Diatonic Harmonica Episodes

David Barrett joins me on episode 118. David is based in San Jose, California, where he took lessons from Gary Smith from age 16, in addition to learning from great harmonica recordings. He started teaching harmonica himself from age 18 and has become one of the foremost harmonica educators around, with his BluesHarmonica.com website an invaluable resource. He ran the School of Blues for twenty years and has written over seventy instructional books, DVDs and CDs. David has four albums ...

Yvonnick Prene joins me on episode 117. Yvonnick was born in France and has been resident in New York for seventeen years after first moving to the city to study at the New School for Jazz & Contemporary Music. He started out playing blues and jazz on the diatonic and took lessons with some of the great French players, before focusing his attention playing jazz on the chromatic. Yvonnick is a bandleader and has released seven albums under his own name as well as numerous sessions as a sid...

Isabella Krapf joins me on episode 116. Isabella is from Vienna, Austria, where she started teaching and performing concerts in her late teens and has had a career in the harmonica ever since. Isabella is a collector of harmonicas and puts on exhibitions. She played a part in keeping the Seydel factory in business when it was looking for new investors in the early 2000s, by ordering 1000 ‘boomerang’ harmonicas. In 2011 Isabella was asked to visit North Korea to teach groups of music students ...

Pat Missin joins me on episode 115. Pat’s knowledge about the harmonica is unsurpassed, with his website at patmissin.com, a definitive source of information for over twenty years. He gives us an insight into some of this knowledge, starting with how free reed instruments were the predecessor of the harmonica and the questionable history of who actually invented the harmonica as we know it today. We also discuss various harmonica recording firsts, such as the first blues harmonica song record...

Seth Shumate joins me on episode 114. Seth is an Old Timey and pre-war harmonica player originally from Arkansas, now living in Tennessee. Seth has deeply researched the early history of the harmonica and has written an Old Time Harmonica Handbook which contains lots of great information, as well as techniques on how to play authentic Old Timey harmonica using various tongue blocking techniques to add percussive rhythm and to provide self-accompaniment while also playing the melody of the tun...

Andre Godoy Coelho (and Brendan Power) join me on episode 113. Andre is a Brazilian who relocated to Portugal in 2018, performing and recording two albums with the Rio Grande band in Sao Paulo, before recording a recent album in a duo in Portugal. Andre quickly became interested in harmonica customisation when his first harmonica didn’t quite perform as he wanted. This has turned into a full time business for Andre, who has now teamed up with Brendan Power on his x-reed harmonica range....

Episode 111 is part 2 of the ten minute question, from the remaining podcast guests up until this point. As per the last episode, I’ll say the name of each guest before they respond to the question: “if you had 10 minutes to practise, what would you spend that ten minutes doing”. Podcast website: https://www.harmonicahappyhour.com Donations: If you want to make a voluntary donation to help support the running costs of the podcast then please use this link (or visit the podcast website link abo...

Something a little different for episode 110 (and also episode 111 so I can keep the length around the one hour mark). The next two episodes are a compilation of all the ten minute question answers from the series so far, in this, the 110th episode (get it?) Not every episode had a ten minute question, such as the retrospectives, but most did, 96 in fact. So I hope you enjoy listening back to this collection and apply some of the tips and tricks offered by the great players who have been on t...

Clint Hoover joins me on episode 109. Clint is originally from Minneapolis and has spent a life immersed in music and the harmonica. He’s reached great heights on both the chromatic and the diatonic. Early on he also studied guitar and saxophone and attended a jazz course in New York City where he also took chromatic lessons from Robert Bonfiglio. His eclectic mix of interests has led him to recording albums in genres from pre-war blues to modern jazz, to rock, pop and World Music. His ...

Roly Platt joins me on episode 108. Roly is a Canadian player who has recorded countless sessions over his 45 year career. He started out playing in a country band which set the scene for him playing a diverse range of genres throughout that time. Roly has recorded 1700 individual session cuts, with the numerous bands he has played in, and also various film, tv and commercial jingles. Roly ecorded his own album in 2017, Inside Out, where he showcased his versatility by including a range of di...

Eddie Martin joins me on episode 106. Eddie has been described as the ambassador of British Blues, having released seventeen albums over his near fifty year career, with many of the songs self-penned by Eddie. He started out as a one-man band, but also performs as part of his own bands too. In either format Eddie makes extensive use of rack harmonica, and is one of the leading players of using a rack, while also playing some hand-held harmonica as well. Eddie gives us some great tips on playi...

Paul Barry joins me again on episode 105, for another look at the life and career of the great William Clarke. Paul has now released his biography: Blowin’ Like Hell: The William Clarke Story, writing it from insights he gained from Bill’s wife Jeanette, and Bill's children, and the musicians who played with him, as well as many others. Bill dedicated his life from the age of sixteen to become the bluesman he dreamed he could be, and he worked extremely hard at it. He honed his craft from wood...

Mike Turk joins me on episode 104. Mike is a Boston-based player who started out playing blues harmonica, inspired by the great Paul Butterfield, before becoming interested in playing jazz on the chromatic. He recorded some session work in New York and recorded through the 1970s with various artists, with many of those tracks available on anthology albums Mike has put out. He released his first solo album, Harmonica Salad, in 1991. Mike went on to record several more albums, with a letter fro...

Konstantin Reinfeld joins me on episode 103. Konstantin is a German who comes from the overblow school of harmonica, studying music at a conservatory and taking lessons from Howard Levy as part of his early development. He released a jazz album at age 18, with two more albums to follow before releasing a classical album played on the diatonic harmonica, for which he won a German Grammy award for classical music. On top of this Konstantin is a music producer, including producing his own recor...

Christian Marsh joins me on episode 102. Christian is an Australian who plays both the diatonic and chromatic harmonica. Starting out playing diatonic, Christian drew inspiration from players such as Norton Buffalo and Charlie McCoy, absorbing as much harmonica as he could lay his hands on . He picked the chromatic up a few years later after hearing Toots Thielemans play, and even went on to maintain Larry Adler’s harmonicas while he was touring Australia. Christian is a mainstay on the...

Tom Ellis interviews Neil Warren on episode 101. Neil started out playing blues harmonica in his hometown of Blackburn (with it’s 4000 holes). He progressed into learning jazz, taking jazz chromatic lessons for several years, and then folk music. Neil currently plays in two bands around his local area, an acoustic act playing blues and folk, and an electric band playing different genres, such as ska and funk and blues, including use of the DM48 midi chromatic. He has won three categories of c...

Dennis Gruenling joins me on episode 99. Dennis is originally from the New York area, where he began his love affair with record collecting, listening to a wide range of music, from country to rhythm and blues and beyond before it all came together when he heard his first harmonica on the great Harp Attack album. Dennis cut his teeth with the support of local harp players before releasing his first album, Jump Time, featuring the jump swing style of his early output. On this, and ...

Paddy Wells joins me on episode 96. Paddy is based in the north of England, where he started out as a singer playing a little harp before hearing amplified harmonica, which really turned him on to the instrument. Paddy is also a freelance music journalist, having written regular articles for several music magazines in the UK, including Blues in Britain. He also wrote an article, Blowin’ Off The Dust, for the SPAH magazine. Paddy has also spent some time travelling the US, including sitt...

Michael Rubin joins me on episode 95. Michael moved to Austin as a young man, initially as a blues player. He found that by diversifying the genres he played on harmonica he became much more in demand in the vibrant music scene in Austin. He added to t his versatility by playing different types of harmonica, including plenty of chromatic in addition to the diatonic being his main axe. Michael has also recorded on bass harmonica and the harmonetta. Michael has gigged and recorded with numerous...

The interview with Jason Ricci continues on episode 94, part 2. Jason shares how he has matured into his music, including on his 2021 album, City Country City, playing jazz, funk and blues with New Orleans musician Joe Krown. Jason goes on to share what he considers to be his best work on harmonica, and the elements that make up a great performance. He’s recorded two albums with JJ Appleton, and Bad Kind is Jason’s current band, having released two albums so far, and a new album coming ...

Jason Ricci joins me on episode 93 (and on episode 94) In part one: Jason tells us how he started out in a punk band, with his bandmates suggesting he take up the harmonica. Of course, he took to it quickly, to become quite possibly the leading diatonic harmonica player of his generation. After initially developing his blues playing via the classic players, Jason moved to Memphis and developed his signature fast licks under the guidance of Pat Ramsey. Then, after getting into jazz and a...

Erland Westerstrom joins me on episode 92. Erland is from Sweden, where he studied Swedish folk music on the harmonica at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, with Filip Jers as one of his teachers there. Erland released a solo harmonica album in 2020, Andas! (Swedish for breathe), where he makes use of drones, polyphonic rhythms, tongue spilts and other techniques to create self-accompaniment to the melodies of the traditional tunes he plays. Erland’s latest band is with the trio Västanv...

Tom Halchak joins me on episode 91. Tom tells us how he grew his successful company, Blue Moon Harmonicas, started in 2009. Tom started out selling custom combs, and then covers in different materials and colours. Tom went on to develop his customisation skills to offer fully fledged custom harmonicas using his Blue Moon product lines. Tom also started offering pre-war Marine Band harmonicas for sale. These hand-crafted harps have stood the test of time and with some improvements ...

Tom Ellis joins me (again) on episode 90. This is part two of the Paul Butterfield retrospective where Tom takes us even deeper into Paul’s career and talks us through more of his incredible output. About how Butter, while paying his due respect to the greats before him, took the blues in a new direction, with his experimentation and innovation. Butter’s music and bands evolved as he developed, with the best musicians joining him to provide a bedrock to some of the greatest harmonica ever rec...