Famous musicians generate interest beyond their music. Background and major life events of the various Beatles are well known to my generation. Tabloids and social media bring contemporary stars to us, whether we like it or not. Books like the superb ‘Chronicles, Volume One’ by Bob Dylan, the surprisingly excellent ‘Life’ by Keith Richards, and the simply wonderful B.B. King's autobiography ‘Blues All Around Me’, written with David Ritz, provides a deep focus on musical icons from my era. Little was known about harmonica players when I started in the late 1970s. This changed in 1993, when Kim Field released ‘Harmonicas, Harps and Heavy Breathers’. Kim is a well known harmonica player and a skilled writer. His book outlines the development of the harmonica and profiles the key 20th century players. Some of the early pioneers, including DeFord Bailey, Herman Crook and Charles Leighton were still around when the book was written, and their respective interviews are a high point. Every harmonica player should read this book, along with Kim Field's upcoming release, ‘The Blues Dream of Billy Arnold’, highlighting the sole surviving (and still performing) major harmonica player from the early 1950s Chicago scene. Electronic media provides another window into our music icons. The Musicians Hall of Fame interviews are a favourite for me, the Vince Gill ones in particular. Harmonica players are not front of mind when major outlets plan interviews, so it falls on our community. PT Gazell has done a series of interviews - a ‘Seydel Overtones’ YouTube search will find them. Hohner has a ‘Harmonica Masters’ video series, featuring their major endorsers. Howard Levy and David Barrett have done some nice interviews. The 2020 COVID lockdowns accelerated online projects by necessity. Tomlin Leckie has become one of the more prolific online harmonica teachers; in 2020 he started a podcast series with well known players. There are now around twenty episodes, each around an hour featuring icons such as Adam Gussow, Brendan Power and Jason Ricci. They are easily found on YouTube. 2020 brought another harmonica podcaster to light: Neil Warren. Neil is well known in UK harmonica circles, has won the HarmonicaUK championship several times, and has harmonica transcripts at harptranscripts.co.uk. His name rang a bell when he contacted me last month, to ask if I would like to be in his Happy Hour Harmonica podcast series. I replied with a yes, then went online to see what I was in for. Starting in April 2020 with a Paul Lamb interview, Neil has done 45 podcasts to date. Google ‘Happy Hour Harmonica’ to find them. Similar to Tomlin Leckie, Neil keeps his guests for around an hour. His cast is impressive, and includes Howard Levy, Charlie McCoy,
HARMONICA BIOGRAPHIES Tony Eyres
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The magazine for HarmonicaUK
