The Blues Harmonica

Blues Origins and Background

The blues goes back to the 17th century, in the United States. Blues is defined as the folk genre for the African-American population, mainly the Deep South, which originated from their spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads.

At the time united states were a British colony that brought slaves from Africa who populated most of the south of the country. They worked on the tobacco, cotton and rice plantations and were not allowed to practice their cultures and religions. The first bluesmen were people that used to sing about how their life was to try and relieve the pain. In a way they were trying to send messages that travelled from plantation to plantation, to show what being a slave was.

Blues became, for the African-Americans, a form of expression and a way to tell their stories. It was emotionally deep, straight to the point and full of meaning. John Mayall, from the Blues Breakers says “the main charm about the blues is that it has such an authenticity about in the fact that when you listen to it you hear these stories, and visualize that these are real stories”. And often they were, as narrative of the lyrics was usually about the cruelty of police offices, oppression at the hands of white people and hard times.

For example, in Blind Lemon Jefferson’s “Rising High Water Blues”, he tells the story of the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 where he lost his girlfriend:

“Black water rising, Southern people can’t make no time,

Black water rising, Southern people can’t make no time,

And I can’t get no hearing from that Memphis girl of mine”

After the war, lyrics became simpler and focused almost entirely on relationship despairs or sexual worries. Themes that recurrently appeared in pre-war blues such as economic depression, farming, gambling, magic, the devil, fires and floods were less common in post-war blues.

Other lyrics by artist like Skip James, Reverend Gary Davis or Blind Willie Johnson were also artist recognized by more religious or spiritual performances, highly influenced by the Christian conversions.

1920’s, First Harmonica Recordings

As for the harmonica, Pete Hampton was probably the first African-American harmonica player to be recorded. Despite a productive recording career in the early 1900s with songs like “Nigger Blues”, he only seemed to have used the harmonica for one particular song titled “Mouth Organ Coon”, where the harmonica probably adopted the term “Mouth Organ”. He already used many effects including vocalising through the harmonica, the use of fox chase and train-like rhythm arrangements and simultaneous whistling. Hampton used an F diatonic harmonica and he played it in first position.

Soon after that, Henry Whitter was the first to record in the cross harp position. Even though he was a white musician, he had adopted a remarkable African-American influence on his harmonica playing. He claimed to have made test recordings in March 1923 and recorded the final tracks around December 1923 in New York City, recording the first three harmonica solos.

The tunes appear to be in the key of A, and Whitter played in the second position on a D harmonica. He also had a train imitation, this one played in first position in what looked like a key of B although it might have originally been played on a C harp, an slowed down at some point.

Another early country music star was DeFord Bailey who became the first African American performer on the Grand Ole Opry, which was a weekly country music stage concert in Nashville, Tennessee that presented different artists from the genre from 1925. Bailey could play various instruments but he was best known for playing the harmonica and he played every Saturday night for 15 years, after he had to leave because of a dispute with management. He developed the fox-hunt and train techniques and he used a custom made megaphone to amplify the sound from his harmonica.

At the time, music was totally acoustic and the harmonica could be played comfortably and heard perfectly while accompanying a guitar and a singer. Some players used a class or a jug to funnel the sound and gain a bit more amplification like DeFord Bailey’s custom megaphone. (See Pic XfunnelX)

By then, the harmonica had proved to be an interesting new instrument full of different sounds and effects, radically departing from the manufactures intentions of a toy.

1930’s, Lomax and the re-discovery

The Emancipation Act of 1863, between 1870 and 1900, which freed the Black communities from slavery and had permitted them to build up the so called “juke joints” as places where Blacks could go to listen to some music, dance or have a gamble after a day’s work. Performances where held in places like the Cotton Club in Harlem, New York or many bars along the famous Beale Street in Memphis.

This style was known as the Delta Blues, which consisted on traditional, rural country blues performed acoustically in more of a polished city urban style, also introducing new sounds like the bottle neck slide guitar and the floorboard stomping.

By the end of the twenties, Vaudeville and tent-show singers, circus artists, boogie-woogie pianists, jug and jazz bands were to be heard at some point playing some form of the blues.

Blues was becoming a vehicle for some people to earn a living by playing and entertaining the audiences. It was exclusively race music and the majority of white people didn’t really know what it was or nor have the interest to listen to it.

Outside the phonograph stores, black people would stand in line anxious to obtain the latest blues disc and by now there was already a reasonably large archive of blues music given by artists like Lead Belly, Henry Thomas and Big Walter Horton. Many harmonica players were recording in duos with guitarists like Hammie Nixon and Sleepy John Estes, or trios like Sonny Terry, Blind Boy Fuller and Bull City Red.

Around the 1930’s, John Lomax, pioneering musicologist and folklorist, together with his son Alan Lomax made a great number of non-commercial recordings for the Archive of American Folk songs. They went around the south of the United States with a mobile recording device, capturing many root songs, field hollers and ring shouts. This contributed in a great way to the blues because they managed to capture, catalogue and generate an archive of traditional and rural sounds.

The instrument’s flexibility also captured the attention of classical music during this decade. Although some conservative musicians didn’t approve of it and degraded it by considering it a toy, young Larry Adler managed to perform a minuet by Beethoven and later on had works written for the instrument by the composers like Ralph Vaughan Williams, Darius Milhaud, Malcolm Arnold and Arthur Benjamin.

1940’s, Pre-war and Post-war Blues

During the war, the United States experienced a shortage of harmonicas mainly because materials like wood and metal that were used to make harmonicas were in short supply due to military demand. Another problem was that Germany and Japan were the primary manufacturers of harmonicas and of course where the Axis powers opposed to the United States and the allied forces.

Companies like Finn Harkon Magnus, developed a molded plastic harmonica that used plastic combs and far fewer pieces than traditional metal or wood harmonicas, which in a way made the harmonica more hygienic and far more efficient to mass produce. The sound from these harmonicas was inferior to the traditional ones but their inexpensiveness made them become a common toy among children.

Between the late 30’s and the 40’s, many African-Americans were starting to migrate to other states further north in hope to find more acceptable working conditions. Many musicians based in Memphis moved to big cities like Chicago and New York encouraged by their music and the idea of making a living from entertainment. It was the beginning of what would later be called the Chicago Electric Blues.

1950’s Chess Records and the Chicago Blues

The 50’s were the beginning of an era of high quality harmonica players. For instance Sonny Boy Williamson II, is one of the most important harmonica players of this era. The blues gradually began to use more electric amplification for the guitar, double bass, and vocals. Using a full blues band, as he usually played backed by a piano or a guitar, a bass and a drummer, Sonny Boy became a popular act in the South with his daily broadcasts when he was hired to play the King Biscuit Time show, advertising the King Biscuit brand of baking flour on the radio. Sonny Boy Williamson II also helped popularize the cross-harp technique and his way of playing which was very expressive, very sensual and very technical.

Another key factor to this new era of blues harmonica was the Chess brothers. Leonard and Philip Chess were two Jewish immigrants from Poland who came to Chicago in 1928. They owned some bars on the south side of Chicago, their largest establishment being a nightclub called the Macomba.

The Macomba had live performances and many of those were blues entertainers that had migrated to Chicago from the Mississippi delta during the late ’30s and ’40s. The Chess brothers realized that these artists were not being properly represented or recorded, so they decided to start recording them themselves. They entered into a partnership with Charles and Evelyn Aron in Aristocrat Records who had just opened Aristocrat Records to record blues, jazz and rhythm & blues.

The most important artist they recorded was McKinley Morganfield, who went by the name of Muddy Waters. He had come from Mississippi to Chicago a few years before and had been working on his own until he met the Chess brothers. His first records where of himself accompanied by a guitar or a piano. His deep raw singing style reflected the spirit of the blues and was quite unique. The Chess brothers were able to build Muddy Waters into Chicago’s leading blues singer through their connections with radio stations and local clubs.

In late 1949, Leonard and Phil Chess became the sole owners of Aristocrat Records and reorganized the company changing its name to Chess Records.

Historically, the music business had always been dominated by a few major record labels which were Columbia, Victor, Decca, Capitol, Mercury, and MGM. These major labels had paid some attention to the blues and other root genres but had always placed the artists on secondary labels that were focused toward the “race” audience. Chess Records grew in those early days of both rhythm and blues and along with other independent record companies like Atlantic, Aladdin, Specialty, Imperial, Modern and King were giving the public music that they could not get from the established major record companies.

Other young Mississippi bluesmen that were drawn to Chicago joined Muddy Water’s band. One of the most brilliant musicians to play with Muddy was Little Walter Jacobs, whose outstanding harmonica made the band even better.

The young harmonicist revolutionized the instrument by playing the harmonica through a microphone, typically a “Bullet” microphone sold for use by radio taxi dispatchers. He cupped in his hands around it with the harmonica, and tightened the air around the harp. It gave the instrument a “punchy”, mid-range, powerful, distorted sound that could be heard as loud as an electric guitar.

MUCH MORE ABOUT LITTE WALTER – His style, is amps and effects, his solo career.

In 1952, Chess formed a subsidiary label called Checker where Little Walter recorded some of his own work. His first release was an instrumental piece called “Juke” which topped the Rhythm and Blues charts for eight weeks. He was able to top the charts again in 1955 with the song “My Babe”.

A young record producer in Memphis Tennessee named Sam Phillips was recording a 300 pound farm worker named Chester Burnette, who became known as the “Howlin’ Wolf”. At the time, Phillips, who later established Sun Re