Hi iam looking for Delta Blues and Preferably Delta blues Harmonica Players, Iam not so much into the Big Band Chicago Blues and you guys know this alot better then me,
Charlie Musselwhite, cd called Delta Hardware www.realworldrecords.com/musselwhite www.charliemusselwhite.com
Charlie has had it hard the last couple of years, his mother was murdered by an intruder in her own home and his Dad died around the same time too. He knows the Blues!!
charlie is not necessarily delta blues. listen to blind mississippi morris, terry bean, they are both current delta harp guys. howlin' wolf, sonny boy williamson II- rice miller- are a couple more. james cotton. slim harpo. lazy lester. these are just off the top of my head.
Excellent answer, jbone! Slim Harpo, though, is a Louisiana player, if I'm not wrong. I'm not sure about Lazy Lester; I always though of him as a swamp guy, too.
Blind Mississippi Morris came to my MBH open house and we had a nice visit before everybody else showed up. He's only three years older than I am. He told me he was from Clarksdale, originally, and was a nephew of Willie Dixon.
I'm happy to count Terry Bean as a friend, too. He actually hails from Pontotoc, which is in the hill country, not the Delta. But he's a contemporary Mississippi player.
Don't forget the late Frank Frost.
Cotton is from Tunica, the uppermost part of the Delta just below Memphis.
Charlie Musselwhite is actually from Kozsiuscko (I know I've mangled that), which isn't in the Delta, nor is it in the hill country. I think most people would call it the piney woods section of the state. But he's certainly a Mississippi native.
Billy Gibson is from the state, too.
There's a neat description of harmonica playing in the Delta to be found in a book called LOST DELTA FOUND, edited by Robert Gordon and Bruce Nemerov. A player is mentioned as being THE Delta harp player in 1940, and I've never heard of him.
Great answers here--but I'm still puzzled--when we say "Delta Blues" are we referring to a distinct type or sound of music? Or, are we referring to a person who happens to be from the Delta who is playing some blues?
That's an excellent question. Read Ted Gioia's DELTA BLUES, published just a few months ago, for a well-researched answer.
The truth is, it's a useless term. B. B. King and Denise LaSalle both come from the catfish-flapping heart of the Delta (Indianola and Belzoni); both are representative of the styles they exemplify: electric blues and soul-blues in the "classic blueswoman" style. Both have well-attended annual homecoming events in those Delta towns. Neither would be considered an exemplar of Delta blues by those who deploy the term.
As a descriptive term, Delta blues is generally taken to mean a particular kind of acoustic guitar style (slide is important but not defining) and rough, "primitive" way of singing. Henry Sloan, Charley Patton, Son House, Robert Johnson: those are the four generations.
When people use the term Delta blues, harmonica playing isn't the first thing that comes to mind--although Rice Miller and Howlin' Wolf do rapidly come to mind after that. But Sonny Boy II and the Wolf played jump blues (in the Trumpet and Sun sessions) that had little to do with Delta blues as commonly understood.
These days, all the Delta players, or 98% of them, are electrified. Electric guitar, drums, electric bass. Terry "Big T" Williams, Big Jack Johnson, SuperChikan, Bill Abel. Harmonica, amplified or not, isn't a big part of the scene. And it's zero part of the hill country blues scene in Mississippi these days--except when Jason Ricci visits Rooster's in Oxford next week....
Last Edited by on Feb 11, 2009 11:05 AM
How about Hammie Nixon, he played with Sleepy John Estes and they had a Delta sound (to my ears if not technically correct).
Adam, do you know if he ever play with Mississippi Fred McDowell? There's some good delta harp playing on some of his early recordings, I'm just unsure who the harp player was.
Anson Funderburgh always introduced his partner, Sam Myers, as the Deacon of the Delta. Sam's running buddy in the old days was Elmore James. I interview Sam Myers a few years ago for a story that I had published in the old Blues Access magazine and is available on my blog at www.bushdogblues.blogspot.com. Muddy Waters always said that his music was the same that he played in the Mississippi Delta--just electrified. That is key--he never changed it, just modified it. I think most people think of Mississippi Delta blues as the style that Son House, Robert Johnson, Willie Brown, Charlie Patton and others popularized with heavy, percussive guitar, string popping, in your face slide guitar--in contrast to the sweet melodic style of folks like John Hurt or the Hill Country grooves of Skip James or the even more expertly single picked notes from the Piedmont guys such as Willie McTell, Blind Blake or the even more modern Brownie McGee. Sonny Boy Williamson Two probably comes closest to the type of harp playing that was evolving around the Delta. Once these cats got to Chicago, then all bets were off once Little Walter got cranking with the amplifier. Some of the jug bands had harp players like Will Shade and the Mississippi Sheiks were immensely influential.
Aussie, Ian Collard's band, Collard Greens and Gravy,has been incorporating the blues harp to Mississippi Hill Country blues quite admirably on their last couple of releases---check out their myspace page, his and his bands. Jason Ricci could possibly weigh in with his time spent with the Burnsides and Kimbroughs--he plays powerfully on Cedric Burnside's recent CD. Anyway--'nuff for now.
Good points, JT. Yes, Jason is a good guy to mention in that regard.
And here's another guy who deserves to be mentioned, and who often slips below the radar: Johnny Dyer.
Johnny WHO?!
Johnny Dyer is a West Coast player who was, I've just discovered, born in Rolling Fork, Mississippi--Muddy Waters's home. I've only seen him once. Satan and Adam did a House of Blues LA gig, a harp summit, and he was on the bill, along with Sugar Blue and James Harman. He played very much in the Little Walter style.
You're right, Adam. Johnny Dyer really does have the LW style down pat and he can sing Muddy's stuff really well. Once these guys left places like Rolling Fork,they took the music with 'em and adapted--in Johnny Dyer's case it was on the West Coast. What I'm saying is that it would be very difficult to separate the Chicago style blues harp from music that came from the Delta. One of the answers to one of my questions posed to Sam Myers back in the day had to do with who influenced him the most on harp. He was very, very adamant that "no one" did because they were all coming up together and developing what they did at the same time. Of course, I think they all claim to have developed their style in a vacuum and that maybe everyone else copped them. Big Walter claims everyone stole his style. I don't think that they sat around a phonograph or radio and copped licks as often as we'd like to think. The majority of blues harp played in the early part of the 20th century tended to be in 1st position and so I think that a lot of what was played around the Delta during that time would have been also and hence if ol' time Delta blues is what you want then 1st position it needs to be. I think John Lee Williamson really popularized just what could be done with a harp in 2nd position--they all copped off him, then off they went with it. Anyway--
Not to get too far off topic, but I'm looking for Delta style guitar+harp arrangements and tabs. I've been trying to put the two together and have a small repertoire of "Key to the Highway", Blues with a Feeling, etc., but I am always looking for more stuff. Not exactly in Charlie Hilbert or Jimi Lee's rear view mirrors yet, but one has to start somewhere.
Check out Brandon Santini and the Delta Highway Blues Band. He is a great harmonica player and has an excellent blues vocal sound. http://www.deltahighwayblues.com/
I never heard of Jonny Dyer until recently when Mark Hummel came to town. I ended up picking up Mark's CD "Rolling Fork Revisited w/ Johnny Dyer". It is a bunch of Muddy Water songs. Some good stuff worth checking out.
I have the Rollig Fork CD as well, but I believe most of the harmonica work (albeit excellent) is done by Mark Hummel. It is definitely a good CD. I saw Johnny at the Portland Waterfront Blues Festival last year and enjoyed his set.
Nobody mentioned the late John Weston who was from the Helena,Arkansas area. John was unique in that he played mostly chromatic harmonica, an instrument that most people don't connect with down-home Delta blues. He did not start recording until late in life but was a prominent figure on the Delta Blues scene from the early '90s to his death in 2005, having played the King Biscuit and Sunflower Blues Festivals in Helena and Clarksdale respectively several times. A great album that featured John Weston's harp playing is: The Delta Jukes-Working for the Blues. It was recorded in Helena and also has Sam Carr and Dave Riley as part of the band. It is available from amazon.com.
I recently came across the name Willie Foster: a Delta-born harp player. I've actually heard the name for years but have never heard his playing. Anybody here care to comment on him? Here's a link with some basic info:
I saw Willie J. back in the mid-80's in Greenville at some afternoon community thing me and a couple of buddies rode up on one weekend when were onshore with idle hands and a traveling blues jones. I saw him again at a little club on the West Bank about 8 or 10 years later. He was in a chair this second time and looked much different. I actually recognized him from his Jimmy Reed-like high stuff that was cutting through the club and asked if he was the same guy during the break. I bought a cassette that made it's way back and forth across the country several times as part of my standard inventory for long windshield time.
About my only comment is that he always struck me as kind of a swingier, funkier version of "Little Hatch".....not to take anything from Hatch, since I really love him as well.
Ah memories. Thanks, AG. I'm going to see if I can find that tape. I have a gadget my son gave me that allows me to convert cassette and lp into my computer somehow through the smoke of white man's magic.
Can I just say how much I love that segment with Adam and Charlie where they bumble and stumble over trying to name the song: Is it Adam's Jump? Sonny's Jump? Nat's jump? Charlie's Jump? Er, I, uh, he calls it, um, yeah...
But more than anything, I love the host's obvious discomfort with the name Mr Satan. If you haven't seen the first half of this segment, do go look it up. She all but asks Adam how he dared to sit in with Beelzebub...
Adam, that tune is awesome, when I hear it I instantly think Down at Antones. Even though judging by some of the names you threw out, it might not have been what it was based off. ---------- Michael
Adam on "Delta Blues" : "The truth is, it's a useless term."
Right. I'm thinking of this song Jimmie Rodgers did called "Mississippi Delta Blues." While Jimmie sang some awesome blues, "Mississippi Delta Blues" was about as far from Mississippi Delta Blues as one can get.
@ Scoltx : Johnny Woods did a stunning album with McDowell, and he played with Burnside too. He could well be the harp player on those early recordings from McDowell, but I'm not sure.
