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Date: Mon, 15 Jul 2002 12:06:31 -0700 (PDT)
From: Robb Bingham
Subject: ~Did The Old Masters Tweak?~

Tinus said,


It is hard to imagine. I know what you mean.

And it's probably true that times have changed and old
Marine Bands might have had a fuller/richer sound-in
SBW's time.

[all that follows only applies to Blues Diatonic
players]
But, I do also know that that [~changed times~] also
partly explains why you can be sure that most of those
guys didn't work on their harps. I'm just musing, mind
you, but even when I was coming up we didn't consider
messing with our harps [besides soaking them in beer
or cleaning the stems and seeds out by whacking them
on one's thigh].

First of all they were all done with nails. And
second, part of their appeal was that they already had
been specially tuned [it was ~new~ to us]. Third, it
seemed to most of us no more advisable to ~adjust~
your harmonica as it was to adjust your- - - baseball.
I don't know how I'd prove this or
explain it- but i really don't think most folks then
even considered messing with the insides. Most
people who were gigging regularly would
just have their ~favorite~ ready, or ask
their managers to get them a new harp
before a big gig [ala Dylan, who can be seen in that
old movie deciding his ~old harp is still good~].

I can tell you that Richard Manuel's [The Band] wife
gave me his ~favorite harp~ after he died. It was a
fairly unresponsive ~E~ MB, kept in the box with a
rubber band- to keep it free from pocket lint and
dents. He clearly thought of harps as- right out of
the store- either, ~good~ or ~bad~. And he thought
this one was a ~good~ one [basically, because all the
holes played, it had a good ~feel~ to him, and he'd
~taken care of it~].

Such an anecdote doesn't really make much of a
point. And things have changed for the better.
But, for a long time the MB was thought of
as a ~complete instrument~. I can
tell you some pretty reputable bands that would do
things like tune their guitars to the singer's harp:
having no idea that this could cause a ton of trouble-
not the least of which being that everyone could,
potentially, be in tune; EXCEPT the harp playing. I
seriously doubt if even Butterfield [and I'm just
guessing here] thought to actually check each note for
tuning [There were no plug-in/digital tuners. Can you
see him standing next to a piano running up the scale?
Could he even play the scales?]. I know that, for most
of us, it was ~common knowledge~ that the 4 or 5 draw
went first- - and that usually meant ~time for a new
harp~.

But it wasn't just that we [I put myself in their
camps because of age- nothing else] were more easily
pleased, but that no one was treating it like a
full-fledged instrument [Jonathan Edwards, one of my
heroes, for instance, couldn't
have played all the ~C's~ on a ~G~ harp-and I'm sure
he didn't feel remiss]. In
general, more ~chords~ were played on the thing. There
was more reliance on a naive understanding of Richter
tuning [ala most folk singers/Neil Y./Dylan]; where
one picked up a knack for where/when it was good to
draw or blow a few holes. Very few people approached
it by learning what the notes were- or had the idea to
make a #2 hole sound like it did in their last
favorite harp.

I'll go a step further. A very famous bluesman had
someone tune his guitar before every gig. He couldn't
do it. And for the early years it was tuned to an E
chord, so he could pluck
and strum at the right times, and almost everything
would sound copesetic [My granduncle played a kick-ass
banjo- but couldn't tune it to anything but ~My Dog
Has Fleas~]. Harp was similar. One's repertoire grew
with new riffs and tunes.

Point is [besides for me just pining for the days when
I thought I was a pretty good harp player]; part of
the appeal of the Richter harp was that it was it's
own funky animal; tuned and ~ready to go~. Certainly
something has been lost and gained in our quest for
~legitimacy~ [~It ain't a kazoo, damn it!~] and our
special tunings.

But, BTAIM, I'm almost positive that almost no one
tweaked their harps before a certain time. Surely not
LW, SBW or the like. And I can say with first hand
knowledge that Dylan or The Band [who catapulted the
harp into the vision of full-pocketed, record store
visiting college students] didn't even consider it
[again, other than letting it play out the window of
the car on the way to the concert, or rubbing it to
warm it up].

FWIW.

PS: I'm not advocating the old approach, and I'm
anything but anti-tweaking! Just another perspective.

Robb
http://www.mp3/robbingham


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