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Dirty-South Blues Harp forum: wail on! >
The Original American Harmonica Makers Tale
The Original American Harmonica Makers Tale
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ElkRiverHarmonicas
801 posts
Apr 04, 2012
2:19 PM
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Here's a clip of something I wrote a couple years ago, I snipped out the part about James Bazin of Mass., USA. He had the idea for the harmonica at the same time the Germans did. It was one of those things where two people invent something at the same time, each with no clue what the other was doing. This guy is the only known person to have invented the harmonica. The Germans have no clue who their inventor was. I've always thought the Buschman invention B.S. tale was sewn by a certain company so nobody could lay a claim for Bazin... but regardless, the harmonica was invented in U.S. and Germany at the same time. It caught on right away in Germany, but didn't catch on in the U.S. until much later.
I'm not making a case for Bazin as THE inventor. It was invented in two places about the same time.
Bazin was a real Renaissance man. He built a camera obscura, like Leonardo's, and impressed the kiddies with it. He invented all kinds of crap. Wind harmonicas, etc., the only thing that made him money was he invented a new kind of rope that wouldn't kink.
He had the idea for the harmonica when somebody sent him a pitchpipe for repair. To repair it, he would have had to actually make a reed for it. when he invented the harmonica, he had the idea of putting numerous pitch pipes together. His was a three octave instrument with blow and draw reeds (sound familiar?)
I will say that he invented the first chromatic harmonica, it was slideless, but chromatic. I think his harmonica might have been more successful had he invented Richter tuning... which is the thing that makes everybody who picks up a harp for the first time think they sound good.
Harmonica Collectors International, I know, reverse engineered Bazin tuning. One of these days, I'll tune a harp to it for the hell of it.
There's still like two of his harmonicas surviving. here's one:
Sorry about the all caps in some paragraphs, it was a conversion thing.
BOTH EARLY GERMAN AND AMERICAN HARMONICA DESIGNERS WERE INSPIRED BY THE SAME INSTRUMENT – THE GERMAN BRASS-REED PITCHPIPE AND CREATED SIMILAR DESIGNS ON BOTH SIDES OF THE ATLANTIC. WHILE EARLY INSTRUMENTS QUICKLY BECAME A POP-CULTURE ICON IN GERMANY, NO SUCH FRENZY DEVELOPED IN THE UNITED STATES UNTIL THE INSTRUMENT WAS REINTRODUCED BY GERMAN MANUFACTURERS DECADES LATER.
James Bazin of Canton, Mass. designed his free-reed instruments after replicating a German-made pitchpipe for a customer in 1821. By 1824, he had designed a working harmonica-type instrument which the player selected a note for playing by rotating a disc of reeds and turned his attention to simplifying the design. He settled on an instrument similar to what the Germans were developing – a blow-only instrument with reeds attached to horizontally-arranged cells.
ONE OF BAZIN'S HARMONICAS, DATING TO THE EARLY 1830S, IS HOUSED IN THE BOSTON MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS. INTERESTINGLY, IT FEATURES A RESONATOR HORN DESIGN THAT WOULD BECOME POPULAR SEVERAL DECADES LATER WHEN GERMAN HARMONICA DESIGNERS MIMICKED HORNS FROM THE POPULAR GRAMOPHONE.
Bazin could make harmonicas, but unlike the Germans, he couldn't sell them, at least in large enough numbers to make his enterprise viable. His harmonicas were too early to find an eager American market, which would develop only after millions of German immigrants already familiar with the instrument arrived on American shores.
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David
Elk River Harmonicas
Steelify your Seydel, Welmeister Blackbird or Bushman Soul's Voice with steel reeds!
"It's difficult to think anything but pleasant thoughts while eating a homegrown tomato." - Lewis Grizzard
"Also, drinking homemade beer." - David Payne
Last Edited by on Apr 04, 2012 2:47 PM
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ElkRiverHarmonicas
802 posts
Apr 04, 2012
2:28 PM
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By the way, I will pull a quote from his obituary, which ran in 1883, to illustrate my point that all these tales of harmonicas in the War Between the States and the Old West is complete and total B.S.
This is from 1883, some decades after there was supposedly this harmonica explosion. I've tried to find references to harmonicas in the Civil War and Reconstruction period for years, this is the only one I've ever found. Maybe there were a handful here, but it was still a few years from entering popular culture... It's obvious from the obit that nobody had a clue what the hell it was:
"He devised many curious musical instruments. He invented a new pitch pipe capable of being carried in the vest pocket which superceded the old fashioned affair of the ancient choirs."
Then the obit goes into quoting the late Mr. Bazin to describe what it actually was:
"It was composed of a set of twenty-two small square pipes, producing the natural scale of three octaves. These pipes were placed in a series of boxes, forming a cap over each reed, the whole being put in a wooden case about four and one half inches long by two inches wide and three-fourths of an inch thick, in such a manner as to allow a free passage for the wind through the pipes, and for a mouth-piece to slide on the end of the boxes. As this could only be played in the natural scale, or in that to which it was tuned, I made another with twelve pipes to the octave, and so contrived that the key notes could be instantly changed to any one of the twelve semi-tones."
He also invented the diatonic accordion (melodeon). The obit raises some cane about folks copying his melodeon and selling them, but it was probably introduced from Germany where it had been invented independently.
So, it suggests in 1883, the diatonic accordion was already here and was popular, but the harmonica hadn't caught on yet.
Doesn't sound to me like harmonicas were all the rage - as is commonly told in the introduction to pretty much every harmonica book ever written- in America by then.
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David
Elk River Harmonicas
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"It's difficult to think anything but pleasant thoughts while eating a homegrown tomato." - Lewis Grizzard
"Also, drinking homemade beer." - David Payne
Last Edited by on Apr 04, 2012 3:05 PM
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