[Harp-L] Don Les and cross harp

[Mick Zaklan <mzaklan@xxxxxxxxx>]

   Great to see Don on YouTube.  He's a historically important harmonica
player, both on bass harp and diatonic.
   Though I don't necessarily agree with it, I've always been fascinated
with Don's beef (as espoused in Kim Field's "Harmonicas, Harps, and Heavy
Breathers") that cross harp and blues playing have "misled" diatonic
harpists into "learning from each other how not to play the harmonica."
   If I'm understanding Don correctly, he felt that since there were no
"wrong" notes in cross harp to be found while following a blues
progression, players were more likely to noodle their way around the
instrument, producing their own patterns.  Recycling them over and over
again.  Wallowing in this security blanket of riffs instead of actually
learning, apparently, the basics of music.  "You don't hear saxophone
players or piano players playing the blues like the harmonica players do,"
Don huffs.
   Well, this may be true but ignores the fact that serious blues players
draw from a completely different historical source of instrumentalists and
recordings than saxophonists, pianists, etc.  Naturally, they would play
the blues differently.
   On the other hand, as someone well known to this list once pointed out,
harmonica players probably pay less attention to the chords of a tune than
other instrumentalists do.  They do tend to fall back on their ears and
pre-conceived riffs.
   Don further gripes:

If you ask a blues player what they're playing, they'll say, "One of my own
compositions."  All of a sudden, they're not only not musicians, but
they're also composers.  This is one of my secret peeves about the
harmonica people that don't take up the harmonica and think they did.  I
don't use cross harp as a blues, I use it as a musician would.  The field
has been wasted by all these people blowing cross harp but not playing
anything.

   I think part of Don's rant was a generational thing, a blues backlash
that I myself have observed quite a bit at the conventions.  Fortunately,
it's died down considerably from the early days.  Believe me, it was
nasty.  Personally I would cut Don a little slack because his statement was
made in 1993 or prior.  I would like to think that the myriad of
superb diatonic players we've had at the conventions since then would have
changed his mind on this.  But maybe not, I suspect that you could have
played a perfect Little Walter or Sonny Boy solo for Don and he wouldn't
have been impressed.  Because it didn't sound like something a 1940's
clarinetist would have dreamed up.
   Anyway, his position (once you strip away the insults) is an interesting
one and not necessarily without some merit.  Definitely a cantankerous guy,
that's for sure.

Mick Zaklan