[Harp-L] Little Walter

["sam blancato" <samblancato@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Chris Writes:
  
> <<I'm happy to issue my standard opinion of harmonica players."99.4% of
all 
>harmonica players on earth are crap musicians. Y'all need to hunker down
and 
>learn to play your instrument as if it were a horn or something">>

I don't know if this is true or not but there are certainly a lot of really
bad players out there that somehow manage to get on stage and clear out a
room with their little harmonica.  

Responding to other comments in this thread, I don't think it's true that
every player blowing through a tube rig sounds alike and thinks he's
actually the best tone-wise.  Evan in Pittsburgh what with the maybe five
harmonica players that are actively playing out there is a wide difference
in tone and sound quality.  Most of this has to do not with their rig but
with their personal tone and how they handle their mic. and amp.  I've had
guys play through my rig and sound great and others who sounded not so
great.  In national acts I've heard a big difference.  Mark Hummel sounds
very different from Steve Guyger and John Nemeth sounds different from both
of them.  Nemeth played through a Super Reverb with a 545, Hummel through a
Meteor with a JT30, Guyger through something else.  I just caught Kim Wilson
3 weeks ago playing through a Fender Twin and he sounded better than I've
ever heard him before both on the Chromatic and on short harp. 

The last thing I wanted to say was about this argument about weather or not
LW was a purist. I don't have to have read any interviews or even know much
about Walter's playing history to know that he most certainly was not a
purist.  In fact, LW may have been one of the first musicians of any kind to
really experiment with distortion.  If you think this was just an accident
of the times and circumstances you're wrong.  All you have to do is listen
to him, and not a lot of material either; just what's on "His Best" will do.
There is enough material on that one album to show that he knew what the
distortion was doing for him and that he was using it in a deliberate way.
Perhaps he didn't have a structured plan for what he did form one month to
the next but he did cool things what he had on hand, and I'm not talking
about the effects Leonard or Phil Chess added on later.  

But after having said all that, it isn't the tonal stuff that made LW so
wonderful.  As this recently available video shows it's what LW did
musically that really set him apart.  The guy really could swing and it's
this quality that really set him apart.  I know he's playing acoustically on
the video and there have been comments about how he's emulating SB II or SB
I.  I don't really hear any similarity there other than the fact that he
playing a harp acoustically.  It sounds like pure Little Walter to me. 

Sam Blancato, Pittsburgh