[Harp-L] Interesting solo by Jimmy Z

[martin oldsberg <martinoldsberg@xxxxxxxxx>]

Jimmy Z is an harmonica player who´s been around a while, plenty of routine. Here he´s playing an extended solo to Eurythmics "There must be an angel" from 1988.
  What´s interesting to me here is that this tune, as far as I can tell, contains no flat 7th, apart from in the Ab chord, but not as a melody note. Yet here he is hitting the 5D several times, not really leaning into it, but in no way avoiding it. (I know from the horse´s mouth that Jimmy Z plays 2nd position exclusively. In my own case with a tune like this I´d immediately settle for 1st: there are plenty of draw notes there, if that´s what´s required ...) And you can´t say that this is a particularly "bluesy" song.

  JZ has his bag of tricks that he makes good use of and these contain to a large extent riffing around 5D -- you can check out his other stuff on the net -- but it´s somewhat fascinating that the flat 7th here doesn´t clash in a more obvious way with the tune.
  This is something I put down to "confidence": He knows what he´s doing -- and he´s a saxophone player so he also knows the chords (unlike ...), that´s obvious -- and he leaves no space for doubt.


Question: Are you people here bothered by this kind of solo? Do you find it "forced" towards the mixolydian scale, or do you, like me, think that he pulls it off just fine?

Cheers,
Martin


Eurythmics featuring Jimmy Z - "There Must Be An Angel"

  
             
Eurythmics featuring Jimmy Z - "There Must Be An Angel"  
View on www.youtube.com Preview by Yahoo