Re: [Harp-L] real deal harp

[Richard Hunter <turtlehill@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

david robbins wrote:
>Hey, check out this video: 
>http://www.wolfgangsvault.com/james-cotton-blues-band/video . No overblows, no 
>overdraws,  no fancy technical licks, no crazy position changes, plain and 
>simple simple 2nd position, no custom harmonicas, no custom amps, no custom 
>mics, no effects processors, obviously no feedback control. Just great music 
>played by a real-deal harp player, musician and entetainer.  This is the best a 
>harp player can strive to get, in an attempt to touch an audience. Blues or 
>otherwise.
>

First things first: It's great music.  It's timeless. Thanks for sharing the link.

Now for the logical fallacies in the argument above:
>No overblows, no 
>overdraws,  no fancy technical licks, no crazy position changes, plain and 
>simple simple 2nd position, no custom harmonicas, no custom amps, no custom 
>mics, no effects processors, obviously no feedback control... 
>This is the best a 
>harp player can strive to get, in an attempt to touch an audience. 

Maybe the above is just an appreciation of the greatness of the music.  But it's framed in terms that make it seem like everything that followed Cotton is pointless.  If that's the case--and I apologize in advance if that's not your point--then the argument essentially boils down to "there's no point in trying anything new, because the best has already been done." 

If that's true, why should anyone improve the instruments?  Why improve the gear? Why try and apply different techniques?  Why even switch positions on the harp in mid-song (something that Charlie Musselwhite, a traditional blues player whose stature is certainly comparable to Cotton's, does on every record he's made since the early 1990s at least)?  For that matter, why should any of us bother to play the instrument ourselves? 

In other words, why not just take some performance at an arbitrary point in time as the standard for everything forever, and stop trying to do anything different?  I mean, if a style developed in the 1950s is "the best a harp player can strive to get," what's the point of doing anything else?

When I was in college, I was amazed to hear a pianist tell me that as far as he was concerned all music after Bach was a waste of time. But audiences and musicians change over time in taste and sophistication. Stevie Ray Vaughn does not sound the same as Hubert Sumlin. And why should they?  They played for different audiences in very different eras, not to mention that they were very different people.  As John Mehegan wrote in his classic work "Jazz Piano", it's pointless to compare Louis Armstrong to Charlie Parker and claim that one should have adopted the conventions of the other, not least because Parker would have sounded completely incomprehensible, emotionally and technically, to an audience in Chicago in 1927.  But Parker, like Armstrong, changed the way people heard music forever.  And he did it by expressing his own ideas, not someone else's.

I love lots of different music, from Beethoven to Little Walter to Hendrix to Levy to... you name it. Evaluating any of these musicians in terms of the others is a waste of time and insulting to the musicians involved. The most important thing ANY of us can do, for ourselves and our world, musically or othrerwise, is to express who we are, not repeat somebody else's ideas. I don't have to reject everything that came after Cotton to make Cotton look great.  Cotton IS great.  He's just not the only version of great out there, nor the last.  And he's definitely not me, and I'm definitely not him. 

I'll be proud if people say I made great music after I'm gone (or even while I'm still around, if anyone is so inclined).  But it's a waste of my time, and an insult to everything Cotton stands for, for me to spend my days and nights trying to do what he did.  The great blues masters, one and all, say that the most important thing for you to play is what's inside you.  So how can anyone say that the best thing a harmonica player can do is emulate someone else, whether it's Cotton, Little Walter, or a modern master like Brendan Power?  They're all great, and we can learn from all of them.  And then we can go our own ways.

My way has involved creating a repertoire of original solo compositions for acoustic harmonica, and then swinging to the opposite pole by exploring what electronics can do with the instrument.  Maybe it's great, maybe not.  Whether or not it's great, I know it's not the end-all and be-all.  And THAT's great, because it means that somebody else, somewhere, sometime, gets the chance to do something great on their own terms. 

And that's what keeps me listening.
 
Again, if I misunderstood the post, I apologize for mis-reading it, and you can forget everything I said above except the first line.

Regards, Richard Hunter



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