Any love for RJ Mischo here at MBH? He's someone who seems to fly under the radar but is the real deal in my book! Check out his nod to Little Walter entitled Joint from his latest release.
http://www.myspace.com/rjblues
He's got fat tone, great tongue blocking technique, an authentic feel for 50's style blues. He's a good singer and songwriter as well.
Last Edited by on Mar 22, 2009 5:37 PM
Bob is great. We're both Minneapolis guys originally. Fantastic tone, vocals and presence. Bob is responsible for getting me on stage for the very first time ever.
Yeah, RJ is a fantastic trad Chi-town blues harp player and he as Scottb says--he has fat tone for days. Saw him play a couple of years ago in Houston and he was smokin'. Anyway--
I'm a fan. I agree: he's an under-the-radar guy. One of my YouTube friends--or perhaps somebody on this forum?--burned me a CD with a handful (well, a passel) of his tunes. He has a huge tone and lots of energy, but he also has something that very few white guys (or black guys, for that matter) get into their playing: a sense of real fierceness and even something like danger. Cotton has the tone and energy, but his music exudes fun, yelping joy, big-belly playfulness. No danger. Mischo is something else. Kim Wilson is a great player; he doesn't, to my ears, have that danger at all. Magic Dick--whose playing I adore--doesn't have any danger at all, although he has every other good thing. I'd like to think that a few of my recordings ("C. C. Rider" and "Ride the Wind" on Harlem Blues) have a little danger, but that's not really where I'm coming from. I can think of two other players who gave me that feeling: Watermelon Slim in the old days back in Boston, and Steve Tracy on one of his recordings from the late 1980s. (White guys, both.) A number of black blues singers had it, although not many harp players. Big Walter Horton had some of it.
Mischo has it. Crazy-dangerous on some cuts, as in, He'd pull a knife on you.
Actually, now that I think about it, Fingers Taylor has some of that danger in his harp sound.
Last Edited by on Mar 22, 2009 7:43 PM
I think that "danger" is what makes him "authentic" to me. Never thought of it as danger before. When you mentioned it this video immediately came to mind.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAi-hJjDjx4
Simple song, stays on the one, just telling a story (true by the way) but with the trance groove and his harp tone and vibrato, and his voice and the low 1st position playing, and the subtle things like singing into both mics at once, it comes across as REAL (and dangerous!) And that's the BLUES!
Last Edited by on Mar 22, 2009 10:01 PM
DANGER--Fat Toned Licks May Blow You Away! Yeah, that's the ticket and your a member of that club Adam. I saw Fingers Taylor playing with Johnny Sansone's band in Houston way back when and those two boys were going at it back and forth. One of the most enjoyable gigs that I ever witnessed. Sansone can absolutely hold his own and his name bears mentioning more often in harp circles.
Since we have a tone shift to those dangerous harp gentlemen--Lester Butler ruled that roost while he was still with us. Anyway--
