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

["Anthony Smith" <anthony@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Glad to see Jason giving props to the man that started it all...Howard Levy!
Good for you JR!!



-----Original Message-----
From: harp-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxx [mailto:harp-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf
Of Fernando Toral
Sent: Thursday, June 04, 2009 11:12 AM
To: harp-l@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [Harp-L] Jason Ricci @ BluesWax Ezine- (Part Two)

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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