Calling all Blow Boys and Girls

[davidt]

I have the DVD of The American Folk Blues Festival 1962-66 VOLUME 2.
It ends with Big Mama Thornton leading a harmonica fest. featuring Shakey Horton, J B Lenoir, Doctor Ross, John Lee Hooker and herself of course all taking choruses on the Down Home Shakedown. 5 for the price of 1. Sonny Boy Williamson also gets 2 tracks on the DVD and Sonny Terry's on another. Just watching it now reminds me I need to buy the other volumes in the series.

I've always loved John Mayall's Blues City Shakedown as a tune.
and of course Dr Ross deserves an honourable mention for giving guitarists the chance to imitate the harmonica with Cats Squirrel.

Incidentally who's doing that Foxchase I'm hearing on an advert on TV at the moment ? Wayne Raney or Sonny Terry perhaps ? I suppose it's a generic style. I can't remember the product but the sound track's made a good impression on me :-)

[will vine]

You don't like to post anything here on a saturday night do you - people might think you've got nowhere to go and nothing better to do, but as long as it's understood that I have NOT been watching a crummy cut and paste compilation on BBC2 "Top of the Pops 2--The Disco Years", I am prepared to cocede the first two points.......well alright it WAS on in the background.

There was a time when saturday night television was something more of a treat. Why, I remember......must've been the 70's I guess, The Val Doonican Show. One night he introduced as his guest the fabulous Nashville harmonica player CHARLIE McCOY who will have enhanced hundreds of records with his great playing. ....most iconic record of his performances worthy of consideration here ......STONE FOX CHASE, the theme tune of The Old Grey Whistle Test which he recorded as part of the band Area Code 615.

Another straight ahead harmonica hit which may get overlooked here....GROOVIN' WITH MR. BLOE.....don't know who played on it, It's not rootsy or innovative. It was probably a near discarded backing track. It's pure pop and totally exhillarating.

[will vine]

Sorry Charlie didn't see Charlie McCoy (in parenthesis) in your original list.

[Alan Balfour]

Incidentally who's doing that Foxchase I'm hearing on an advert on TV at the moment ? Wayne Raney or Sonny Terry perhaps ? I suppose it's a generic style. I can't remember the product but the sound track's made a good impression on me :-)

Sonny Terry and elsewhere on the web other discussion groups are attempting to identify the exact recording. It's a version I own but life's too short to play through umpteen ST discs in order to pinpoint it.

[Chris P]

I reckon French maestro Vincent Bucher should be represented somewhere here.

He's played extensively with Malagasy 'multi-stringest' Tao Ravao, but perhaps more people have heard him on Lobi Traore's brilliant "Duga" album. He's also guested on Henri Dikongue's 'Wa', on 'Vamba' by Malagasy artist Vaovy, and on Boubacar Traore's latest 'Kongo Magni'

Another great example of gob-iron meets Africa is Jean-Jacques Milteau on the track 'Djougouya Magni' on Sekouba Bambino's 'Sinikan'

[Charlie]

I'm a big fan of Rory McLeod but can't put a name to the tune that blowing in the back of my mind.

Good idea, Dominic. Funnily enough I ran across Rory last night, playing at Ian Anderson's 60th birthday party. But he was playing a trombone! Very well too, to my ears, although he afterwards insisted his was just using like a double bass or tuba, as a rhythm instrument.

Even more remarkably, Max Reinhardt took to the stage with his harmonica to join an ensemble of two guitars and Ben Mandelson on mandolin, and proceeded to play wonderfully well, I thought. But he modestly insisted he had simply picked it up during two years or hanging around in the presence of Errol Linton. I will listen again to Errol's albums, Adam, and that song you recommend in particular.

Mention of James Cotton coincided with the arrival in the mail of a package of 12 home-recorded CDs from Will Street, who had made a present of them to his dad, also celebrating his 60th birthday. Twenty-something Will had painstakingly taken the cassettes his dad had made of some of my radio show Honky Tonk (BBC London, 1972-78), copied them onto his hard disc and compiled his own favourite tracks into CDs with themes of his own devising - Hang Up My Rock and Roll Shoes, Third Rate Romance, The Voice of God, etc - wisely and thankfully cutting me out of the picture. It has been fascinating to recognise songs I'd long forgotten but alarming to hear others that I have no recollection of ever playing, including a marvellous "Whose Afraid of Little Red Riding Hood' from James Cotton's 1968 album, Pure Cotton, featuring pianist Alberto Gianquinto doing the hippest vocal you've ever heard, roughly in the style of Harry The Hipster Gibson or Slim Gaillard, laced with sly drug references.

[Charlie]

I reckon French maestro Vincent Bucher should be represented somewhere here.

good call, thanks Chris

[Adam Blake]

Most harp players will generally genuflect a little when you mention James Cotton. At his best he was absolutely astonishing. I remember being knocked flat by his version of "Rocket 88" on the groundbreaking "Best of the Chicago Blues" compilations on Vanguard that came out at the the end of the 60s and, I gather, shook up the blues fraternity more than somewhat. He takes a three chorus solo that virtually blowtorches the rhythm and drags the band into a crazed uptempo ska lurch. Leaves Ike Turner and Jackie Brenston in the dust and that takes some doing...

Sadly, I believe he became a cocaine addict and a sad shadow of his former self. God, I hate that f*cking useless drug.

[Rob Hall]

I have an album by James Cotton from about 10 years ago, called "Deep In The Blues". It's really good, if you don't know it, I highly recommend it. It's all acoustic, the band features Charlie Haden, Dave Maxwell and Joe Louis Walker, and it's rough around the edges, which is the way it ought to be (his singing makes Tom Waits sound like Aled Jones).

[Adam Blake]

Yeah, I got that one. It's damn good.

[davidt]

James Cotton makes a cameo appearance in the chapter on the Chicago Blues in the DVD set that came out about 2001 American Roots Music.
There's a great vintage b&w archive performance of Got My Mojo Working which cuts back and forth to a contemporary James demonstrating the harmonica part.

[Adam Blake]

Very glad to hear he's still around and, by the sounds of things, sorting himself out.

[will vine]

Tricky category this harmonica one. I don't have the recall I ought to have yet I'm sure we're missing some gems. I also don't have the technical ability to judge these things on their levels of virtuosity so I can only respond intuitively.

Surprised to see no mention of Paul Butterfield or Charlie Musselwhite so far, nor yet the immodestly named Magic Dick, from J. Geils Band.

Charlie's initial list was sound, I think, in including 54321 by Manfred Mann - a very iconic record - but seeing The Blues Band the couple of times that I have I was struck by what a very accomplished gob iron player Paul Jones is. Not just the regular blues licks for him, but a bit of Toots Theilmanns going on. I'm hazy here but a track which may have been called Blue Collar comes to mind - anybody ?

Captain Beefheart --- musician/non musician ? you choose, but he got some fantastic sounds one way or another out of whatever he stuck in his mouth ....Glider....Nowadays a Womans Gotta Hit a Man.....Click Clack...and of course Gimme That Harp Boy.

I mentioned Groovin' with Mr. Bloe in an earlier posting as the only successful all out harmonica solo record (apart from Juke) that came to mind. Now don't get me started on The Morton Frazer Harmonica Gang or Tommy Reilly and the theme tune to Dixon of Dock Green, 'cos that'll take us into a whole other area and have me declaring that After You're Gone, used in the soundtrack to The Singing Detective and probably played by Tommy Reilly, as my all time favourite harmonica piece.

As I say -Tricky category.

[Adam Blake]

Getting away from the format of the blues, but definitely staying with the feel of it: how about the theme to "Midnight Cowboy"? Written by John Barry, played by ??

[Rob Hall]

It took a while to track down, but it appears to be Toots Thielemans:
http://www.tootsthielemans.com/biography/biography.html