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

"Anthony Smith" <anthony@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> · Thu, 4 Jun 2009 11:56:05 -0400

"Didn't Al Wilson and Will Scarlett to name a few."

Not that I've heard?  Maybe they did but not even close to the extent of
H.L. and you surely can't credit those two for ushering in the Star-Trek
generation of harp players!  

-----Original Message-----
From: harp-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxx [mailto:harp-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf
Of Gary Calahan
Sent: Thursday, June 04, 2009 11:28 AM
To: Fernando Toral
Cc: harp-l@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [Harp-L] Jason Ricci @ BluesWax Ezine- (Part Two)

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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