David Naiditch

In 2017, I was at the Galax Old Time Fiddlers Convention in West Virginia, a dream long held and finally realised. I fell in with the folk at Swingtown, the biggest marquee on the site. One day, while talking with a friend camped adjacent, I heard a chromatic harmonica playing swing tunes with a distinctive virtuosity. It just had to be … I went next door, and sure enough it was. David Naiditch. I’d known David online for some years and had a few of his CDs. I wrote some nice words about one of them on the harp-l forum many years back, a ruse which had David send me all subsequent recordings, including his latest. We’ll get to that. DAVID NAIDITCH David studied mathematics at UCLA, then philosophy at UC Santa Barbara, and was for many years a software engineer at The Tony Eyres Aerospace Corporation. He has published two books on the Ada programming language. Despite all this, or perhaps because of it, David has found much time for his music. He started as a diatonic player in the 1960s, tutored by Sonny Terry, then moved to chromatic. He often plays with just one hand, a skill he gained (according to our discussions) as he practised while commuting, his other hand presumably on the steering wheel. This one-handed habit can be disconcerting, as he appears to be without instruments, until his right hand emerges from his pocket, followed by chromatic playing at the highest level. David has adopted two distinct music genres: swing (in particular, acoustic gypsy jazz) and bluegrass instrumentals. I inhabit this latter genre and have been lucky enough to share tunes with him, at Galax, then at SPAH. This included a roaring version of Jerusalem Ridge, played for Lars Seifert, the president of Seydel Harmonicas. A grand moment. Bluegrass and gypsy jazz have strong jamming cultures, very different to blues jams, where an evening generally comprises a short set on stage, followed by long breaks while others play. Bluegrass and gypsy jazz comes alive at festivals, where players gather, not so much to hear performances, but to play all day (and all night) with their peers. I’m familiar with bluegrass festivals – the jamming session quality is often astoundingly good. David has attended these festivals for decades. The result has been twofold: a formidable technique and repertoire, and long-standing musical associations with the best players.

Until COVID-19 struck, David ran a house concert series at his residence in Altadena, near Pasadena, California, and regularly hosted bluegrass, jazz and other ensembles of the highest calibre. Videos from these events are at Jackie Naiditch’s YouTube channel. All this provides David with a stellar cast for his recordings. In 2011 he released Bluegrass Harmonica and in 2012 Douce Ambience, the latter comprising gypsy jazz standards. Key players from these recordings were Pat Cloud on banjo and Gonzalo Bergara on Django-style guitar, both extraordinary musicians previously unknown to me. Not so for his later releases, Bluegrass in the Backwoods and Bluegrass that Swings, where the lineup includes Sierra Hull, a young lady whose exquisitely precise mandolin has taken the bluegrass world by storm, and who in 2016 became the first female International Bluegrass Music Association Mandolin Player of the Year, an award she has won twice since. In short, David gathers strong groups for his recordings. The band for his latest release, David Naiditch plays Bluegrass and Swing Instrumentals, includes David Grier, Jake Workman and Stuart Duncan. To bring non-bluegrass folk up to speed, a small table set for the leading bluegrass guitar players would include David and Jake. An even smaller table of the fiddle luminaries would certainly include Nashville-based Stuart Duncan, who would probably be handed the wine list. It is one thing to assemble this cast, another altogether to mesh as seamlessly as David does. Perhaps decades of rubbing shoulders with the best at festivals makes recording with this group just another day at the office. The album begins with a short bluegrass set, with standards such as Texas Gales (made famous by Doc Watson), Billy in the Lowground, Beaumont Rag and Whiskey Before Breakfast. The power and precision of Jake Workman’s guitar is immediately apparent, intertwined with David’s harmonica. After a few tunes the bluegrass band slopes off, leaving fiddler Stuart Duncan behind to deal with the gypsy jazz band which follows. And what a set they play, including Joseph Joseph, made famous by the Andrews Sisters. German guitar player Joscho Stephan drives the jazz set with an immensely skilled hand. A key feature of this recording is that no one shines above the others. David Naiditch is at home with these peerless peers. Check it out at website and YouTube Channel, or better still, book him for a European festival when such things resume. YouTube channel: youtube.com/DNaiditch Website: davidnaiditch.com