[Harp-L] Re: Butter TV spot



I think Tom's remark was hyperbolic in a heartfelt way, which might
also describe Butterfield's tone.  Tom probably means he has not heard
anyone whose tone and intonation are as instantaneously or at least
quickly compelling, and galvanizing in combination with the sense of
risk-taking tangible in the note choices and timing/phrasing.  To me
there's a desperate intensity in PB that makes me think, "No wonder he
didn't live very long."  That applies to the vocals, too, and it
didn't surprise me that Tom named Rice Miller as having the same
quality--there are claims that the census says SBWII barely made it
past fifty.

To me Lester Butler conveyed a similar desperate intensity in his
musical approach and of course did not last long either.  You don't
hear it as much in LB's harmonica for reasons I think yield to
analysis: more traditional phrasing, and I think mechanical aspects in
LB's use of a bullet mic and tendency to TB rather than PB's preferred
wand mics and lip blocking and upside-down harp.  Butterfield is
playing with a less compressed tone a lot of the time; there's an edge
to it, and some overtones defining the vibrato, that I suspect tend to
happen more often with wand mics, their combination of EQ range and
formation of the cup in most people's hands, especially if they lip
block.  Requires Butterfield's depth of resonance and purity of
intonation to sound its best--and I think that's another thing he
shares with Lester Butler, a nearly choirboy purity of vocal
intonation and ease of singing near the top of his range, early on at
least in PB's case.

But with some models of wand mic, there may be a possibility of
exploiting some higher mids than usual, and different distortion
characteristics to the mic diaphragm, that can yield a
characteristicallyclear, intense sound.  Last weekend I stumbled
across Will "Harmonica" Wilde from Great Britain, www.willharmonicawilde.com,
a young guy who plays a wand mic and whose tone sounds remarkably like
Aaron "Little Sonny" Willis, another wand mic player who exploited a
similar vibrato.  Not the Butterfield vibrato, but clearly meant to
grab the listener hard.

For my own part, I would say that Pat Ramsey, on Johnny Winter's
White, Hot and Blue record, has got emotionally compelling intensity,
and Ian Collard's amplified playing on the first couple of Collard
Greens & Gravy CDs does too, in terms of rapidly engaging me; and both
are exploiting vibrato with more edge and higher overtones than
usual.  (You're not slipping, Ian, just that aspect of your sound was
more to the fore back then :-)  I think there's an amplified harmonica
equivalent to the upper end of male middle voice, vocally, that can be
an emotionally electrifying combination of timbre and vibrato if used
well.  It was not the only mode Butterfield had either: he had softer,
relaxed elements to play it off of.

Which was another thing about Butterfield, the sense of risk-taking:
Pretty often I feel like he's not lost but has no idea where he's
going next, and isn't worried about having an idea where he's going
next, and that taking of risks is still tremendously engaging to
audiences when it works out, and precisely what is lacking among most
schooled, encyclopedic blues harmonica players and their bands these
days. Since Butterfield relied on a characteristic set of phrasings
and physical moves to get around the harmonica, when it's not really
working, he's just flailing around in a relatively predictable
fashion; but when it does work, it pulls off harmonizing and timing
more akin to jazz than blues.  I was just reading some of the guys in
Weather Report saying that they really tried to improvise a lot of the
time and when it didn't work, it was just movement, not action--
Zawinul calls it "swimming," just swimming around if it's not really
working.  Part of the risk in Butterfield was the timing that I've
seen called "hemiola" or "three-over-two" timing in some of his
phrasing, a certain rushed quality that's not simply pushing the beat,
and that's very urgent if not overdone.  (Wikipedia says it's also not
hemiola, technically, maybe even the opposite of classical hemiola,
but whatever.)

And there was also Butterfield's tendency to play very original,
unusual things that worked--harder to analyze, I just think of it as
"I would never think of playing that right there."  That's part of
what works on the Levon Helm/RCO record, is that Butterfield simply
plays very musically.  I think with Magic Dick there tends to be more
sense of standard blues licks well adapted to rock contexts, whereas
with Butterfield it's some off-the-wall **** that works in a totally
individual way, just singing along with something new.  I think that's
what Bonnie Raitt meant when she said, "There was no one like him."
If you really tried copying the PB approach, it would require you to
go off in your own direction.  People who play by emulating his tone
and signature moves often don't get that part of it, same thing that
happens with emulating anyone else.

Boy, the problem with writing something like this is that there've
probably been seventeen other posts on it since I started writing;
apologies for redundant opinions.  I don't mean to romanticize that
part about emotional intensity, btw.  Nice place to visit, but I
wouldn't want to live there.

Stephen Schneider

On Dec 21, 3:32 am, Ev630 <eviltw...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> John,
>
> I wasn't addressing that comment to you, but more broadly to some (but not
> all) of the other responses.
>
> I do think (again as a general observation) it's going to be hard for anyone
> to objectively establish that Butterfield was the last harmonica player to
> be emotionally expressive with the instrument, which I think is what Tom
> Ellis was contending.
>
> cheers
> Drew


On Dec 21, 3:32 am, Ev630 <eviltw...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> John,
>
> I wasn't addressing that comment to you, but more broadly to some (but not
> all) of the other responses.
>
> I do think (again as a general observation) it's going to be hard for anyone
> to objectively establish that Butterfield was the last harmonica player to
> be emotionally expressive with the instrument, which I think is what Tom
> Ellis was contending.
>
> cheers
> Drew
>




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