I found this place called Wolfgang’s vault that has bootleg concert files. I am listening to The Paul Butterfield Blues Band at the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco 10/14/1966. Good quality stuff – excellent early Butterfield. I will be exploring the site looking for some more harp stuff. I’d like to hear some early Canned Heat or James Cotton’s great early 70s band.

The Paul Butterfield Blues Band – Concert Vault

This site is serious about collecting microphones, at least the picture of mics. I hope to have one of each of these before I die. I own about half of the American mics on his site, but I have a ways to catch up on the Japanese and European mics.

Check this out! I wonder if he’ll paint a mic for me?

“Eye Bone” Blues Bone Main Page

My brother Larry (bass player for Carlos Colina’s Band), went to buy milk about 20 years ago and as he gets out of the car in the Grand Union parking lot, he hears someone wailing away on the harp. Larry’s not shy and introduces himself. The harp player is Adam Gussow who was raised a few miles from our old Nyack, NY homestead and is out buying milk, too.

Skip forward a few years.

Adam went on to discover Satan (Sterling Magee) playing guitar and rhythm on a street corner. The story is that Adam asked Satan if he could jam along. Adam is supposed to have said, I won’t embarrass you or something to that affect, and he didn’t. Satan and Adam was born. They went on to make a few tapes, one of which I found in a flea market down on Canal Street. I found another down at the Greenwich Village Tower Records before they closed up. Good stuff on both of them.

Skip forward to 2007.

Now, we all know that there is no money in blues. A bad country and western band cleans up. A heavy metal cover band can make $1,000 a night most weekends, but a blue band usually gets a handshake and a free drink from the bar. Don’t quit your day job. Adam has been making a few bucks here and there giving lessons, but I don’t think that he is getting rich. A few months ago, Adam Gussow started giving away some kick-ass harp lessons on YouTube. These are some of the best lessons on the net and I am betting he is finally getting some much deserved revenue from his websites.

If you are interested in good blues harp, check out Adam’s site. (The site is sometimes slow to respond.)

If you are in the New York Metropolitan area, go down to Terra Blues on Friday, June 1, where Satan and Adam will be playing their first New York Gig in over 11 years at Terra Blues.

Modern Blues Harmonica

Carey Bell passed away last Sunday.

In my old job, I used to spend lots of time in Washington DC. During one of these times, Carey Bell performed at a bar in Alexandria. Each night after dinner, I took off in a Taxi and would watch Carey play. I went into his dressing room during the break each night and he would give me a bottle of beer and we talked about playing harp, traveling around the country, and he told me a few juicy Muddy stories. He played with an old golden vocal mic that had a volume control. He used what looked like Hohner Meisterklasse harps, but he claimed that they were custom built for him. He wouldn’t let me examine them.

Before I went to see him, I had only heard Carey on the Muddy’s London Muddy Waters Sessions and I was not that impressed. Seeing him in person just blew me away. He is so much better than he sounds on the Muddy album. Later, when I was deep into Big Walter, I began to appreciate how he stood his own on the album Big Walter Horton with Carey Bell. This is one of Walter’s best, yet Carey keeps up with Big Walter throughout the collection. Since then, I have purchased every Carey Bell album as they came out.

There is no player who ever did more with Third Position than Carey Bell, and just as I think of First Position as Jimmy Reed Style, I will always think of Third Position as Carey Bell style.

Carey was a great person and for those three days in Alexandria, I felt that I could call him a friend. I never made it to another Carey Bell gig, but I will miss him and I regret that I will never get to hear him live again.

Alligator Records

Savenetradio.org: “There is a bill just introduced in Congress that will save Internet radio from the devastating royalty fee increases that will put thousands of Internet webcasters out of business on May 15th. Please call your Representative in Congress as soon as possible and urge them to co-sponsor H.R. 2060, the Internet Radio Equality Act.”

I just learned about these very cool modular system Harmonicas with a built in microphone.

They basic system costs £25 (no microphone) and additional key modules cost £12. (that’s British pounds). They have what they call is a recording module that is £70 and their performance rig is £250.

One interesting thing is thing is that the basic system comes with a “dummy” module where the microphone goes. I would like to modify this with a crystal or high impedance dynamic element. I don’t know, but I am guessing that their recording module has an electret element. Electret elements require a battery and, in my experience, are not well suited for the big bass response needed for harmonica.

I an interested in this nifty gadget. I am thinking about ordering the basic unit. I have a few 1 inch vintage magnetic elements that might fit in the dummy module along with one of my tiny impedance transformers.

I don’t know if the tuning is “just” or “equal” tempered and I don’t know how thick the reeds are. There are some nice illustrations on the site as to how a harmonica works. I’ll watch eBay for this and if I see one show up in the US, I’ll buy it and let you know.

Harmonix electric harmonica, incorporating Harmonic Solutions