Paul Oscher

Paul Oscher died of COVID-19 in Austin, Texas on 18 April. Paul was best known as the first permanent white member of the Muddy Waters Blues Band, which he joined as a harmonica player in 1967 and toured with for almost five years, also recording on several of Muddy’s albums at this time. Paul was born on 5 April 1950 in Brooklyn, New York, and an older African American man he worked with in a grocery store showed him some blues licks on harmonica when he was around 12 years old. Within three years, he was playing Little Walter numbers and appearing in a black club in New York. He first met Muddy at a show in the mid-sixties. There are numerous PAUL OSCHER YouTube clips which feature Paul playing with Muddy; he even appeared with Muddy on the Norman Darwin television show Jazz At The Maltings on BBC2 back in October 1968. He left Muddy in the very early ’70s due to ill-health. Later in the decade he worked and recorded as Brooklyn Slim. There was talk of him rejoining Muddy’s band around 1980, though in the end this did not happen. In the early ’90s he began his own career under his own name, gigging and recording as a one-man band or with accompanying musicians. Paul went on to work with many blues greats, among them fellow harmonica player Steve Guyger, Muddy’s son Big Bill Morganfield, and even rapper Mos Def, although Paul was always anxious to stress that he only really played the deep blues. Paul himself went on to influence a younger generation of blues harmonica players, and his regular weekly shows at a club in Austin over the last few years always attracted a large number of the city’s musicians. He was 71 years old when he died.

Keith Parker and Paul Oscher. Keith writes about meeting Paul in this issue’s Heroes of the Harp on page 34.