Harp Surgery

Win a Voucher for Seydel Söhne Harmonicas

The Good Doctor

[Note: competition now closed.]

Harps down, heads up! Our lovely friends at Seydel Söhne are offering you the chance to win an e-voucher to the tune of €30.00 (US residents $40.00). If you submit three correct answers to our quiz before midnight (GMT) Jan.10 2010 and are one of three lucky names drawn at random from the Harp Surgery’s ugly hat, an e-voucher will be winging its way to your inbox.

All you have to do is study our competition questions, find the correct answers on the Seydel Söhne website and drop us an e-mail, stating your country of residence and your three competition answers (you can also access the Seydel Söhne site by clicking the yellow logo in our Partners menu to the right). Read more

Happy Birthday Junior Wells

Elwood

Happy Birthday Junior WellsThe Hoodoo Man would be 75 today.

Harmonica great Junior Wells was born December 9th 1934. It’s remarkable to think that someone who played with Muddy Waters in the early days would have been so young today (he was 19 in 1952 when he joined Muddy’s band, and died in 1998, aged 63).

I like Junior a great deal, so I’m celebrating him today. His harmonica style strikes me as being deceptively simple: he knew when not to play. And when he decided to play, he could make that thing wail like a cat being set on fire.

Read more

Harmonica Effects 1 – Police Sirens

The Good Doctor

Jake, Elwood and The Blues MobileOur Lady of blessed acceleration don’t fail me now

As we know, every Blues Harp player grows twitchy when they hear the sound of Cop Cars in pursuit. Unless, of course, they happen to be driving one themselves. But have you ever tried to imitate the sound of a police chase on the harmonica? Grab your nearest diatonic and we’ll take a look. But before we do, just a few words from our sponsors, fresh from the Mount Prospect City police auction..

  • Jake: The Caddy. Where’s the Caddy?
  • Elwood: It’s been traded for a microphone.
  • Jake: I can see that.
  • Elwood: Like it?
  • Jake: No I don’t like it
  • [Elwood floors the gas pedal and leaps an opening drawbridge]
  • Jake: Car’s got a lot of pickup
  • Elwood: It’s got a cop motor, a 440 cubic inch plant, it’s got cop tyres, cop suspension, cop shocks. It’s a model made before catalytic converters so it’ll run good on regular gas. What do you say, is it the new Bluesmobile or what?
  • [ a brief pause as Jake lights his cigarette with a Zippo lighter – having previously thrown the electric car lighter out of the window]
  • Jake: Fix the cigarette lighter Read more

Journeyman’s Road by Adam Gussow, pt 2

Elwood

Journeyman's RoadIgnoring the politics of blues music is like ignoring the crocodile swimming in your Coco Pops. Elwood the Apprentice looks at Gussow’s essays on how to position yourself within the blues tradition.

“He was wearing a pink tuxedo and patent leather shoes. He towered over me… Suddenly he was quivering with anger, his finger in my face. “You don’t know me. You don’t know anything about me. You don’t know where I’ve been.” – Whose Blues?, Adam Gussow.

Note: This is a long post, so I’m going to reward those who read to the bottom by revealing the identity of the man in the pink tuxedo who challenges Adam Gussow backstage in the late 1990s. Read more

The Sailor’s Hornpipe [..with tab]

The Good Doctor

Marine BandAll the nice girls love a sailor

As an island nation, a good deal of Britain’s military, economic and cultural tradition is drawn from its seafaring experience. So what better way to mark the romance of our heritage than a good old sea shanty?

A few years ago the Doc was chaperoning the West Sussex Youth Orchestra on their tour of Germany and Austria. As a finale to each concert, the orchestra chose to perform Sir Henry Wood’s wonderful Fantasia Of British Sea Songs, a fulcrum of the annual last night of the Proms. The prize number from the fantasia is the Sailor’s Hornpipe. ‘Tis music to stir the heart of any a true Brit; and as the revellers display the glorious eccentricities of their patriotic pride, you just can’t wait for that Mr.Toad car horn and a frenzied climax which, with every tin of spinach on the planet, even Popeye could not sustain. Read more

Old-School Harmonica or New-School?

Elwood

After chatting to Joe Filisko, Elwood the Apprentice wonders if blues harmonica really needs a war of the clones

a million bullet mics, a million Marine Bands, but just one derivative sound

Those of you who’ve been paying attention will see that I recently posted a (rather overdue) Q&A with Chicago harmonica master Joe Filisko. In a very short conversation in a very noisy pub, which I’ll admit was not conducive to nuanced debate, he contended that harmonica should stay rooted in tradition: “One might argue,” he said, “that the harmonica sounds best played as it was played in the Fifties. And if it sounds best, then why not do it?”

Now, it ain’t easy arguing about harmonica with Joe Filisko. He’s nice about it, but one can hardly forget that a single horn-like blast from his Marine Band could reduce poor Elwood into nothing more than a pair of smoking Hush Puppies.

But I gotta say that Filisko’s traditionalism is just something I can’t quite swallow. Read more

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