Harp | All About Blues Music

JOHN HAMMOND Jr.

John Hammond Jr. has enjoyed a long career playing country Blues on his National Steel guitar and Blues harp, carrying a technique soaked in the Delta to stages all over the world. John is no country copyist, as his electric guitar work shows, but his dedication to acoustic Blues has done a lot to preserve…

SONNY TERRY & BROWNIE McGHEE

Blind harp wizard Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, a spectacular guitar picker, had a 35-year-long partnership that helped to define Folk/Blues. Their Piedmont style Blues has a very different feel to Delta Blues and its effect on modern music has a very different genesis to the route through Chicago that gave us Blues-rock. New York…

RICE MILLER, SONNY BOY WILLIAMSON II

The man we know as ‘Sonny Boy Williamson II’, or Rice Miller, was born somewhere in Mississippi in 1899 (or 1897, or 1910 although newer sources say 1912) and his real name was Aleck (or Willie) Miller (or possibly Ford). Deception came easily to this man, so stories he told about his own past cannot…

JOHN LEE ‘Sonny Boy’ WILLIAMSON

There were two men who used the name Sonny Boy Williamson, and both made a huge contribution to the Blues. One was an open-hearted genial fellow who made the harp a fixture in Chicago Blues bands, and died very young; the other was a utter rogue, whose juke-joint skills brought the sound of the Mississippi…

GEORGE ‘HARMONICA’ SMITH

George was always a showman, and there are stories of him tap-dancing along the bar while playing his harp! As well as blowing his sparse, soulful solo lines he also exploited an ‘octave’ technique to expand the possibilities of the Blues harp, making it like sound like the horn parts in a swing band and…

SNOOKY PRYOR

Mississippi born James Pryor learned to play Blues harp from listening to records, despite the objections of his devout father. During Military service, Snooky played bugle, and after blowing his ‘calls’ through the PA at his camp, he would blow his harp too, making him an early exponent of ‘electric harp’. Snooky was discharged from…

DeFORD BAILEY

Virtuoso harp player DeFord Bailey made a living playing for dances and parties around his home town, displaying a range of riffs and trills that any modern Blues harp player would envy. His live performances always had a comedy element, as he used his harp to imitate a railway engine, a wheezing jalopy, or any…

BIG MAMA THORNTON

Everything about Willie Mae ‘Big Mama’ Thornton was Big. She was a big woman with a big voice, a big harmonica sound, a big stage presence and a big hit record. Her version of Leiber and Stoller’s ‘Hound Dog’ sat on top of the R&B chart for seven weeks in 1953, but that achievement was…

JOHN MAYALL

John Mayall played a crucial role in the development of British music in the 60’s that re-vitalised the Blues from its enclaves in the Black American community and gave it to everybody. As leader of the Bluesbreakers, his revolving door policy gave dozens of young players a chance to step into the spotlight. Mayall himself…

LITTLE WALTER

Big swooping notes blasted out into the studio when Little Walter’s harp wailed into his closely held microphone, as the band set up to record Muddy Waters ‘Country Boy’ on the July 1951 Chess session. That soulful sound cemented in place a big stone in the foundations of modern Chicago Blues. The huge distorted electric…