[Harp-L] Re: Totally bored with the blues genre - weather report:Raining Vitriol

[JON KIP <jon@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On May 2, 2015, at 6:46 PM, harp-l-request@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:

>   I'm constantly amazed by the vitriol harmonica players seem to want to
> rain upon blues harpists for the crime of playing mainly blues music and
> not tunes with other changes.  Or apparently not using enough 16th or 32nd
> notes.  And usually it's the people with the button on their harp doing the
> beefing.  And, again, most of those guys couldn't play the blues to save
> themselves from being buggered by a live moose.

As fun as I remember "being buggered by a live moose"  actually was, (I admit that the second time didn't live up to expectations raised by the first time, and I subsequently released the moose into The Wild), the issue here may be that the jazz players, as you mentioned, Cannonball and his brother, had a much larger bag of idiomatic phrases from which to piece together their wonderful solos, and , at the time, they were pretty unique.  When you hear his playing, there's no doubt that it's Cannonball. That means that, like the blues players being complained about,  he has a style, including his "go to" phrases, that he uses. 
 
I'm not a blues player, don't play diatonic, and, after wasting my time as a studio woodwind player for too many years,  am only 11 years into the chromatic, (in my silly world, time-wise, that's considered "beginner-adjacent"),  but I do remember being at a party at Michael Polesky's dad's house, with Tommy Morgan, Michael, Bill Barrett and some other fine folks, and, when the rhythm section started, the speed with which five or six diatonic players quick-drew their harps and started to play was extraordinary. What was also extraordinary was that they were playing mostly the same licks. That was my introduction to The Harmonica People. Fine folks. Much more fun than any large group of oboe or clarinet players, to be sure. It's certainly easier to quick-draw a diatonic from its holster than to take out an oboe. And more polite.

Then, years later, at a party at The Naiditch Estate, in the Bluegrass part of Pasadena, people were playing, and a diatonic player (not David) grabbed his instrument and played just what I knew he would. Predictable.

In between those two events, I got several chances to go and hear Tom Ball, and spent some time with PT Gazelle, and got to really enjoy their diatonic playing. (In case anyone thinks I hate diatonic harmonica.)

It probably takes a lot of skill to make The Blues on Diatonic sound original, or even interesting, for an extended period of time. 

Same goes for jazz players of Expensive Instruments, like Cannonball, but they have a far greater bag from which to assemble their licks. 

Even with Cannonball, since his playing is easily recognizable, tone and phrasing, there aren't many times when I can say, after listening to him, "That's the first time I've heard him play that lick". Tone and thematic repetition are what make his playing recognizable. And really great to listen to, for me, anyway.

One thing that makes music interesting is the amount of randomity compared to the amount of predictability.

Too random, and it's too disjointed for the average listener, and too predictable, it's too boring. It's a progressive player's job to gently push the boundaries while not losing the listeners.

Being Progressive is not mandatory, it's just one choice. 

I find that, for me, the amount of predictability when I hear blues players, on harmonica, is pretty high.

"Telling a story with their horns", as you say, isn't lost these days, it's just more difficult to have a unique story while at the same time, not losing your audience. A fine line to walk if your living depends on it.  Some audiences probably are just fine and comfortable not being challenged. Being entertained without being challenged isn't terrible, in fact, it's entertaining.

I think that, many times, the players have more fun than the audiences.

And, since the original purpose of playing music was to have fun playing it, that's really not a bad thing.

Forgive me if my cavalier treatment of The Moose offended anyone. 

jk


Of the instruments that I own, only the harmonica comes in so many keys, costs so little, and has room for magnets.

http://jonkip.com