Re: [Harp-L] Jason Ricci @ BluesWax Ezine- (Part Two)

[Gary Calahan <glcalahan@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello,

I just finished reading the article in BluesWax before your post.  There
were other earlier pioneers into the OB arena.  Didn't Al Wilson and Will
Scarlett to name a few.  I believe that was around the same time Howard
started as well.  Also, aren't there several much earlier examples of old
recordings ('30's) of OB?

BTW.......Very interesting interview with JR!

Gary C

On Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 11:12 AM, Fernando Toral <ftoral@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> These are excerpts from an interview published by BluesWax
> http://www.visnat.com/entertainment/music/blueswax/default.cfm
>
> -o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
>
> (...)
> The diatonic harmonica is the small harmonica that most Blues players play.
> There are two different kinds of harmonicas. There are more than two, but
> there are two main kinds of reed harmonicas. There's the diatonic harmonica
> and the chromatic harmonica. Chromatic is a word that refers to all twelve
> tones of the scale. In western music we have twelve tones that we identify
> as being notes. In eastern music there are more. A piano has eighty-eight
> keys, repeated over and over again. A diatonic is limited, that's what the
> word means. That means there are less than 12 tones. That's what the
> majority of harmonica players play.
>
>
>
> Most of the people that play Blues on chromatic harmonica play the
> chromatic diatonically, meaning they don't use the twelve tones. They play
> the music in one, two, or maybe three different keys. And they use the
> little button on the side that gives them all twelve tones but use a few of
> them. So overblowing is in essence the opposite of playing the chromatic
> diatonically, it's playing the diatonic chromatically.
>
>
>
> There's a player who came along named Howard Levy, he had been in a band
> called *Bela Fleck and the Flecktones*. He's on their first two albums. He
> rose to popularity through that band, however he had been around for quite
> awhile and has been doing some recording with some other bands, but he
> remained in obscurity in the harmonica world as well as in the musical
> world. He had developed this technique from my understanding sometime in the
> '70s. The technique came to the forefront of the musical world at the
> release of these albums with Bela Fleck. From the world's perspective all of
> a sudden we heard one of those little harmonicas, the Blues harp, playing
> all twelve tones of the chromatic scale whereas we had been told that it was
> impossible - the notes weren't there, and they didn't exist. So Howard
> called the technique "overblowing," and the name was coined.
>
>
>
> It is the position of the mouth, the /embouchure/, that forces a hole to
> pop into that other note. You hear harmonica players talk about bending
> notes; it's completely different. It's popping that note which previously
> was thought to do nothing other than play that note into another note, the
> note that it lands on happens, by the grace of God, to be that missing note
> in every circumstance. It's really proof of the existence of God in a
> nutshell. Adam Gussow was to my knowledge and to my ears the very first
> Blues player to implement it, and it came out on a record called /Satan and
> Adam Harlem Blues/. I got the record, and I couldn't believe what I was
> hearing because it wasn't a chromatic harmonica. It was a diatonic
> harmonica. They have two very distinct sounds. Here are these notes that
> don't exist coming out. I'm like, "What is this?" I find out it's this
> technique that Howard implemented.
>
>
>
> I started learning it, and then this other player came into my
> understanding, *Carlos del Junco* from Canada. This guy was playing them all
> over the place. This guy's amazing! So I start studying these guys, Adam
> Gussow, Howard, and Carlos del Junco, and I start mixing it in with the
> stuff Pat taught me. And then next thing you know, I stopped sounding like a
> generic copy of Pat. Between the study of scales, harmony, chord structure,
> and this new technique, I was able to get out from underneath the cape of
> Pat Ramsey. I was a carbon copy up until 1998.
>
>
>
> Now I could suddenly play all of these cool Jazz songs that I'd heard. In
> the past I would say, "I'm sorry I can't play that. The note's not here. It
> doesn't exist." Then, all of a sudden, I was able to say, "Oh yeah, sure.
> What note is that? No problem!" I could play anything the piano played,
> anything the guitar played, anything the violin played. I just had to figure
> out how to do it. It's all owed from my end to Howard.
>
>
>
> There are really only three of us that are doing this on a wide-scale
> level. There are hundreds of kids all over the world, if not thousands, who
> can do the technique, mostly kids that are attracted to it 'cause it's new
> and it's exciting and that's what kids want to do, things that are new and
> exciting and advanced and difficult and limitless. That's what attracts
> youth. But there's not very many people doing it musically, and on top of
> that there are very few people with record contracts on the road doing it.
> So, it's me, Howard, and Carlos del Junco.
>
>
>
> There's a whole mess of harmonica players that don't believe still that the
> technique has any relevance. "Little Walter, he didn't play that way, so,
> why would I?" I say, if little Walter had known about it, he would have done
> it. He'd have been all over it, especially if it was changing the way the
> instrument is played, which it is. Who wants to be in a band with somebody
> and have them say, "I can't play that." I don't want to be in a band with
> that guy. I want to be in a band with a guy who says, "Yeah, sure." It's a
> really exciting time for the instrument. Being alive now is what it must
> have been like to be an alto player when *Charlie Parker* was alive or be a
> tenor player when *Coltrane* was alive. To be living at a time when this
> guy, Howard Levy, revolutionized the instrument.
>
>
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