonic Rock n' Roll stuff Bill Monroe was
> playing in the 1940s... I like to play bluegrass with some
> blues and a rock beat in it. The one exception of his stuff
> was "Lonesome Moonlight Waltz" I was really
> getting into that one. 
> http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=387735431
> 
> I'm gonna check to see if he's got a CD with a
> Jimmie Rodgers remake or something... On Lonesome Moonlight,
> that's pretty much what I envisioned myself learning to
> do, using the chromatic to mimic the mandolin, then with
> diatonic rhythm chops as rhythm.
> 
> ______________________________
> Dave Payne
> Elk River Harmonicas
> www.elkriverharmonicas.com 
> Fact: "Teddy Roosevelt did not actually write 35
> books. The words just assembled themselves out of
> fear."
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