Doe's anyone have any recommendations of 1st position blues songs to learn. I am really focusing on the lowend and middle register of the harmonica. The high end is feeling natural for me now. I am developing my chops and trying to use the full range of the harp from top to bottom or bottom to top.
All suggestions certainly welcome. I couldn't find a thread on the forum when I searched and thought I remembered reading one and possibly posting one years back.
Here's something that I did on a session for a now defunct Boston area band called Two Bones And A Pick that's actually more of a Mexican folk song that was done using an arrangement that's similar to how The Fabulous Thunderbirds covered a '50's Perez Prado instrumental called Cherry Pink And Apple Blossom White:
---------- Sincerely, Barbeque Bob Maglinte Boston, MA http://www.barbequebob.com CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
On the low end, a couple of things got me going. These are mostly pretty old records
Dave Barrett has a lesson song called The Tub which was generally good with getting the feel of where everything is and how it works.
I remember listening to how Taj Mahal played on that Jimmy Rogers record (Blues Blues Blues) when he did Bright Lights, Big City. He plays a lot of it on the top but then he gets down in the low end for a while and when I dig in to it I found it was pretty helpful. Hard Hearted Woman was good too Also, the Muddy Waters record of Hoochie Coochie Man where Little Walter plays 1st is super cool Kim Wilson did a Sonny Boy song called From the Bottom on his Blues and Boogie Volume 1 album a few years ago which is also rewarding enough to be worth the time I think And from the Hard Again record, I Want To Be Loved has Cotton wailing on a C harp, showing another way to do similar to Hard Hearted Woman in a funny kind of way. Another Big Walter one which makes effective use of the low end is Trouble in Mind, from the album on Alligator, “with Carey Bell”. There’s a lot of high end work there as well and some cool movement from top to bottom and bottom to top.
