[Harp-L] Charlie Leighton

Richard Sleigh <rharp@xxxxxxxxxx> · Mon, 28 Sep 2009 23:32:01 -0400

I have heard many times that your tone of voice has a lot more effect  
than the words you are speaking, and the same goes for music. Charlie  
Leighton had a huge musical vocabulary, but it was his tone that  
always stunned me and touched my heart in ways that I will never be  
able express in words. I bought the tapes that Tom talks about from  
Richard Farrell years before I heard Charlie play live, and although  
they were amazing, nothing compared to what I heard when he played at  
SPAH live. No effects, just his technique. I was totally star-struck  
to the point where I found it hard to talk to him at first, but he was  
so easygoing that I got over it enough to talk tone with him. His  
advice was to work at matching the vibrato and tone blowing and  
drawing by playing the draw 4 C note (slide in) and the blow C notes  
on a 280, or the draw / blow F notes , same idea....
I went home and spent 6 months working on those exercises daily on  
both the 280 and the diatonic harmonica and then wrote Charlie a  
letter to say thanks for the inspiration and ideas. He called me on  
the phone to thank me for the letter, and it was such a surprise to me  
that he would do that that  once again, it took me a couple of minutes  
to get my bearings and say something halfway intelligent.
Charlie loved the wood 280 Chromatic, and in particular the older ones  
that came originally with leather wind-savers and the rounded rivets.  
I looked around till I found some of those harps, and they really do  
feel special to me. I don't really care at this point if I hear  
something special in those harps because I expect to, or if there is  
some other x factor at work. They remind me of Charlie, and Charlie  
reminds me that music has profound and mysterious powers that can be  
felt but not explained. They can also be attained by a kind of  
practice that is more of a surrender, an allowing, an opening of the  
heart, than an attempt to master an instrument.
I do hope that someone collects some unreleased recordings of  
Charlie's playing , even fragments, and makes them available. I would  
love to see more of his music out there for people to appreciate.
I am sure that Charlie is resting in peace, because that is the way he  
lived, as far as I can tell....

Richard Sleigh
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