[Harp-L] What first attracted you to harmonica? Why did you learn it .

[Joseph Leone]

> On Mar 6, 2017, at 6:02 PM, dfwhoot at xxxxx wrote:
> 
> Everyone has a story. Mind started when I was growing up at home, and my Dad, played one occasionally , with his guitar. I'd sneak it out and blow on it, but not making music. I was in the Navy, in Viet Nam , walking the streets of Saigon and saw a harmonica for sale , and bought it. I'd play that thing all the time , especially on watch . Playing , or trying to , songs I grew up with , and after a while , could actually recognize some. Got stationed in Calif. in the late 60's and got turned on to a lot of stuff , especially Paul Butterfield , Canned Heat and all those. I grew more attached to the harp and played as much as possible. Got Discharged in 71 and made it back to Texas, and eventually heard a harp player named Charlie McCoy, and my god, what he could do with this little 10 hole. That was it , I started buying all his LP's and it was playing playing playing. Didn't look at it as practicing. With blues techniques , and add those to country licks , I felt satisfied. I made contact with Charlie , for lessons , and he said he wasn't giving them , but to get involved with SPAH . I did , in 91 , and the rest is history. My first convention was in Detroit, Howard Levy was doing his seminar there and all the Trio players , it was just unbelievable . I came back and started HOOT and my mission was to encourage everyone with the interest in the harmonica to get as involved as possible To become an accomplished player takes a lifetime.


I came to harp in a convoluted way. 
1… As a small child in the late 40s we were posted to Vienna. (my father was in charge of food going to starving eastern Europe.) There seemed to be harmonica players in Vienna and I liked the music they made. 
2… By 1951 I was 9 and we were in Trieste at the time and place the cold war started. My father was labor attache. I purchased a Marine Band diatonic at the British PX. Unfortunately one day I was running for a
double streetcar to get to school and the MB fell out of my pocket and was run over by the rear half of the streetcar. On a side trip to Genoa to watch the launching of the Andrea Doria, I fell in love with a 27 key 
white mother of pearl accordion in a window of a tiny shop. I knew I was never going to get it. SO 
3… 1955 found us in Naples where my father worked in immigration and deportation. I went to the U.S. PX to buy a Swiss army knife and came home with a Hohner 270/48 chromatic. I practiced down at the fish-
ing boat and yacht basin because my father didn’t like ’noise’ at the house.
4… A year later I was 14 and playing at the Sea Garden rest/night club in Luna Park in Naples. Then we came home to America again. On the trip home my Hohner went down with the Andrea Doria. 
5… In the late 50s we were in Paris. I grew to love the French and their music. By 1959 we came home one last time and I was asked by my old school friends to join their doo-wop group as the bass singer (I’m more
of a baritone, but I could handle it.) It was in my senior year (1960) that I changed some of my diatonics to my own tuning so as to facilitate playing tunes with one diatonic when they had previously required two (or more).
An example? Londonderry Aire.
6… My parents wouldn’t sign for a driver’s permit so at 17 3/4 I left home and was a hobo for 9 months until I joined the navy. I spent my time as a SeeBee salvage diver mostly in the Caribbean 1962-1965. 

I think my impetus for harp were: Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (feat. Tommy Morgan), The Little Fugitive (feat. Edward Salmanson (Manson), the short subjects feat. the Minnevitch rascals, Ruby Gentry theme 
(feat. George Fielding (Fields). My favorite players had been: Leo Diamond, Richard Hayman, Charlie McCoy, Rice Miller, Sonny Terry. Modern players? Rachel Plas, Yvonnic Prene, Jerome Perelevades, and on
and on.

 (aka Mr. Cellophane). Formerly smokey Joe and the cafes.