[Harp-L] She caught the Katy

[Joseph Leone]

> On Sep 4, 2018, at 12:51 PM, Mick Zaklan <mzaklan at xxxxx> wrote:
> 
>   You know, I think part of the diatonic/chromatic nastiness 15-20 years
> ago at SPAH was due  to how two different generations defined the blues.

And to this I agree. While I was born in 42, my musical tastes varied. It has been said that a person identifies with musics that were around when they were in their ‘formative’ years.
Iow, between the ages of 16-25. You start going to dances, you may continue schooling, you may marry, you may get into a steady job. Iow, you are joining society as a whole. 
In my particular case MY musics should be stuff from between 1958-67. But I like stuff all the way back to 1896. lolol. 
 
But something strange happened. I inherited a slew of 78s from an uncle that didn’t come back from WWII. Most was from the 30s. Then, being a govt. brat I wound up spending about
 8 of my first 18 years in Europe (mostly Italy).

It came to pass that there were (basically) three types of music available to me. The G.I. radio out of Heidelberg Ger, which played mostly stuff from the 30s and early 40s. This was 
because the men who stayed behind as occupation troops were mostly career G.I.s as the younger men went home to the U.S. and got discharged. I could also get Italian music. But my 
favorite was from eastern Europe. Delivered by short wave. Gypsy jazz. 

> The WWII and Korean War vets who were dominant numbers-wise at SPAH in
> those days grew up on big band blues and the boogie-woogie piano craze.
> Blues to them was horn-based Count Basie and Duke Ellington stuff.  Big Joe
> Turner, Louie Jordan, Billie Holiday.  Guys in tuxedos.

Correct. Or at least that’s how I saw it too. 

>  All of a sudden
> you had, to them, scruffy-looking guys toting diatonic harps and playing
> Jimmy Reed-Muddy Waters stuff with guitarists wandering around their fest.

Came back from Vienna once and found that the whole country had gone rock and roll. Then there was the folk movement, then the blues movement. 

> "Racket-makers", as one of the old guard described them to me.  "Racket" as
> in noise.  They just couldn't relate to it.

Correct. Or at least that’s the way I saw it too. I had a friend Tony Mowad (now syndicated) who ran the jazz program at WDUQ (Duquesne Univ.) He used to give me some of the old
 records. I was first exposed to RHYTHM and blues around 1959 when I joined a doo-wop group. My parents wouldn’t let me drive so I left home 3 months shy of 18 and became a hobo
for about 9 months until I joined the navy. My first TRUE BLUES exposure was at Baton Rouge around the end of 1960. So, culturally and ethnically blues were not part of my DNA. I used
to cross the river from Baton Rouge to Port Allen La. (by ferry..there was no bridge back then). People told me not to go as the road house was what was known as a black and tan club.
And there was friction at the time between Southern Univ. (No. Baton) and L.S.U. (So Baton). But I went anyway. And glad I did. Never had a problem.

 My idea of ginchy music of that era were tunes like: “High Heel Sneakers” (Buster Brown), "Fannie Mae” (Tommy Tucker), “Western Union Man” (I forget).

>   I went to see alto saxophonist Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson at Chicago's
> Jazz Showcase long ago.  The promoter, Chicago legend Joe Segal, fell into
> this category.  I remember him announcing to the crowd that this was the
> "real blues".  Not what he called "the hillbilly stuff" that was playing
> across the street at the Chicago Blues Fest that very same day.

Yeah, that’s a shame. I play both harps, so I never discriminated. :)

smokey joe  (I’m Jaoquin, yessiree, and I’m Talquin, bout you’n me)
> 
> Mick Zaklan