Jan. 11, 2023

Rob Paparozzi interview

Rob Paparozzi interview

Rob Paparozzi joins me on episode 77. Rob is based around the New York area where he started out playing in blues bands before quickly adding the chromatic to his harp arsenal. He took lessons with Robert Bonfiglio and then had Toots Thielemans giving him tips over the telephone. The versatility afforded to Rob by playing both diatonic and chromatic allowed him to enjoy a tremendous career on the session scene in New York, playing with many famous names including Dolly Parton, Randy Newman an...

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Season 1 Diatonic Harmonica Chromatic Harmonica Jazz Chromatic Pop Harmonica Session Musician

Rob Paparozzi joins me on episode 77.

Rob is based around the New York area where he started out playing in blues bands before quickly adding the chromatic to his harp arsenal. He took lessons with Robert Bonfiglio and then had Toots Thielemans giving him tips over the telephone. The versatility afforded to Rob by playing both diatonic and chromatic allowed him to enjoy a tremendous career on the session scene in New York, playing with many famous names including Dolly Parton, Randy Newman and Whitney Houston. He’s fronted the Original Blues Brothers Band for over twenty years, released a Paul Butterfield tribute album and his own Grammy nominated album.


Links:

Rob’s website:
http://robpaparozzi.com/

Blue Moon Harmonicas:
https://bluemoonharmonicas.com/

Videos:

Rob’s YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/user/chromboyx

Tommy Morgan playing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDv0nLlUxDs&list=RDEMkbeA-8Dfp9SMty0FJvHNpA&start_radio=1

Rob performing with Dolly Parton:
https://youtu.be/RILd7USxBMc

Rob performing with Randy Newman:
https://youtu.be/4EmF3Xxlxg8

Electric Butter: Walking By Myself:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdaabsUn-PQ

Rob’s My Music Masterclass videos: https://www.mymusicmasterclass.com/premiumvideos/rob-paparozzi-harmonica-masterclass-videos-1-2-3-bundle/

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 above):
https://paypal.me/harmonicahappyhour?locale.x=en_GB

Spotify Playlist:
Also check out the Spotify Playlist, which contains most of the songs discussed in the podcast:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5QC6RF2VTfs4iPuasJBqwT?si=M-j3IkiISeefhR7ybm9qIQ

Podcast sponsors:
This podcast is sponsored by SEYDEL harmonicas - visit the oldest harmonica factory in the world at www.seydel1847.com  or on Facebook or Instagram at SEYDEL HARMONICAS
and Blows Me Away Productions: http://www.blowsmeaway.com/

Support the show

01:27 - Rob’s moniker is ‘The Honeydripper’ from playing with the Original Blues Brothers band

02:21 - Lives in New Jersey, just over the river from New York

02:44 - Has Italian ancestry

03:11 - Rob is mainly a harmonica player and singer and has worked a lot as a session musician

03:21 - Started out playing in blues bands as a teenager

03:47 - Started playing harmonica age 15, starting on diatonic, starting chromatic five years later

04:13 - Equally comfortable on chromatic and diatonic and the similarities he saw between them

04:57 - Took lessons from Robert Bonfiglio (who learnt from Chamber Huang)

05:40 - Also had lessons with Toots Thielemans over the telephone after finding his number in the union directory in New York

07:01 - What did Toots teach Rob

07:55 - Length of the telephone lessons with Toots and kept in touch through the years

08:34 - Met up again with Toots in later years during a harmonica summit also featuring Howard Levy

09:46 - Didn’t focus on learning jazz from Toots Thielemans as Rob wanted to be an all-rounder on the harmonica

10:29 - Spent some time studying the playing of Larry Adler and Tommy Morgan

10:58 - Rob is a real all-rounder on the harmonica, which helped him in his session work

12:11 - Session work partly came because of proximity to New York

12:22 - Started playing chromatic after hearing it on pop music recordings such as Bob Dylan and The Beatles)

13:07 - Differences and similarities between diatonic and chromatic and tips transitioning between the two

14:47 - Also plays some piano and guitar, on which he was mainly self-taught

15:23 - First time played harmonica was picking up one of older brother’s Hohner Marine Band harmonicas

16:00 - Bought a piano, mother also played piano

17:14 - One of Rob’s first bands was the Psychotic Blues Band, and they used to hang out with Bruce Springsteen before he made it big

18:41 - Missed out the chance to support Bruce Springsteen when he was getting famous

19:27 - How Rob started with the session work

20:12 - Formed a wedding band with his brother where he had to play piano but he stopped that so he could sing and play harp

21:59 - Started getting more of a name for himself and people contacting him to perform

22:14 - Joined Blood, Sweat and Tears

23:18 - Got a call to play in a Broadway Show, Big River, but turned it down at first due to family commitments

24:33 - Did go back to perform some Big River shows later, subbing for Don Brooks

25:40 - Played in the Hudson River Rats band, an offshoot of Blood, Sweat and Tears

26:23 - Hudson River Rats had lots of famous guest performers at their regular New York gig, including Julian Lennon

27:22 - Recorded a session with Cyndi Lauper

27:54 - Also did shows with many others, including Dolly Parton and Randy Newman

29:39 - Did a session on a Whitney Houston song and another with James Galway

29:48 - Did a session on a Whitney Houston song and another with James Galway

31:38 - Rob’s versatility was probably the thing which got him the sessions over other great harp players in New York

32:34 - Rob’s album Etruscan Soul was nominated for a Grammy in 2009

34:00 - Recorded a version of Ticket To Ride, which works so well on the harmonica

35:05 - Strange Brew is another song off the album

35:53 - Peg O My Heart song, which Rob chose to play on diatonic to bridge the gap between diatonic and chromatic at SPAH

37:49 - Recorded a Paul Butterfield tribute album with a big band and influence of Butterfield on Rob and exposure to Blues (and Rolling Stones)

39:44 - Has fronted The Original Blues Brothers Band for over twenty years

42:02 - Was originally hired to be just the singer with Blues Brothers band. Rob had to work the harmonica into the show

43:22 - Has been playing with The Original Blues Brothers Band for over 20 years now

43:42 - Paparozzi’s Juke Joint is the latest of Rob’s bands

44:17 - Has done session work for movie soundtracks and TV appearances

45:09 - Teaches harmonica and has some online tuition videos available

45:37 - Taught at the Turtle Bay music school, where he attended lessons when younger

46:39 - 10 minute question

47:26 - Has played with the New York Philharmonic orchestra

47:56 - Harmonica of choice is a Hohner Big River after playing hard on original Hohner Marine Bands when first learning

49:21 - Sells custom Big Rivers with Blue Moon combs on his website

50:42 - Chromatic mainly plays Hohner 270s, but played Suzuki chromatics for a spell

51:38 - Has a customiser who sets up his 270s as doesn’t like maintaining chromatics himself (will do some diatonic work)

52:10 - Plays some 270 Deluxe model too

52:21 - Different tunings: uses Country Tuning

53:14 - Plays some overblows

53:16 - Doesn’t modify chromatics, buys different keyed chromatics

53:21 - Embouchre: plays lip pursing and puckering

53:32 - Doesn’t believe that tongue blocking gives you a bigger tone

55:03 - Mics: Rob helped Audix design the Fireball mic

55:43 - Mainly goes for a clean sound

56:13 - Does still use tube amps, with the Audix Fireball

56:36 - Doesn’t like to modify amps for harmonica

57:14 - Future plans

WEBVTT

00:00:00.194 --> 00:00:02.278
Rob Paparazzi joins me in episode 77.

00:00:03.380 --> 00:00:09.955
Rob is based around the New York area where he started out playing in blues bands before quickly adding the chromatic to his harp arsenal.

00:00:10.457 --> 00:00:15.608
He took lessons with Robert Bonfilior and then had Toots Thielmans giving him tips over the telephone.

00:00:16.321 --> 00:00:29.175
The versatility afforded to Rob by playing both diatonic and chromatic allowed him to enjoy a tremendous career on the session scene in New York, playing with many famous names including Dolly Parton, Randy Newman and Whitney Houston.

00:00:29.475 --> 00:00:38.223
He's fronted the original Blues Brothers band for over 20 years, released a Paul Butterfield tribute album and has his own Grammy-nominated album.

00:00:38.865 --> 00:00:41.326
This podcast is sponsored by Zidel Harmonicas.

00:00:41.747 --> 00:00:51.070
Visit the oldest harmonica factory in the world, at www.zeidel1847.com or on Facebook or Instagram at Zeidel Harmonicas.

00:01:21.890 --> 00:01:24.118
Hello, Rob Paparazzi, and welcome to the podcast.

00:01:24.513 --> 00:01:26.015
Hi Neil, great to be

00:01:26.055 --> 00:01:26.596
here today.

00:01:26.936 --> 00:01:29.918
So you're Rob the Honey Dripper, Papa Rosie.

00:01:30.358 --> 00:01:31.560
Where's the Honey Dripper come from?

00:01:31.620 --> 00:01:33.040
Obviously there's a famous song.

00:01:33.100 --> 00:01:34.722
Is that something you played a lot?

00:01:34.862 --> 00:01:41.067
Yeah, it was a famous song back, I think Joe Liggins had a little hit with it back in the 50s or something.

00:01:41.409 --> 00:01:46.533
And when I joined the Blues Brothers 20 plus years ago, they said, what's your moniker?

00:01:46.993 --> 00:01:48.795
And I said, I don't even know what that is.

00:01:48.954 --> 00:01:54.480
But they said, well, you know, Matt Guitar Murphy and Steve the Colonel Proper and Blue Lou Maroon.

00:01:54.480 --> 00:01:56.662
So you need to have a moniker.

00:01:56.721 --> 00:01:58.623
You can't just be Rob Paparuzzi.

00:01:59.125 --> 00:02:04.831
So I said, okay, well, I had this newsletter called The Honey Dripper that I would, you know, plug my gigs.

00:02:05.031 --> 00:02:07.593
And I said, why don't we, I'll be The Honey Dripper.

00:02:07.733 --> 00:02:08.875
And they said, okay, fine.

00:02:09.235 --> 00:02:10.856
That was the only one I could come up with.

00:02:11.098 --> 00:02:12.438
And it kind of stuck.

00:02:12.699 --> 00:02:13.580
It's a lot to say.

00:02:13.639 --> 00:02:18.025
I mean, I remember Steve Cropper on stage with, you know, Rob, The Honey Dripper, Paparuzzi.

00:02:18.044 --> 00:02:19.687
It's like, wow, that's a mouthful.

00:02:21.127 --> 00:02:24.431
So you are joining us from, I think you're living in New York now.

00:02:24.431 --> 00:02:26.234
and you're originally from New Jersey, yeah?

00:02:26.413 --> 00:02:27.955
Well, I'm still in Jersey.

00:02:28.135 --> 00:02:29.556
I'm only across the river.

00:02:29.638 --> 00:02:34.062
So I'm about like a 40 minute car ride and a half hour train ride into New York City.

00:02:34.102 --> 00:02:35.883
But I've always been on the Jersey side.

00:02:36.344 --> 00:02:44.032
And we recently moved, still in Jersey, but close to both of my kids who are equidistant from where I live.

00:02:44.473 --> 00:02:47.757
And so, and you've got Italian ancestry and hence your name.

00:02:47.796 --> 00:02:50.319
So I think both your parents were Italian, yeah?

00:02:50.620 --> 00:02:51.540
Yeah, they both were Italian.

00:02:51.561 --> 00:02:55.064
My mother was Italian American from New Jersey and the States here.

00:02:55.525 --> 00:03:03.653
And my dad came over as an Italian prisoner of war during World War II and met my mom somehow in his prison travels.

00:03:03.973 --> 00:03:05.355
And they got married back.

00:03:05.415 --> 00:03:07.518
They went back to Italy after the war ended.

00:03:07.698 --> 00:03:10.640
And then they came back and started a life here in the States.

00:03:11.002 --> 00:03:14.085
So you're mainly a harmonica player and a singer, yeah?

00:03:14.305 --> 00:03:19.371
And I think it's probably fair to say that you've made most of your career as a session musician.

00:03:19.390 --> 00:03:19.850
Is that right?

00:03:20.171 --> 00:03:21.552
Yeah, it turned out that way.

00:03:21.772 --> 00:03:24.256
It started more with me playing in bands.

00:03:24.276 --> 00:03:28.123
You You know, at age 15 and figuring out that I was going to do something.

00:03:28.183 --> 00:03:37.562
And then I sort of was, yes, designated as the lead singer and the harmonica player because that's kind of what I was doing best at the time.

00:03:37.824 --> 00:03:39.247
So I was doing that.

00:03:39.687 --> 00:03:44.477
And then years later, yeah, found out about the session work in New York City and all that.

00:03:44.537 --> 00:03:44.798
Yeah.

00:03:45.186 --> 00:03:45.887
Yeah, yeah.

00:03:45.907 --> 00:03:46.687
So we'll get into that.

00:03:46.887 --> 00:03:53.272
Before then, you know, talking about how you started out playing harmonica, I think you started about age 15, was that it?

00:03:53.432 --> 00:03:55.375
About age 14 or 15, yes.

00:03:55.794 --> 00:03:59.177
And then you were playing diatonic to begin with.

00:03:59.478 --> 00:04:01.000
Diatonic to begin with.

00:04:01.180 --> 00:04:07.985
Didn't even really look at a chromatic for another five years, you know, when I saw one in the store and said, oh, geez, that's a lot more money.

00:04:08.045 --> 00:04:09.567
I wonder if I should buy one of those.

00:04:09.687 --> 00:04:13.471
And at around age 20 is when I said, let me buy one of these things.

00:04:13.711 --> 00:04:14.991
I mean, you're definitely one of those...

00:04:15.151 --> 00:04:26.653
rare breeds which is you know i think equally accomplished on the diatonic and chromatic would you say that yourself so

00:04:32.129 --> 00:04:39.041
It ended up that I fell in love with both eventually, and I saw not a whole lot of difference.

00:04:39.343 --> 00:04:43.771
I mean, there was obviously a difference with the button and the positions of everything.

00:04:43.990 --> 00:04:51.043
But I said, as a harmonica, it's really the same instrument, and I'm going to keep that philosophy.

00:04:51.084 --> 00:04:56.494
And by doing that, it made it a lot easier to transition to the chromatic.

00:04:57.281 --> 00:04:57.541
Yeah.

00:04:57.562 --> 00:05:06.709
And I know you had, you know, you had a good scene there with the chromatic plays and you had

00:05:08.531 --> 00:05:15.177
Chamber Huang and Robert Bonfilio.

00:05:16.158 --> 00:05:27.148
You had some lessons from both those guys, didn't you?

00:05:27.247 --> 00:05:28.829
Robert Bonfilio.

00:05:29.470 --> 00:05:30.050
He teaches.

00:05:30.130 --> 00:05:31.692
I don't have time to teach every day.

00:05:31.773 --> 00:05:33.213
I just do these seminars.

00:05:33.574 --> 00:05:38.819
Sure enough, yeah, I looked up Bonfilio and he said, yeah, come on, if you're serious, let's do it.

00:05:39.120 --> 00:05:40.562
Yeah, two great teachers.

00:05:40.641 --> 00:05:45.728
And you also had some, at least some conversations with Toots Tillmans when he was in New York as well, yeah?

00:05:46.088 --> 00:05:50.773
Yeah, after I, you know, I mean, I was learning how to read with Chamber and Robert Bonfilio.

00:05:51.093 --> 00:06:01.865
I realized that, you know, this is all great, but I'm not really a classical musician because I kind of learned blues And I didn't really know how to read music that great growing up.

00:06:01.964 --> 00:06:04.067
I'm just learning it now at age 20, you know.

00:06:04.687 --> 00:06:08.913
Eventually, maybe a year or two after that, I had to join the union a couple of years after that.

00:06:09.173 --> 00:06:11.295
And I had to join the union in New York City.

00:06:11.514 --> 00:06:14.819
And they gave you this book, which was, you know, a union directory.

00:06:14.838 --> 00:06:21.725
And I just flipped it through and I went to the harmonica section and Robert Bonfilio was in there and whoever else was in there.

00:06:22.026 --> 00:06:24.949
And I saw Toots Thielman and it had his phone number.

00:06:24.990 --> 00:06:27.151
And I'm saying, oh, my gosh, I wonder if I could call him.

00:06:27.151 --> 00:06:27.572
home.

00:06:27.932 --> 00:06:31.396
A pretty nervy thing, but you know, it's in the union directory.

00:06:31.456 --> 00:06:33.519
So I'm a fellow union member.

00:06:33.559 --> 00:06:34.759
So I dialed the number.

00:06:35.141 --> 00:06:43.009
He was living in Yonkers, New York, a little suburb of Manhattan at the time, because he was still doing a lot of work in Manhattan and going back and forth to Europe.

00:06:43.329 --> 00:06:48.514
I called and we started chatting and he said, you know, I don't teach, you know, I'm too busy.

00:06:48.555 --> 00:06:50.096
You know, he had that Belgian accent.

00:06:50.137 --> 00:06:51.697
He goes, I'm too busy to teach.

00:06:51.757 --> 00:06:55.182
He goes, but if you want to be phone buddies, let's do that.

00:06:55.281 --> 00:07:00.767
You for him to teach me on the telephone, you know, and that's what we did.

00:07:01.127 --> 00:07:01.468
Great.

00:07:01.488 --> 00:07:03.531
So what sort of things did you learn from Toots then?

00:07:03.810 --> 00:07:14.322
Well, I picked his brain a lot, mostly because it was hard, you know, on the telephone, but I would ask him questions about his tone and his playing and how he did things in the studio.

00:07:14.423 --> 00:07:16.124
And then also what he would practice.

00:07:16.244 --> 00:07:17.925
And he gave me information.

00:07:17.985 --> 00:07:21.990
Like he said, Paparazzi, the first thing you got to do is stop listening to me.

00:07:22.031 --> 00:07:23.312
And I said, well, what do you mean?

00:07:23.351 --> 00:07:24.192
You're Toots Thielman.

00:07:24.213 --> 00:07:27.055
You're like the harmonica Jedi as far as I'm concerned.

00:07:27.055 --> 00:07:35.543
He said no.

00:07:35.603 --> 00:07:39.538
He goes, well, where do you think I learned how to play all this jazz stuff from?

00:07:40.098 --> 00:07:41.439
And I said, I don't know.

00:07:41.459 --> 00:07:48.024
He said, well, you need to start listening to the masters, Sonny Rollins and Charlie Parker and Miles Davis.

00:07:48.045 --> 00:07:49.927
And, you know, the light bulb went off.

00:07:49.966 --> 00:07:54.810
He's telling me, stop trying to copy me because I got it from these guys, you know?

00:07:55.370 --> 00:07:55.911
Yeah, amazing.

00:07:56.151 --> 00:07:58.834
So how long did these conversations go on with Toots?

00:07:59.235 --> 00:08:05.360
You know, depending on his schedule, sometimes we could have a nice long hour plus conversation.

00:08:05.379 --> 00:08:08.783
Other times, you know, if he was busy, you know, he would cut me off or whatever.

00:08:09.223 --> 00:08:13.367
And then we stayed in touch and he would send me postcards from around the world.

00:08:13.807 --> 00:08:17.711
He had had a stroke once and I checked on him to see how he was doing.

00:08:17.732 --> 00:08:21.997
So we were kind of, we were a little bit more than phone buddies and maybe correspondence buddies.

00:08:22.257 --> 00:08:29.485
And I would also try and go out and see him live anytime he was playing in my little neighborhood area, New York and New Jersey.

00:08:29.665 --> 00:08:31.427
So he kind of knew who I was.

00:08:31.466 --> 00:08:33.528
And then I reconnected with him.

00:08:33.849 --> 00:08:42.610
Fast forward, we had a harmonica summit here by the late Chris McCulloch, a great harmonica player and crazy guy that left us too soon.

00:08:42.993 --> 00:08:45.304
And he decided to have a harmonica summit.

00:08:45.570 --> 00:08:49.373
So I reconnected with Toots physically when they had the summit.

00:08:49.493 --> 00:08:51.335
Maybe it was around the turn of the century.

00:08:51.634 --> 00:09:00.462
They were bringing Toots Steelman out to Minneapolis because he had some jazz gigs out there and they were going to team him up at this harmonica summit with Howard Levy.

00:09:00.682 --> 00:09:07.749
So I ran into Toots Steelman at the airport and I started chatting with him there about him jamming with Howard Levy.

00:09:07.849 --> 00:09:10.912
And he was a little confused about what he was supposed to do.

00:09:10.991 --> 00:09:13.413
And he, no, I heard of this guy, Howard Levy.

00:09:13.514 --> 00:09:15.535
And, you know, and I said, well, you're going to play with him.

00:09:15.535 --> 00:09:39.861
them so you know that's the deal and uh we talked about overblows because i said toots you know you were doing overblows before howard levy and he's going he goes you maybe he goes but i didn't know that's what they were called you know and we had these conversations so that was my connection with toots and i continued to go to hear him live right up until he stopped playing out a lot he was an amazing guy right

00:09:40.182 --> 00:09:52.495
fantastic yeah well you're very lucky to have that connection with him and lots of jealous listeners so yeah So when you were learning from him, were you trying to learn jazz from him specifically or was it more just general chromatic technique?

00:09:52.975 --> 00:09:57.520
Yeah, I mean, I kind of knew that I wasn't a jazz player.

00:09:57.561 --> 00:10:00.344
You know, I mean, I just wanted to play harmonica.

00:10:00.384 --> 00:10:04.729
I kind of committed to all kinds of music years before that.

00:10:05.109 --> 00:10:11.235
You know, after my blues bands broke up and, you know, I realized that I really didn't know how to communicate with other musicians.

00:10:11.275 --> 00:10:13.357
That's why I wanted to learn how to read music.

00:10:13.418 --> 00:10:15.080
And jazz was a cool thing.

00:10:15.100 --> 00:10:17.363
I just didn't and how deep I would be able to get into it.

00:10:17.663 --> 00:10:21.528
So I didn't really study with Toots to become a great jazz harmonica player.

00:10:21.587 --> 00:10:29.278
I just wanted to pick his brain as just a great harmonica player and maybe bring back some of that stuff to my harmonical world.

00:10:29.578 --> 00:10:33.183
As I did the same thing with studying Larry Adler off of his record.

00:10:33.344 --> 00:10:39.873
I went to see Larry live once and also the great Tommy Morgan, who was a session player from California.

00:10:51.009 --> 00:10:57.620
I loved all these guys and I would be happy to be just a little bit of every one of them, you know, if I could, you know.

00:10:57.801 --> 00:10:59.143
Well, I think that's great what you've done.

00:10:59.202 --> 00:11:04.912
As you say, you know, we're getting again to your session work shortly, but giving yourself a real all-rounder approach there.

00:11:04.951 --> 00:11:07.875
As you say, I've been able to play the diatonic really well, the chromatic really well.

00:11:08.116 --> 00:11:12.903
You know, you do play jazz songs on the chromatic, but it's probably like light jazz, it's fair to say, isn't it?

00:11:12.984 --> 00:11:13.183
So...

00:11:23.490 --> 00:11:25.130
But, you know, it's a great approach you're having.

00:11:25.150 --> 00:11:26.712
It gives you that all roundness, doesn't it?

00:11:27.013 --> 00:11:27.293
Yeah.

00:11:27.472 --> 00:11:32.658
And it kind of helped me in the studios too, because I was getting calls to do session work and all kinds of stuff.

00:11:32.778 --> 00:11:40.625
I realized that it's not so much being a specialist, you know, a bluegrass or a blues or a jazz or classical specialist.

00:11:41.065 --> 00:11:43.067
The studio thing wasn't about that at all.

00:11:43.187 --> 00:11:49.893
It was about, you know, we just need a harmonica player that can do this particular job on this particular day.

00:11:50.293 --> 00:11:53.096
And I said, you know what, I'm up for that challenge.

00:11:53.176 --> 00:11:53.736
It sounds Yeah.

00:11:53.897 --> 00:11:58.265
And so

00:12:01.072 --> 00:12:09.350
did you consciously decide to play chromatic with a view of doing session work or did you learn, did you pick up the chromatic before you even thought about that?

00:12:09.570 --> 00:12:11.051
Yeah, no, it was before that.

00:12:11.171 --> 00:12:21.000
I mean, the session work came because I lived so close to New York and eventually I realized that there's sessions, you know, and they need players of all different styles.

00:12:21.059 --> 00:12:21.900
So that came later.

00:12:21.921 --> 00:12:42.682
I picked up the chromatic because I realized even, you know, I mean, I had first listened to Bob Dylan and John Lennon with the Beatles and that was my frame of reference for, oh, there's harmonica on record, on hit records, you know, and eventually my ears said, geez, I don't I don't know if he's using a diatonic on that.

00:12:42.743 --> 00:12:45.168
It sounds like it could be maybe that chromatic thing.

00:12:45.567 --> 00:12:49.436
That's when my fascination for the chromatic started coming about.

00:12:49.456 --> 00:12:50.458
It wasn't through jazz.

00:12:51.019 --> 00:12:54.025
Then I heard about Larry Adler and Tuck Steelman a little after that.

00:12:54.466 --> 00:12:59.677
And then I said, okay, well, there's this world of chromatic out there and it could be used on pop.

00:12:59.937 --> 00:13:04.442
And it probably could be used on, it can be used on jazz and whatever, or classical.

00:13:04.741 --> 00:13:06.323
So yeah, that was my interest.

00:13:06.344 --> 00:13:07.725
Let me just learn this thing.

00:13:08.085 --> 00:13:14.210
At first it was terrifying because it was so different, as most our players realize when they first pick it up.

00:13:14.289 --> 00:13:17.953
It's like, you know, the only thing in common is that you breathe in and out, right?

00:13:18.053 --> 00:13:19.575
And then everything else is different.

00:13:19.815 --> 00:13:32.687
You know, obviously most harmonica players play diatonic, but you'd give some words of encouragement to say that, you know, they should tackle the chromatic as well, yeah, and give them that versatility to be able to play you know the different styles of music and the different approach of the chromatic yeah

00:13:32.767 --> 00:14:05.022
yeah and any way you can do it you know if you're starting like like me you know on diatonic and it's like so many players did um maybe coming from the 60s with the you know the rock and roll stuff and the blues stuff you you put a lot of time in on that diatonic and you and maybe even started to learn a little bit about well the first second and third position okay so there's this blues world out there but if you put a transitioning over to the chromatic, you can bring some of those diatonic chops over.

00:14:05.042 --> 00:14:08.445
And if that works, at first, you're terrified about reading the notes.

00:14:08.684 --> 00:14:09.807
Don't even worry about that.

00:14:09.947 --> 00:14:13.910
Just say, what can I do the same on the diatonic that I can on the chromatic?

00:14:14.270 --> 00:14:17.975
You start saying, okay, there is a little bit of a second position thing.

00:14:18.176 --> 00:14:23.701
There's a little bit of a first position, but it's just wider spacing and maybe a little bit different layout.

00:14:23.961 --> 00:14:29.548
But when you go to the middle of the diatonic on hole number four, you know, you've got a C scale, right?

00:14:29.768 --> 00:14:33.071
On on a C harmonica, and that's where the chromatic starts.

00:14:33.471 --> 00:14:44.222
That's when I realized, okay, there are similarities, and even in the tuning, maybe not on holes one to four on the diatonic, but once you get up to hole four on the diatonic, that's the same as the chromatic.

00:14:44.384 --> 00:14:46.265
I tried to find those similarities.

00:14:46.966 --> 00:14:47.667
So great.

00:14:47.687 --> 00:14:51.730
So as well as the chromatic and diatonic, you also play some piano as well,

00:14:52.172 --> 00:14:52.251
yeah?

00:14:52.292 --> 00:15:03.356
There's a city way down on a river Where the women are Is that

00:15:03.938 --> 00:15:06.089
something you'd learn at this early age as well?

00:15:06.402 --> 00:15:34.687
yeah around so around that same time around well i was 15 i picked up the harmonica and i would start to noodle with my brother's guitars when they weren't when they weren't home i'd up their guitars and try and teach myself a little bit of guitar because my two older brothers played guitar matter of fact the harmonica was was my older brothers and he just left it there on the shelf and that's how i first discovered the harmonica he had one laying on the shelf and when he went out i took his harmonica too you know

00:15:34.947 --> 00:15:35.947
and was that a marine band

00:15:36.327 --> 00:15:37.408
it was a Marine band.

00:15:37.749 --> 00:15:42.254
Yeah, he was into Dylan and peace rallies and he had this harmonica, you know.

00:15:42.774 --> 00:15:48.260
And I said, well, you know, they always tell me not to touch their guitars, but who's going to know if I touch that harmonica?

00:15:48.301 --> 00:15:50.283
I'll just kind of wipe it off when I'm done.

00:15:50.322 --> 00:15:51.945
And I started playing with that.

00:15:51.985 --> 00:15:55.148
And then about two years later, at age 17, I started working.

00:15:55.187 --> 00:15:59.952
I was going to high school and I was working at a men's clothing store and I saved up a little money.

00:16:00.212 --> 00:16:03.256
And I knew my mother played piano by ear only.

00:16:03.537 --> 00:16:11.765
We didn't even have a piano, but we went over other people houses or a place that had a piano, she could sit down and play like 10 songs.

00:16:12.166 --> 00:16:12.626
That was it.

00:16:12.787 --> 00:16:15.870
But she sounded like a real piano player for those 10 songs.

00:16:15.929 --> 00:16:18.974
And then after that, you'd say, hey, Ma, where's Middle C?

00:16:19.033 --> 00:16:20.514
And she just would like freak out.

00:16:20.554 --> 00:16:21.735
I have no idea, you know.

00:16:21.996 --> 00:16:22.898
So I said, you know what?

00:16:23.258 --> 00:16:24.239
I'm going to buy a piano.

00:16:24.259 --> 00:16:27.783
So I saved up about$700 working at this clothing store.

00:16:28.102 --> 00:16:36.913
And I said to my mother, who was a secretary, you know, I said, can you go out on your lunch hour and see if you, you know, that music store across the street and see if they have I have a piano.

00:16:37.312 --> 00:16:38.855
I have 700 bucks.

00:16:38.894 --> 00:16:44.801
She went out and found a Kawaii Upright for 700 bucks, brand new, brought it home.

00:16:44.880 --> 00:16:48.465
She wouldn't play it unless she was inspired when she really was.

00:16:48.764 --> 00:16:51.307
And I sat down there and I just, same thing with the harmonica.

00:16:51.388 --> 00:16:55.552
I taught myself just noodling out notes and little broken chords.

00:16:55.873 --> 00:16:57.293
And that's how I learned piano.

00:16:57.335 --> 00:17:00.317
Never took piano lessons, never took guitar lessons.

00:17:00.738 --> 00:17:12.015
Later on, I found a guitar teacher and I started to get a little serious on the guitar, but I felt that knowing a chordal instrument, I can maybe bring some of that back to my harmonica playing.

00:17:12.256 --> 00:17:13.965
And sure enough, it really did help.

00:17:14.369 --> 00:17:18.012
You mentioned that you, you know, you're playing in blues bands when you were younger.

00:17:18.053 --> 00:17:20.035
That's the first thing you did on the diatonic.

00:17:20.075 --> 00:17:25.098
So you had a period of that, I think one from like 1967, you were playing in local blues bands.

00:17:25.118 --> 00:17:25.259
Yeah.

00:17:25.500 --> 00:17:28.382
Playing in what the psychotic blues band, I think I read.

00:17:28.662 --> 00:17:28.982
Yeah.

00:17:29.022 --> 00:17:31.164
I mean, that was sort of my first official band.

00:17:31.244 --> 00:17:42.654
I had a couple of junior high school bands and then the psychotic blues band was the band that one of my brothers, my older brother who was playing guitar, he realized that I could sing and start playing harmonica and stuff.

00:17:42.674 --> 00:17:45.037
So they, their singer was having some problems.

00:17:45.477 --> 00:17:48.019
At the time, I was kind of doing lights for them.

00:17:48.039 --> 00:17:51.042
I was kind of running their little light show, you know.

00:17:51.324 --> 00:17:52.525
They were the Psychotic Blues Band.

00:17:52.545 --> 00:18:00.053
They did blues and R&B, and so they were a little bit older than me, and they offered me the job as a singer and harmonica player.

00:18:00.073 --> 00:18:04.758
So the Psychotic Blues Band became, in 1967, my first band.

00:18:04.837 --> 00:18:07.942
They had horns, and we were doing blues, basically.

00:18:08.193 --> 00:18:08.673
Did you

00:18:08.974 --> 00:18:10.836
support Bruce Springsteen with this band?

00:18:11.076 --> 00:18:12.438
We came to hear this band.

00:18:12.657 --> 00:18:15.820
And also, we did some shows opening up for his band.

00:18:15.980 --> 00:18:17.902
He was a little bit further down the shore area.

00:18:18.022 --> 00:18:19.324
I was a little bit up north.

00:18:19.544 --> 00:18:23.186
But somehow, through mutual friends, our paths crossed.

00:18:23.307 --> 00:18:26.329
He would come up to where I lived in Linden, New Jersey.

00:18:26.470 --> 00:18:29.211
And he would come and hear my band and sit in with my band.

00:18:29.251 --> 00:18:33.115
And then I'd go down there and we'd do some shows in Asbury Park opening for him.

00:18:33.155 --> 00:18:34.757
But he wasn't famous at the time.

00:18:34.797 --> 00:18:40.876
He was just a local guy that everybody kind of liked down Yeah, so that's the connection with Springsteen.

00:18:41.218 --> 00:18:44.941
Did you carry on playing with him as he did get more famous?

00:18:45.541 --> 00:18:46.482
Well, you know, it's funny.

00:18:46.702 --> 00:18:48.344
I kind of dropped the ball on that.

00:18:48.644 --> 00:18:53.648
When he came up to hear me one day, I was doing some stuff with my guitar and a little harmonica rack.

00:18:53.788 --> 00:18:58.472
And he said, man, he goes, Rob, he goes, I love what you're doing with that harmonica on the rack thing.

00:18:58.512 --> 00:19:01.134
He goes, you know, and I love what you're doing on the harmonica.

00:19:01.194 --> 00:19:03.897
You should come down to this place called the Student Prince.

00:19:03.978 --> 00:19:07.340
And I'm doing like a blues kind of jam every Tuesday night.

00:19:07.461 --> 00:19:08.842
You know, you should just come on down.

00:19:08.882 --> 00:19:11.183
And, you know, it was a little far at the time.

00:19:11.183 --> 00:19:14.166
you know, I'm saying to myself, I should, you know, but I never went.

00:19:14.366 --> 00:19:17.550
And then two years later, I saw him on the cover of Time and Newsweek.

00:19:17.631 --> 00:19:20.693
And I said, maybe I should have went to that gym.

00:19:21.394 --> 00:19:23.978
Maybe, but you play with plenty of other great people as well.

00:19:24.038 --> 00:19:26.140
So, you know, you've done okay.

00:19:26.240 --> 00:19:26.961
It all worked out.

00:19:27.320 --> 00:19:27.540
Great.

00:19:27.582 --> 00:19:33.248
So, so yeah, so you, you're in sort of playing with blues bands for a few years when you were, what is this kind of early twenties?

00:19:33.307 --> 00:19:36.691
And then when did you get into the session work and how did that all start?

00:19:36.830 --> 00:19:37.211
Well, yeah.

00:19:37.251 --> 00:19:43.377
So, so blues bands throughout the rest of my end of my 11th, 12th I graduated high school and then I went into college.

00:19:44.801 --> 00:19:47.644
And in college, I kept playing in the blues bands.

00:19:47.704 --> 00:19:49.566
And then that started falling apart.

00:19:49.665 --> 00:19:52.469
You know, the bands, everybody's kind of going in their different directions.

00:19:52.788 --> 00:20:01.836
So around maybe 1974, 75, I get out of college and I realize I'm still enjoying playing my harmonica and the music thing.

00:20:02.156 --> 00:20:04.719
Maybe I should start playing other kinds of music.

00:20:04.778 --> 00:20:11.224
So that's when I started branching out, taking the lessons a little more, studying with Bonfilio, learning how to read.

00:20:11.484 --> 00:20:23.537
And then what I did is first branched out from the music, went from the Yeah, exactly.

00:20:44.720 --> 00:20:48.144
wedding bands at the time, a lot of the guys were getting old.

00:20:48.403 --> 00:20:50.846
They were becoming old timers like I am now, right?

00:20:51.146 --> 00:20:55.171
So they, you know, we want some young people to be playing at our wedding, you know?

00:20:55.531 --> 00:20:58.315
So then I realized, well, I had to learn more than blues if I'm going to play.

00:20:58.515 --> 00:21:02.618
And then my brother who was playing guitar, he kind of was sort of my leader, right?

00:21:02.858 --> 00:21:07.865
He said, well, if we're going to start a wedding band, that's cool, but you can't play harmonica in a wedding band.

00:21:07.904 --> 00:21:09.185
Nobody wants to hear that.

00:21:09.465 --> 00:21:11.188
I said, well, what am I supposed to do?

00:21:11.208 --> 00:21:13.170
And he said, well, you know, you play a little piano, right?

00:21:13.371 --> 00:21:24.321
Let's get you an electric piano He bought me a Fender Rhodes piano, and I became the piano player in his wedding band that had no knowledge of this beforehand.

00:21:24.762 --> 00:21:30.788
And then eventually, I'd sneak my harmonica in and play a song at the wedding that we were playing at.

00:21:31.009 --> 00:21:35.314
And I said to my brother, I said, you know, I really don't feel comfortable on this piano.

00:21:35.673 --> 00:21:37.036
Harmonica is what I love.

00:21:37.096 --> 00:21:39.999
And he'd go, yeah, I know, but you know, you got to get the job done.

00:21:40.278 --> 00:21:42.161
I said, but I don't want to play piano anymore.

00:21:42.181 --> 00:21:44.143
So we hired a real piano player.

00:21:44.463 --> 00:21:48.888
And then And I went out in front of the band and I sang and I played my harmonica.

00:21:49.189 --> 00:21:50.529
And that's where I wanted to be, right?

00:21:50.911 --> 00:21:54.294
So now I had to learn like wedding band, like popular music and sing it.

00:21:54.714 --> 00:21:56.957
And also, but now I have my harmonicas next to me.

00:21:56.977 --> 00:21:58.919
I didn't have to be buried behind this piano.

00:21:59.140 --> 00:22:04.305
And now the phone is starting to ring a little bit more with people wanting me to come and maybe do it.

00:22:04.484 --> 00:22:05.866
The freelance thing started.

00:22:05.906 --> 00:22:08.348
You didn't have to have a set band anymore, right?

00:22:08.690 --> 00:22:09.530
Things were changing.

00:22:09.590 --> 00:22:10.932
The 80s were coming in.

00:22:11.231 --> 00:22:14.415
So I started getting calls as a singing harmonica player.

00:22:14.576 --> 00:22:20.883
There was a band, some young, great jazz and rock players that were studying at William Patterson College in New Jersey.

00:22:21.202 --> 00:22:23.305
There was a band called Blood, Sweat, and Tears.

00:22:23.586 --> 00:22:24.906
They had hits, you know.

00:22:24.926 --> 00:22:26.048
Spinning wheel.

00:22:26.328 --> 00:22:26.788
Big band.

00:22:26.828 --> 00:22:28.211
David Clayton Thomas was the singer.

00:22:28.651 --> 00:22:31.114
And they were kind of living in the New York area at the time.

00:22:31.153 --> 00:22:39.122
He would go and recruit these young players because he wanted to keep the Blood, Sweat, and Tears thing going, but he needed people that could play rock and jazz.

00:22:39.383 --> 00:22:41.904
He would go get some great players from the local colleges.

00:22:41.924 --> 00:22:51.955
Well, these guys knew me and And they said, hey, Rob, you know, we've been out playing with blood, sweat and tears, and we would like to just play some blues, you know, when we get back home during the week.

00:22:52.076 --> 00:22:53.678
And why don't you come and join us?

00:22:53.978 --> 00:22:54.858
And I said, OK.

00:22:55.480 --> 00:22:58.143
And they said, we're going to be playing at a jam session in New York.

00:22:58.182 --> 00:23:01.205
We'll be the house band and then people will come up and jam with us.

00:23:01.226 --> 00:23:03.868
So this is now we're up to around 1980, 85.

00:23:04.229 --> 00:23:08.393
I was already just starting to get some calls for session work.

00:23:08.513 --> 00:23:14.480
So I was really coming into the chromatic and the diatonic thing and really putting time in on it.

00:23:14.480 --> 00:23:18.263
the harmonica, getting serious with it now for all styles of music.

00:23:18.443 --> 00:23:21.567
I even got a call to play in a Broadway show called Big River.

00:23:21.907 --> 00:23:23.569
The music was written by Roger Miller.

00:23:23.609 --> 00:23:25.471
Now, this was around 1981, 82.

00:23:26.212 --> 00:23:28.914
Now, I had just bought a house.

00:23:29.536 --> 00:23:30.257
I was married.

00:23:30.277 --> 00:23:31.637
I got married around 1974.

00:23:31.778 --> 00:23:33.359
I was still in college.

00:23:33.840 --> 00:23:36.383
But we decided to have a kid around 1982.

00:23:37.003 --> 00:23:38.465
And my wife was pregnant.

00:23:38.566 --> 00:23:41.429
And I got called to play in this show, Big River.

00:23:41.469 --> 00:23:43.830
And I think I was still studying with Robert Bonfiglio.

00:23:44.231 --> 00:23:46.034
And I said, well, what does it entail?

00:23:46.114 --> 00:23:47.515
And they said, well, you'd have to come in.

00:23:47.575 --> 00:23:58.186
And I said, well, I just started this job, like this day job, you know, because I got a mortgage to pay, you know, because the music thing was great, but it still was seat of your pants kind of thing.

00:23:58.247 --> 00:23:59.468
And you didn't have a steady income.

00:23:59.667 --> 00:24:03.571
So they said, well, you have to be here every day, nine to five until the show opens.

00:24:03.633 --> 00:24:06.214
And then, you know, the performances are mostly in the evening.

00:24:06.234 --> 00:24:08.057
I said, well, I'll have to turn that down.

00:24:08.237 --> 00:24:08.978
And they said, what do you mean?

00:24:09.318 --> 00:24:09.878
Turn it down.

00:24:09.919 --> 00:24:10.960
You're a harmonica player.

00:24:11.240 --> 00:24:12.582
You know, it's a Broadway show.

00:24:12.622 --> 00:24:13.923
We're offering you a gig, you know?

00:24:14.104 --> 00:24:17.779
And I said, I said, yeah, but that's not really what I'm going to be doing.

00:24:18.826 --> 00:24:20.432
So I had turned it down.

00:24:20.705 --> 00:24:29.292
But I was starting to really get serious about the harmonica and getting some calls to work a little bit in New York, maybe get called to play on a little jingle if they needed harmonica.

00:24:29.354 --> 00:24:32.635
My name was starting to get around that I was a harmonica player that could

00:24:32.655 --> 00:24:33.356
read a little bit.

00:24:33.517 --> 00:24:37.059
I think you did go back to Big River, didn't you, later on and do some shows?

00:24:37.319 --> 00:24:48.369
Turns out the show, you know, they hired somebody else and then they called me again and said, look it, the harmonica player was this guy, Don Brooks, who was a great country blues harmonica player.

00:24:49.431 --> 00:24:50.672
He rode like me

00:24:50.672 --> 00:24:52.798
Yeah, boogie

00:25:00.354 --> 00:25:05.838
And he had worked out on the road with Well and Jennings and Judy Collins and Jerry Jeff Walker.

00:25:05.959 --> 00:25:10.962
And he settled in New York and then he became the guy that they ended up using on the harmonica.

00:25:11.042 --> 00:25:13.965
And then he called me up and said, I could use a sub.

00:25:14.526 --> 00:25:15.646
We got a hit show here.

00:25:15.666 --> 00:25:18.209
And he goes, they really like you over there.

00:25:18.589 --> 00:25:20.050
And I said, is it in the evening?

00:25:20.490 --> 00:25:23.773
And he goes, don't worry about the matinees.

00:25:23.814 --> 00:25:25.115
He goes, I'll cover those.

00:25:25.195 --> 00:25:27.698
He goes, just come on over and do this show.

00:25:27.778 --> 00:25:28.598
And that's what I did.

00:25:28.838 --> 00:25:30.319
And I ended up doing a whole bunch of business.

00:25:30.319 --> 00:25:31.000
Yeah,

00:25:32.561 --> 00:25:33.083
great.

00:25:33.462 --> 00:25:37.166
So we'll mix up you playing in different bands and then the session work you did.

00:25:37.247 --> 00:25:39.490
So as you say, you were getting more session work.

00:25:39.730 --> 00:25:43.374
I've got you playing with the Hudson River Rats through the 90s.

00:25:43.413 --> 00:25:45.415
That was your band through the 90s, yeah?

00:25:45.496 --> 00:25:45.797
Yeah.

00:25:45.856 --> 00:25:56.728
So around that same time that I was subbing on Big River on 85, 86, 87, they called me to do that Hudson River Rats where this was the band from Blood, Sweat& Tears that wanted me to front them.

00:25:56.948 --> 00:25:58.349
And I said, well, what are we going to call it?

00:25:58.390 --> 00:26:00.271
And they said, well, we all live around the Hudson River Rats.

00:26:00.271 --> 00:26:02.276
River, so let's call it the Hudson River Rats.

00:26:02.636 --> 00:26:09.009
And that became another New York scene where I would go over every Wednesday night and front this band.

00:26:23.041 --> 00:26:31.189
I had no idea that there was people out in the audience like Carole King and Cindy Lauper and Phoebe Snow and even Clayton Thomas.

00:26:31.568 --> 00:26:35.972
They wanted to just play some blues because they were maybe doing sessions during the day.

00:26:36.012 --> 00:26:38.234
And at night, they said, wouldn't it be fun to just go out?

00:26:38.494 --> 00:26:40.737
Hey, this is a crazy, great little blues band.

00:26:40.896 --> 00:26:41.778
So they would sign up.

00:26:41.857 --> 00:26:49.605
And after we played our set, they would come up and they'd have to be called up by our host, this guy, Jeff Kent, who was kind of put it all together.

00:26:49.805 --> 00:26:52.907
But if they came up, they couldn't just come up and play any song.

00:26:53.008 --> 00:26:56.153
They had to pick a blues song because, you know, it's a blues jam.

00:26:56.313 --> 00:26:58.416
I remember one night, place got crowded.

00:26:58.457 --> 00:27:00.640
It was like, it was like turning into a scene.

00:27:00.961 --> 00:27:06.009
And I remember one night, Julian Lennon came up to, he was waiting on line to go to the bathroom.

00:27:06.068 --> 00:27:10.455
And I was waiting on line and he comes up to me and he goes, I want to come up and play a blues.

00:27:10.496 --> 00:27:11.538
He goes, is Johnny B.

00:27:11.738 --> 00:27:12.378
Goode a blues?

00:27:12.499 --> 00:27:14.021
And I said, it certainly is.

00:27:14.122 --> 00:27:16.605
And you're John Lennon's son, so you have to come up.

00:27:16.726 --> 00:27:17.146
And he did.

00:27:17.186 --> 00:27:18.489
He came up and did Johnny B.

00:27:18.528 --> 00:27:18.769
Goode.

00:27:18.848 --> 00:27:18.950
And-

00:27:19.490 --> 00:27:19.650
was

00:27:19.670 --> 00:27:19.891
cool

00:27:20.151 --> 00:27:28.128
so obviously this helped you meet a lot of the people you play with you mentioned cindy loper there so that's one of the people you've recorded with i did a song called broken glass with her

00:27:42.369 --> 00:27:45.295
I think in the early 90s, I got a phone call to come and play.

00:27:45.615 --> 00:27:47.217
Maybe she remembered me from the jam.

00:27:47.298 --> 00:27:47.718
I don't know.

00:27:48.278 --> 00:27:52.965
Yeah, I went and played on one of her records called Hat Full of Stars, and it was a lot of fun.

00:27:53.366 --> 00:27:57.093
So I'll run through some of the illustrious names you play with, and pick up on some.

00:27:57.173 --> 00:28:01.098
You played with Dolly Parton, and you performed with her on The Late Show.

00:28:09.913 --> 00:28:10.814
From the coal mines of Kentucky to the canals...

00:28:12.193 --> 00:28:14.521
She came up from Nashville to promote a new record.

00:28:14.642 --> 00:28:17.049
So we did a bunch of TV shows with her.

00:28:17.471 --> 00:28:19.115
You played with Randy Newman.

00:28:19.396 --> 00:28:20.401
Yeah, Randy Newman.

00:28:20.961 --> 00:28:22.949
We did a little thing down at the Kennedy Center.

00:28:23.088 --> 00:28:24.473
I was in part of the house band.

00:28:24.801 --> 00:28:27.445
And he was supposed to just play a solo song.

00:28:27.526 --> 00:28:29.307
Now, I mean, I was a big Randy Newman fan.

00:28:29.347 --> 00:28:31.371
He had no idea I was such a fan.

00:28:31.391 --> 00:28:37.298
But anyway, he was over on stage behind his Steinway piano, and he was going to play a song from a famous movie.

00:28:37.358 --> 00:28:42.486
We were roasting Steve Martin, the comedian that was part of the show, as everybody was going to come out.

00:28:42.605 --> 00:28:46.070
Paul Simon would come out and do a song for Steve Martin.

00:28:46.111 --> 00:28:51.278
And then Randy Newman was going to do something from a movie called Parenthood, where Steve Martin was in it.

00:28:51.298 --> 00:29:01.218
And So he was getting ready to play this song solo, and he's looking over at the band during the rehearsals, and he comes over to the band, and he says, you know, I was going to play this song, fellas.

00:29:01.317 --> 00:29:02.880
And he goes, solo?

00:29:02.940 --> 00:29:05.402
He goes, but I'm thinking maybe I could use some of you guys.

00:29:05.442 --> 00:29:13.888
Now, we had like a fiddle player and a tuba, like a roots band, because Steve Martin was a banjo player, you know, so they wanted a roots and a harmonica.

00:29:14.190 --> 00:29:17.172
So he says, yeah, give me the fiddle and the clarinet.

00:29:17.471 --> 00:29:20.275
And then he looks down and he goes, and give me the harmonica, too.

00:29:21.195 --> 00:29:21.615
And we went.

00:29:21.615 --> 00:29:23.880
up on stage and we rehearsed a tune and we did a

00:29:23.920 --> 00:29:30.189
tune with him.

00:29:32.593 --> 00:29:33.374
He was kind of funny.

00:29:33.433 --> 00:29:39.304
I mean, he's always like very sarcastic and he said, he goes, you know, guys, this is a pretty important show here.

00:29:39.384 --> 00:29:42.749
He goes, I'm going to need at least 80% from you guys.

00:29:44.451 --> 00:29:45.913
We did it and it was a lot of fun.

00:29:46.690 --> 00:29:47.553
Fantastic, yeah.

00:29:47.593 --> 00:29:50.260
And then you've also played with Whitney Houston as well.

00:29:50.280 --> 00:29:51.163
How did that one come about?

00:29:51.183 --> 00:29:51.223
So

00:29:51.505 --> 00:29:55.798
the Whitney Houston one was a little different because I didn't get a call from Whitney Houston per se.

00:29:56.220 --> 00:30:00.333
I got a call from Warren Hill from the Fugees who was producing...

00:30:00.769 --> 00:30:04.153
a song on the new Whitney Houston comeback record.

00:30:04.173 --> 00:30:07.516
It was around 1997 or eight or something like that.

00:30:08.256 --> 00:30:14.162
My daughter took a message and left it on the kitchen table, said Lauren Hill or something.

00:30:14.402 --> 00:30:16.784
And she said, dad, are you, are you playing with Lauren Hill?

00:30:16.824 --> 00:30:18.444
And I said, I don't even know who that is.

00:30:18.565 --> 00:30:20.166
And she said, well, that's Lauren Hill.

00:30:20.186 --> 00:30:21.488
You know, she's like famous, you know?

00:30:21.768 --> 00:30:27.573
And I said, well, it says I called them back and they said they want me to come and play on this on a Whitney Houston song tonight.

00:30:27.833 --> 00:31:06.932
She goes, if you're going to go play with Lauren Hill, I want to, come you know so she did it I said well go do your homework and she did and we went and did this session but the session was for Whitney Houston who had already laid down the vocals and they wanted to add harmonica it was an old Stevie Wonder song called I was made to love her and they were changing it to I was made to love him and they wanted to add chromatic harmonica so so was a pretty cool session and my daughter was thrilled that she got to have some chinese food with lauren hill

00:31:07.432 --> 00:31:34.579
fantastic yeah and you know and then the list goes on and on you played with all sorts of great people and you know you played with a big band that moan in you played with james goldway who's the irish flute player and so lots of different variety we talked about all the different genres you like to do so really coming through and uh and all the people you play with there

00:31:35.298 --> 00:31:37.339
I was thrilled to get these calls.

00:31:37.420 --> 00:31:53.973
I really couldn't figure out why I was getting the calls because we had some great harmonica players in town, you know, in New York City, you know, Bonfilio and William Gallison and Hendrik Merkens had come in from Germany and just some great players, blues and chromatic.

00:31:54.314 --> 00:32:03.162
And I was getting the calls, I think, because I was willing to just go in and do whatever had to be done and not specialize in one style of music.

00:32:03.201 --> 00:32:05.023
And I think that worked to my advantage.

00:32:05.263 --> 00:32:11.230
that I could just go in and play on a movie soundtrack or play on an artist's record and be a team player.

00:32:12.732 --> 00:32:15.916
Here's a quick word from the podcast sponsor, Blows Me Away Productions.

00:32:18.420 --> 00:32:20.883
Hey folks, this is Charlie Musselwhite.

00:32:20.903 --> 00:32:28.231
If you're in the amplified tone like I am, the best and only place to start is a microphone from Blows Me Away Productions.

00:32:28.752 --> 00:32:30.976
Check them out at blowsmeaway.com.

00:32:31.455 --> 00:32:32.958
You know I ain't lying.

00:32:33.602 --> 00:32:38.766
So as well as all this session where we mentioned that obviously you played with different bands and you've released a couple of albums.

00:32:39.106 --> 00:32:42.148
2009, you released the Utrechtian Soul.

00:32:42.369 --> 00:32:43.911
This is a sort of area of Italy, yeah?

00:32:43.931 --> 00:32:46.894
So it's kind of your Italian soul, this album.

00:32:46.993 --> 00:32:48.694
And this was Grammy-dominated, this album, yeah?

00:32:48.934 --> 00:32:49.336
It was.

00:32:49.415 --> 00:32:50.416
It made the first round.

00:32:50.436 --> 00:32:52.478
It didn't get all the way to the end.

00:32:52.518 --> 00:33:05.410
But yeah, around that time, I had realized that I had been playing on all these other things and I really needed to make a record that was a little more representative or make a record, but that was representative of what I wanted to do.

00:33:05.829 --> 00:33:10.355
And I wasn't really a songwriter, so I didn't have like these great original songs.

00:33:10.675 --> 00:33:21.646
I said, you know what, I'm going to make a record of 15 or whatever it was, cover songs that I always wanted to do and arrange them my way and play harmonica and sing and do what I do.

00:33:21.827 --> 00:33:23.388
And that became Etruscan Soul.

00:33:23.689 --> 00:33:31.317
The name Etruscan Soul was kind of, yeah, from my father's roots in Italy before the Romans were the Etruscan tribe.

00:33:31.498 --> 00:33:35.201
You know, the Romans were crazy, but the Etruscan were a lot more into the arts.

00:33:35.622 --> 00:33:37.624
And as I read up on them, I said, you know what?

00:33:37.723 --> 00:33:40.548
Maybe I have more of an Etruscan soul than a Roman soul, you know?

00:33:40.708 --> 00:33:42.388
And that hence became the name of the record.

00:33:42.630 --> 00:33:43.911
You've got a fantastic band with you.

00:33:43.931 --> 00:33:45.932
You've got a horn section, backing singer.

00:33:45.992 --> 00:33:48.935
So these are people you all knew from working on the scene there, was it?

00:33:49.156 --> 00:33:51.038
Yeah, I tapped into that.

00:33:51.058 --> 00:33:54.241
I realized that I had met some, you know, I'm in New York area.

00:33:54.422 --> 00:33:58.747
So I tapped into some great players and I asked them to join me and most of them did.

00:33:58.807 --> 00:33:59.928
And I was thrilled.

00:34:00.269 --> 00:34:21.085
One thing I really like about the album is, again, we talked about the variety material you do two songs that you do ticket to ride the Beatles song which you play you know the harmonica over and I just listen thinking this is great you know why don't more people do this and kind of play a pop song you know on the harmonica and it just sounds fantastic so

00:34:30.657 --> 00:34:54.559
yeah and and i and i realized that you know and like you said not enough people are doing it you know they they'll play a blues song or they'll play a jazz song but why not just play pop music on it because you can i mean it's not that limited and there i was playing you know a beatles song in basically second position blues thing no overblow nothing fancy and there it was it was like right there

00:34:54.938 --> 00:35:02.465
exactly and that's what i was really thinking listen to it works so well i mean yeah yeah because you're playing on a diatonic it sounds a bit bluesy but it It just works so well, doesn't it?

00:35:02.485 --> 00:35:04.648
I'm thinking this, you know, we've got to hear more songs like this.

00:35:04.688 --> 00:35:05.128
Fantastic.

00:35:05.268 --> 00:35:08.012
You also do Strange Brew on there by Cream.

00:35:08.052 --> 00:35:10.014
You know, this is a bit more of a rock song, right?

00:35:10.054 --> 00:35:12.175
But it works in a similar sort of way, doesn't it?

00:35:12.496 --> 00:35:13.157
Yes, it does.

00:35:13.318 --> 00:35:13.637
It does.

00:35:13.737 --> 00:35:18.762
And I had gone to see Eric Clapton and Cream at a local high school here back in like 68.

00:35:18.923 --> 00:35:21.206
That also was a big influence on me too.

00:35:21.405 --> 00:35:25.891
And then I realized that why not try and play some of these songs on harmonica?

00:35:26.411 --> 00:35:33.039
I'm always interested in trying to get people to use, right, as a session guy that I became to use harmonica on more stuff.

00:35:33.179 --> 00:35:42.050
Don't just stereotype it and say, it's got to be the cowboy Ennio Morricone movie, or it's got to be the jazz Tootsie Omen, or it's got to be the this or that.

00:35:42.250 --> 00:35:45.454
Why not just get arrangers and composers interested?

00:35:45.494 --> 00:35:49.239
That was kind of my goal is like, let's get this harmonica out there now.

00:35:49.338 --> 00:35:52.202
It's time to make it a bona fide instrument.

00:35:52.461 --> 00:35:53.023
Yeah, definitely.

00:35:53.083 --> 00:35:58.750
And another one I want to pick out from there is Peg of My Heart, which is a famous kind of harmonica band song.

00:36:10.434 --> 00:36:12.335
So you're playing this on diatonic, right?

00:36:12.396 --> 00:36:14.777
Not chromatic, which is, it's more traditionally a chromatic song.

00:36:14.797 --> 00:36:16.840
So what made you choose to play it on diatonic?

00:36:17.039 --> 00:36:22.824
What made me choose to play it on diatonic was, I know you're a member of the UK harmonica, right?

00:36:23.025 --> 00:36:23.385
Yeah.

00:36:23.405 --> 00:36:27.128
And I was a member of Spa, which was the American version of that.

00:36:27.409 --> 00:36:33.813
I had joined it back in the seventies when most harmonica players didn't even know, young guys like me at the time didn't know what it was.

00:36:33.974 --> 00:36:37.476
But I said, this is an organization that, you know, loves harmonica.

00:36:37.516 --> 00:36:38.498
Let me become part of it.

00:36:38.759 --> 00:36:42.621
Well, when I went to become part of it, uh, The late Danny Wilson invited me.

00:36:42.862 --> 00:36:51.271
I realized that there was a lot of older players at the time playing chromatic, and they really didn't have a lot of respect for the diatonic guys at the time.

00:36:51.472 --> 00:36:53.994
And I would get into these little bitty arguments with guys.

00:36:54.074 --> 00:37:01.922
I had like a little correspondence thing going on with this guy, Eddie Manson, who was this great classical session guy from California, chromatic guy.

00:37:02.143 --> 00:37:04.445
And he compared the diatonic to the penny whistle.

00:37:04.505 --> 00:37:06.288
And he goes, yeah, that's like a toy.

00:37:06.367 --> 00:37:07.668
And I said, wait a minute.

00:37:07.768 --> 00:37:08.730
No, it isn't a toy.

00:37:08.750 --> 00:37:10.351
You know, we'd get into these philosophical conversations.

00:37:10.351 --> 00:37:11.753
things about music.

00:37:12.034 --> 00:37:19.221
And then I realized that this is a great organization, but they're into that Peg of My Heart thing from the 50s, that harmonica band thing.

00:37:19.501 --> 00:37:20.603
So I said, you know what?

00:37:20.782 --> 00:37:25.268
What if I did what Charlie McCoy did and just kind of made it into a country tune diatonic?

00:37:25.427 --> 00:37:27.070
And then I played Peg of My Heart.

00:37:27.170 --> 00:37:29.972
And that's when I decided to learn it to make those guys

00:37:30.032 --> 00:37:30.393
happy.

00:37:30.833 --> 00:37:31.173
You're right.

00:37:31.193 --> 00:37:36.119
There was a big division there, but hopefully you helped to cross that divide and bring the people together between the two

00:37:36.139 --> 00:37:37.041
institutions.

00:37:37.181 --> 00:37:37.681
I think it helped.

00:37:37.760 --> 00:37:48.902
Later on, there was guys like Joe Felisco that joined and mad cat and i think that helped bridge the gap because you know otherwise the harmonica was just going to die in the world of peg of my heart you know

00:37:49.202 --> 00:38:00.925
yeah so then after after this album you did a an album which is a sort of tribute to paul butterfield called electric butter i think you released in 2015 so

00:38:09.858 --> 00:38:10.494
Thank you.

00:38:11.425 --> 00:38:15.048
So this is with the Ed Palermo big band, yeah?

00:38:15.068 --> 00:38:17.590
So obviously Paul Butterfield was a big influence on you.

00:38:17.992 --> 00:38:21.153
Yeah, Butterfield was a big influence when I was learning the blues stuff.

00:38:21.414 --> 00:38:31.963
I went back to the Chicago Blues Masters via Paul Butterfield because after I was listening to Bob Dylan and John Lennon and Brian Jones on the pop music, you know, the Beatles and Stones and all that.

00:38:32.204 --> 00:38:34.166
My mother owned a candy store too, by the way.

00:38:34.326 --> 00:38:41.032
And there was this guy who came into the candy store back when I was in high school and he had the first Paul Butterfield record under his arm.

00:38:41.072 --> 00:38:44.155
And he was kind kind of like an artsy, kind of a tough guy.

00:38:44.775 --> 00:38:46.237
But he had this Paul Butterfield.

00:38:46.257 --> 00:38:49.000
He goes, hey, I think you and your brothers would like this record.

00:38:49.039 --> 00:38:49.900
Why don't you check it out?

00:38:50.221 --> 00:38:51.101
Now, I had no idea.

00:38:51.121 --> 00:38:53.864
I'm from New Jersey, what Chicago blues was.

00:38:53.925 --> 00:38:56.088
And Paul Butterfield was second generation.

00:38:56.128 --> 00:38:58.449
He had a half white, half black blues band.

00:38:58.590 --> 00:39:02.393
And they were playing stuff from the Masters, from Little Walter and Muddy Waters.

00:39:02.735 --> 00:39:04.737
And that turned me on to that music.

00:39:05.237 --> 00:39:08.101
So Paul Butterfield's music was important to me.

00:39:08.240 --> 00:39:11.864
He was sort of doing like what the Stones were doing in the UK Right.

00:39:11.945 --> 00:39:13.346
They turn in the world onto.

00:39:13.626 --> 00:39:19.572
And also, you know, who was the other guy in London, too, that there was a real blues aficionado?

00:39:19.793 --> 00:39:36.670
Cyril Davis.

00:39:41.295 --> 00:39:43.577
that they probably would have never heard before.

00:39:43.617 --> 00:39:50.085
And that's kind of like fast forward to turn of the century when I got a call to go play with the Blues Brothers.

00:39:50.365 --> 00:39:55.210
At first in the 80s, when the Blues Brothers movie came out, I figured this is like a joke.

00:39:55.251 --> 00:39:56.612
They're making fun of the Blues.

00:39:56.652 --> 00:39:57.273
What are they doing?

00:39:57.313 --> 00:39:58.094
You know, comedians.

00:39:58.333 --> 00:39:59.074
And I didn't get it.

00:39:59.315 --> 00:40:06.143
But when Steve Cropper called me and he asked me to come out in front of this band, but when I went out, I did it because it was Steve Cropper.

00:40:06.222 --> 00:40:06.922
He was the colonel.

00:40:06.963 --> 00:40:08.405
I had to go play with these

00:40:08.505 --> 00:40:09.106
legends, right?

00:40:09.346 --> 00:40:09.887
So exactly.

00:40:09.927 --> 00:40:24.222
So just to explain this, so this was the original blues brothers band and steve cropper was the guitarist in the movie yeah yeah so so this was all after the movies had all finished and um you think you know obviously john belushi had died and dan akroyd had given it all up and everything yeah at this stage

00:40:24.581 --> 00:40:43.382
yeah john had died and dan akroyd still and judy belushi owned the name of the band and dan akroyd sanctioned the bank because look at guys i don't want to come out and do gigs in europe and asia you know i'm busy making movies so he sanctioned the bank hey go out and do your thing so they needed a front man and that's how I got the call to go do this thing.

00:40:43.521 --> 00:41:03.844
But I realized when I did go out into the world and now I'm doing these concerts all over the place, there was young kids, my grandkids age and generations of people that now knew this music, which happened to be blues and R&B, that never would have ever heard this music without that movie.

00:41:04.304 --> 00:41:07.068
And so I got down off my high horse and said, oh, you know what?

00:41:07.367 --> 00:41:07.788
I get it.

00:41:08.048 --> 00:41:09.851
And I'm going to go out and I played with these guys.

00:41:10.170 --> 00:41:13.614
And I saw the smiles on the people's faces as they all left the concerts.

00:41:14.175 --> 00:41:18.260
And this was every place from, I mean, like Ronnie Scott's all the way to Japan.

00:41:18.639 --> 00:41:21.362
I mean, people were moved by this music.

00:41:21.782 --> 00:41:23.505
And that band was their little link.

00:41:24.146 --> 00:41:24.847
Yeah, fantastic.

00:41:25.067 --> 00:41:27.789
And so you weren't like a Blues Brothers tribute band, though.

00:41:28.010 --> 00:41:29.150
It was just you as a singer.

00:41:29.331 --> 00:41:33.135
There wasn't like two, you know, there wasn't like the Elwood and Jake Blues Brothers thing.

00:41:33.175 --> 00:41:35.858
No, and there's some really good ones out there.

00:41:36.559 --> 00:41:38.521
But I never would have personally done that.

00:41:38.701 --> 00:41:40.182
I didn't want to join a tribute band.

00:41:40.222 --> 00:41:43.891
But when I saw it was The original guys are who was like Matt Guitar Murphy.

00:41:43.951 --> 00:41:45.355
And I said, you know what?

00:41:45.614 --> 00:41:47.280
These guys are the real deal.

00:41:47.340 --> 00:41:49.043
So let me bring what I can to it.

00:41:49.284 --> 00:41:50.206
Yeah, no, fantastic.

00:41:50.226 --> 00:41:52.853
And obviously you were playing harmonica with these guys as well.

00:41:55.882 --> 00:41:55.961
Yeah.

00:41:55.981 --> 00:41:56.061
Yeah.

00:42:02.146 --> 00:42:04.628
They didn't know I was a harmonica player, even.

00:42:04.907 --> 00:42:07.050
I said, yes, I can sing these songs, Steve.

00:42:07.090 --> 00:42:07.971
I know these songs.

00:42:08.411 --> 00:42:10.132
And I said, you know, I play harmonica.

00:42:10.393 --> 00:42:12.855
Well, we don't really need a harmonica player at this point.

00:42:12.914 --> 00:42:14.536
You know, we just need you to sing these songs.

00:42:15.317 --> 00:42:18.519
When I went to take the first gig, we were in Poland or something.

00:42:18.599 --> 00:42:23.545
And I went to take out my harmonica on She Caught the Katie, which was their first big opening number.

00:42:23.764 --> 00:42:27.148
And at the rehearsal in the afternoon, Blue Lou Marini said, no.

00:42:27.507 --> 00:42:29.369
He goes, Rob, you don't play harmonica on this.

00:42:29.690 --> 00:42:30.451
I said, what do you mean?

00:42:30.490 --> 00:42:31.992
Taj Mahal wrote it?

00:42:32.112 --> 00:42:34.717
And Dan Aykroyd played harmonica on the movie.

00:42:34.956 --> 00:42:37.922
And they said, yeah, but now we made it a trombone solo.

00:42:38.163 --> 00:42:41.449
And he said, you could play at the end of the song over the one chord.

00:42:41.570 --> 00:42:43.213
And I just kind of gave him a dirty look.

00:42:43.253 --> 00:42:45.978
And I took the harmonica and I put it in my back pocket.

00:42:45.998 --> 00:42:48.443
And I said, nah, I don't play over the one chord.

00:42:50.242 --> 00:42:50.963
And they said, oh, well.

00:42:51.222 --> 00:42:56.708
And then the next night we were playing at some fancy revolving stage in Monaco, right?

00:42:57.007 --> 00:42:58.369
And I was kind of still nervous.

00:42:58.429 --> 00:42:59.409
It was my second show.

00:42:59.449 --> 00:43:00.831
So I'm warming up for the show.

00:43:00.871 --> 00:43:06.295
And the way I would warm up is I'd pull a harmonica out of my bag and just play, even though I wasn't playing it in the show.

00:43:07.016 --> 00:43:12.360
And Steve Cropper walked into the dressing room and he goes, Eddie, Eddie Floyd was our special guest.

00:43:12.380 --> 00:43:13.382
He goes, come in here.

00:43:13.442 --> 00:43:16.164
He goes, listen to what Rob's playing on that harmonica.

00:43:16.505 --> 00:43:18.487
And he goes, we got to work that into the show.

00:43:18.806 --> 00:43:21.771
And then after that, I started playing harmonica and singing.

00:43:22.090 --> 00:43:23.152
Yeah, fantastic.

00:43:23.172 --> 00:43:24.675
A fantastic gig to do.

00:43:24.735 --> 00:43:26.898
How long were you playing with those guys and touring around?

00:43:27.059 --> 00:43:28.842
Probably from around turn of the century.

00:43:29.023 --> 00:43:32.507
So I would say around 2000 to around the present.

00:43:32.768 --> 00:43:38.157
And we haven't had much since the pandemic hit, but over 20 years.

00:43:38.530 --> 00:43:39.210
A great gig.

00:43:39.231 --> 00:43:39.490
Wow.

00:43:39.971 --> 00:43:42.233
Just finishing off on your music career.

00:43:42.432 --> 00:43:45.096
I think you've got a latest band, Paparazzi's Juke Joint.

00:43:45.155 --> 00:43:46.797
Is this your latest band?

00:43:47.117 --> 00:43:47.577
Yeah.

00:43:48.077 --> 00:43:54.083
So everything kind of morphed over the years after I did my little records at Truskin Soul and Electric Butter.

00:43:54.364 --> 00:43:58.768
I realized that now I have a lot of stuff that I could call from in my career.

00:43:59.148 --> 00:44:12.661
That became Paparazzi's Juke Joint, where whoever you hire me with, maybe a two-piece, three-piece, four-piece, up to a 10-piece band, we're going to call it Paparazzi's And it's just going to be all the music that I've always wanted to play.

00:44:12.822 --> 00:44:14.945
And I'm going to entertain you for a night.

00:44:15.264 --> 00:44:20.391
And going back a little bit to the session where you touched on, you know, you've done movie soundtracks.

00:44:20.452 --> 00:44:25.197
You've done a song, a movie called Tom Hook, which is a Walt Disney movie.

00:44:33.710 --> 00:44:33.789
Yeah.

00:44:34.561 --> 00:44:47.166
done TV shows you mentioned advert jingles you know you've been on the David Letman show with Dolly Parton so lots of TV work and also quite a lot of movie soundtracks as well yeah

00:44:47.521 --> 00:44:47.882
Yeah.

00:44:48.043 --> 00:44:54.074
You know, all of a sudden when you become a guy that's on call, then you never know where the calls are going to come from.

00:44:54.114 --> 00:45:01.467
You know, I would get calls from, let's go play behind George Jones on the Letterman show or culture clubs coming into town.

00:45:01.487 --> 00:45:03.672
They're doing a comeback and they need a harmonica player.

00:45:03.831 --> 00:45:06.155
And you become this on call kind of a guy.

00:45:06.175 --> 00:45:07.338
It's pretty interesting.

00:45:07.418 --> 00:45:09.061
You never know what the gig is going to be about.

00:45:09.409 --> 00:45:11.952
And you also do some teaching of harmonica.

00:45:11.992 --> 00:45:17.777
You've got this My Music Masterclass where you've got, I think it's three videos, which are available online by your website.

00:45:17.797 --> 00:45:19.739
I'll put a link onto the podcast page for those.

00:45:20.059 --> 00:45:20.318
Yeah.

00:45:20.780 --> 00:45:25.384
The teaching thing kind of just became a natural thing because that's how I had learned.

00:45:25.463 --> 00:45:29.628
You know, I found a couple of guys like Bonfilio and Toots on the telephone.

00:45:29.708 --> 00:45:36.673
And I always felt like, you know what, if I ever get a chance, I'm going to try and help other harmonica players from whatever information I can use.

00:45:37.074 --> 00:45:40.498
I started getting calls from the Turtle Bay Music school where I learned.

00:45:40.760 --> 00:45:42.543
And they said, you want to come and teach here?

00:45:42.623 --> 00:45:45.110
And so back in the 90s, I was teaching there.

00:45:45.150 --> 00:45:50.164
And then I turned it over to Dennis Grunling, who was in the area, who was a great player.

00:45:50.204 --> 00:45:51.788
And I said, why don't you take over?

00:45:51.847 --> 00:45:53.251
I'm not going to be teaching anymore.

00:45:53.592 --> 00:45:58.641
But then Fast forward now, right, to the new century and even the pandemic.

00:45:58.782 --> 00:46:04.126
We've all had to reinvent ourselves, haven't we, with podcasts and teaching and Zoom lessons.

00:46:04.226 --> 00:46:06.688
And I started teaching online even.

00:46:06.789 --> 00:46:10.552
I mean, I was teaching from my house and people wanted to come over and study with me.

00:46:10.731 --> 00:46:19.039
And I would tailor make my lesson to the student because harmonica is such a diverse instrument and everybody plays different styles.

00:46:19.320 --> 00:46:19.800
Fantastic.

00:46:19.820 --> 00:46:23.163
Yeah, and you're still teaching now on Skype and things, yeah?

00:46:23.282 --> 00:46:24.304
Yeah, I'll teach online.

00:46:24.304 --> 00:46:26.851
A little less now since the pandemic ended.

00:46:27.072 --> 00:46:30.784
And I do some stuff from the house here for locals that people want to come over.

00:46:30.824 --> 00:46:35.802
It's a great way of keeping the great players and the young players interested in this instrument.

00:46:36.193 --> 00:46:36.835
Definitely, yeah.

00:46:36.855 --> 00:46:38.956
Well, you've got definitely a wealth of experience to share.

00:46:39.336 --> 00:46:44.601
So a question I ask each time, Rob, is if you had 10 minutes to practice, what would you spend those 10 minutes doing?

00:46:45.121 --> 00:46:48.905
You know, it really, I'm not a very disciplined player and I'm not proud of that.

00:46:49.144 --> 00:46:55.070
I wish I had had more discipline to do with some of the great jazz and classical players do.

00:46:55.311 --> 00:47:00.695
So I'll sit down and work on whatever I'm into at the time, if it's a piece of music.

00:47:01.016 --> 00:47:04.798
Matter of fact, last week, my brother moved down to North Carolina.

00:47:04.858 --> 00:47:06.159
He plays with a keyboard player down there.

00:47:06.159 --> 00:47:10.945
They sent me a track of Blue Zet, which is a famous Toot Steelman song, right?

00:47:11.264 --> 00:47:12.947
And they said, would you want to play on this?

00:47:13.126 --> 00:47:16.050
You know, I never really even played Blue Zet.

00:47:16.251 --> 00:47:17.632
So that's what I was working on.

00:47:17.972 --> 00:47:20.335
So I work on whatever is on the table.

00:47:20.695 --> 00:47:26.201
And if it means practicing some scales so I can jam on a tune or whatever, that's what I do.

00:47:26.422 --> 00:47:35.530
I remember when I got a call to play with the New York Philharmonic to do Henry Mancini's Breakfast at Tiffany's, I wanted to work on that classic chromatic sound.

00:47:35.711 --> 00:47:55.652
And I wanted to sound like the guy george fields who was a session player from california back then and i worked on that for weeks getting my tongue blocking chromatic plan to try and sound less like toots and stevie and more like this sound that we had remembered from this movie so i just practiced whatever's on the table

00:47:56.373 --> 00:48:08.085
so so we'll move on to the the last section now uh rob and uh talk about gear so first of all your harmonica of choice is a is a big river hona harmonic here which is probably quite an unusual choice.

00:48:08.126 --> 00:48:11.068
What made you choose this as probably on the cheaper end of the scale?

00:48:11.088 --> 00:48:13.771
But I know you do some modifications, don't you?

00:48:14.373 --> 00:48:21.820
So for diatonic, when I started out, obviously in the 60s, they only had the marine bands and the quality control was pretty ugly back then.

00:48:22.101 --> 00:48:23.342
You never knew what you were going to get.

00:48:23.463 --> 00:48:24.163
And that's all you had.

00:48:24.182 --> 00:48:29.289
You didn't have all these models like crossovers and golden melodies and special 20s.

00:48:29.509 --> 00:48:30.070
You only had that.

00:48:30.429 --> 00:48:44.864
So I learned on a marine band, as all these other super duper models came out years later, I've tried them, but I found that since I learned a different way, I played on some pretty leaky harmonicas back in the 60s and 70s.

00:48:45.106 --> 00:48:47.969
I learned to push my air a little differently through the harmonicas.

00:48:48.268 --> 00:49:00.922
So what might be a good harmonica for you, since you learned on maybe a great, like a crossover that really sings for you, you know, for me, that might not work because it would clam up because I'm maybe pushing a little more air in a different way.

00:49:01.262 --> 00:49:05.967
So for me, the Big River, Price Point was sort of like a modern day Marine Band.

00:49:05.967 --> 00:49:11.273
that Horner was going to now make a modular harmonica out of that you could change the plates on.

00:49:11.474 --> 00:49:18.541
So for me, at price point, I'm using a load of harmonicas and that was going to work for me because it was the right price.

00:49:18.742 --> 00:49:20.543
So I went with the Big River for that reason.

00:49:20.864 --> 00:49:28.351
And now you're selling these custom Big River signature harmonicas, which are using the Blue Moon Combs, which are made by Tom Halchak.

00:49:28.452 --> 00:49:37.240
Yeah, if you open up a Big River, you realize that the cover plates are nice, the reed plates are really nice, but the weakest link is that little molded comb.

00:49:37.300 --> 00:49:39.103
It's a really cheesy comb.

00:49:39.304 --> 00:49:43.128
And that makes the harmonica play not so well, maybe leak and whatever.

00:49:43.487 --> 00:49:49.635
So I found that when people started coming out with combs, there was a guy, the first guy was this guy, Mark Lavoie.

00:49:50.155 --> 00:49:53.458
Back in the early 90s, he came out with this thing called the Lavoie comb.

00:49:53.478 --> 00:49:54.579
It was a titanium.

00:49:54.840 --> 00:49:58.103
And that's when I realized that, okay, now we have the option.

00:49:58.563 --> 00:50:01.987
So fast forward to Tom Halcheck and Blue Moon Combs.

00:50:02.447 --> 00:50:09.876
He was making all kinds of materials, plastic and synthetic and metal and whatever, aluminum and anodized aluminum.

00:50:10.157 --> 00:50:15.061
I found if you just replaced it, take the Big River and replace the comb, you've got a great instrument.

00:50:15.382 --> 00:50:24.271
Buy the cheap Big Rivers and then add these combs or let Tom put them together because Tom Halcheck and we have a lot of customizers now out there, which is great.

00:50:24.311 --> 00:50:26.054
We never had this when I was coming up.

00:50:26.074 --> 00:50:28.715
And these guys can tweak your harmonica the way you want it.

00:50:28.916 --> 00:50:33.942
Your overblow, you're a wet player, you're a dry player, you're a hard player, you're a soft player.

00:50:34.141 --> 00:50:35.322
So that became an option.

00:50:35.623 --> 00:50:35.824
Oh, great.

00:50:35.824 --> 00:50:39.487
I have a couple of the Blue Moon combs myself, which I bought a good few years ago now.

00:50:39.527 --> 00:50:40.768
But yeah, they're excellent combs.

00:50:40.869 --> 00:50:41.750
Yeah, so good stuff.

00:50:42.150 --> 00:50:44.452
And then on chromatic, you're also playing honers.

00:50:44.492 --> 00:50:46.414
I think you're playing the 270 mainly.

00:50:46.916 --> 00:50:49.559
Yeah, I pretty much stuck with the honer harmonicas.

00:50:49.858 --> 00:50:55.985
I had a short love affair with Suzuki and I went over to Suzuki because they were really getting into things at the time.

00:50:56.226 --> 00:50:59.909
I wasn't so crazy about their diatonics, but their chromatics were really nice.

00:50:59.989 --> 00:51:01.731
The serious and the fabulous.

00:51:01.791 --> 00:51:03.954
And I started adding some of those to my kit.

00:51:04.153 --> 00:51:08.818
And then honer got better again and I went back because that was the company I started with.

00:51:08.978 --> 00:51:15.626
But I always found that the Stockowner 270, before the Toots Hard Bopper and all that, was a great instrument.

00:51:15.766 --> 00:51:16.827
You know, square holes.

00:51:16.887 --> 00:51:21.713
I mean, it was a little, it wasn't like a fancy looking thing, but it really always held up really well.

00:51:21.873 --> 00:51:32.605
Problem is, is that, you know, with the chromatic, they use these pear wood combs and eventually comb was going to crack so that even if the reed plates were still good, you've got a cracked comb and now you're back to square one.

00:51:32.724 --> 00:51:36.047
And they weren't so modular that you could just pop off the reed plates.

00:51:36.148 --> 00:51:37.570
You kind of had to know what you were doing.

00:51:37.849 --> 00:51:39.211
I still do play the chromatics.

00:51:39.351 --> 00:51:40.592
I play the 270s.

00:51:40.612 --> 00:51:41.713
That's my choice.

00:51:41.793 --> 00:51:48.681
But I have a guy in San Francisco, Steve Malerbi, who had worked on all of Norton Buffalo's harmonicas.

00:51:48.802 --> 00:51:50.824
He had done some servicing for Stevie Wonder.

00:51:51.264 --> 00:51:53.507
And I don't like working on my harmonicas.

00:51:53.626 --> 00:51:55.548
I'm not very handy, especially the chromatic.

00:51:55.588 --> 00:52:00.534
Now, diatonics, I'll take them apart and I'll tune a couple of notes or I'll make it into a country tune.

00:52:00.614 --> 00:52:05.219
I could do that because diatonics don't have all the moving parts that a chromatic does.

00:52:05.460 --> 00:52:21.009
So I went with this guy who's a pretty good tech and he does a good job for me before we leave the chromatic thing I should also mention the chromatic deluxe model is it has the round holes and that's a great and it has a synthetic comb so I added started adding some of those to my kit

00:52:21.530 --> 00:52:27.300
talking about different tunings on the diatonic you mentioned you play country tuning earlier on so do you use many different tunings

00:52:27.713 --> 00:52:29.114
I don't use many.

00:52:29.135 --> 00:52:35.019
I do like the country tuning because you don't have to change too much of your technique.

00:52:35.099 --> 00:52:37.922
You just have that one major seventh on the fifth hole draw.

00:52:38.282 --> 00:52:40.164
But I'm open to other tunings.

00:52:40.264 --> 00:52:47.610
I did some workshops with Todd Parrott, who's a great player, and he has his Parrott tuning where he takes the hole seven and tweaks that.

00:52:47.771 --> 00:52:51.655
And then guys like Brendan Power have done amazing things with the tuning layouts.

00:52:51.755 --> 00:52:59.481
And then you have that Patty Richter tuning where you take hole number three because holes two, draw, and three blower, the same note on the diet.

00:52:59.681 --> 00:53:04.387
So you can kind of make that an A note instead of having to bend the, you know, on a C horn.

00:53:04.507 --> 00:53:06.789
So I don't mess around with them a whole lot.

00:53:06.909 --> 00:53:10.514
I don't want to get too far away from relearning all these tunings.

00:53:10.574 --> 00:53:17.701
So I stick with just the country tunes and then I've learned how to do overblows and the same thing with the chromatic.

00:53:17.942 --> 00:53:19.583
I don't retune anything.

00:53:19.884 --> 00:53:21.344
I'll buy different keys.

00:53:21.846 --> 00:53:22.987
And what about your embouchure?

00:53:23.387 --> 00:53:29.894
I would say 50% pucker and 50% tongue block on all my playing on diatonic and chromatic.

00:53:30.034 --> 00:53:31.757
It's a back and forth constantly.

00:53:31.856 --> 00:53:41.969
For me, I'm also very big on telling players not to buy in to the theory that you get bigger tone with 100% tongue blocking.

00:53:42.268 --> 00:53:45.512
That's a fallacy, in my opinion, after 50 years of playing.

00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.000
...

00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.000
...

00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.000
...

00:53:59.458 --> 00:54:04.902
The tone comes way further back in your throat than it does with your front of mouth embouchure.

00:54:05.302 --> 00:54:09.347
You can have a full, full tone as a pucker player or a tongue block player.

00:54:09.567 --> 00:54:11.829
There's a lot of factors that go into tone.

00:54:12.268 --> 00:54:17.213
So anytime we have harmonica players that say, oh, if you're not tongue blocking, you're doing it wrong.

00:54:17.614 --> 00:54:18.554
I totally disagree.

00:54:18.755 --> 00:54:32.266
You may not agree with me, but I feel I have a pretty good tone and I've made it work by using both of the You should learn them both and keep up with them both.

00:54:32.286 --> 00:54:32.646
Yeah.

00:54:32.666 --> 00:54:39.614
And then there's certain licks that sound like really good with tongue blocking and certain effects that you can get.

00:54:39.675 --> 00:54:45.021
And then, of course, corner switching where you're playing out of both sides of your mouth is the ultimate in tongue blocking.

00:54:45.101 --> 00:54:50.527
And, you know, and there's that too, if you're playing bigger interval leaps and jumps and stuff like that.

00:54:50.646 --> 00:54:58.034
But there's also things on pucker that you'll never be able to get that speed as a tongue blocker because of the armature of the puckering.

00:54:58.414 --> 00:54:59.376
You can move faster.

00:54:59.376 --> 00:55:02.418
and do licks that you can't do as a tongue blocker.

00:55:02.800 --> 00:55:05.422
And so equipment-wise, what about microphones and amps?

00:55:05.463 --> 00:55:06.202
What do you like to use?

00:55:06.724 --> 00:55:12.769
Yeah, mics and amps are interesting because we've also added so many options like we did with harmonicas themselves.

00:55:13.391 --> 00:55:17.835
I helped the Audix company develop what Mike called the Fireball a couple of years back.

00:55:18.556 --> 00:55:20.177
I really like that microphone.

00:55:20.237 --> 00:55:21.739
It's not a bullet mic.

00:55:22.019 --> 00:55:27.967
For Chicago blues, you might want to use something like an Astatic or a Shure or a Bulletini.

00:55:28.226 --> 00:55:35.574
Jason Ritchie developed up to 57, the short 57, into a Jason Ritchie model, which is a really great mic.

00:55:35.635 --> 00:55:37.456
So I'm all over the map with that.

00:55:37.556 --> 00:55:38.797
I don't have one favorite.

00:55:38.898 --> 00:55:45.565
If I had a go-to mic, it would probably be the Audix Fireball with the volume control, because I go for a cleaner sound.

00:55:45.766 --> 00:55:48.909
If I want dirt, I'll get that from the amp or my throat.

00:55:49.228 --> 00:56:12.751
A bullet mic is great, but the problem with a bullet mic is it gives, you know, since I play a lot of different style music, not just Chicago blues, it's going to make it sound like a guitar player would sound if he stepped on a distortion pedal and left it on the whole performance to me that's what a bullet mic is it's one sound and that's it and it's great is if you're just playing classic chicago blues it sounds great for the whole set

00:56:13.092 --> 00:56:16.135
so you're playing a lot through a pa then and not so much through amps

00:56:16.414 --> 00:56:32.193
no i mean not not so much that this microphone works great through pas but i'll use this audix microphone through i i like playing through a fender ramp i'll use a fender blues deluxe and i'll plug right in You know, I have the converter plugged so it's quarter like a guitar jack.

00:56:32.514 --> 00:56:35.498
And I plug right into the Fender Blues Deluxe, which has 112.

00:56:36.318 --> 00:56:40.324
But I don't like modifying the amplifier for harmonica.

00:56:40.684 --> 00:56:43.748
I feel then you're starting to do what you did with the bullet mic.

00:56:44.289 --> 00:56:46.391
I want that amp to sound like a Fender amp.

00:56:46.532 --> 00:56:49.596
I don't want to start modifying the tube swapping and all that stuff.

00:56:50.115 --> 00:56:51.157
I want to plug into it.

00:56:51.585 --> 00:56:58.960
And if you tweak it right with your knobs and your bass and treble and master volume, you can get a little dirt from that amp or plenty of dirt from it.

00:56:59.101 --> 00:57:00.985
And then also do the rest from your cupping.

00:57:01.266 --> 00:57:09.202
So I do like playing through amps, but I like having the variety of changing the colorization from tune to tune.

00:57:09.483 --> 00:57:12.590
And I can do that with an amp and with a mic like that.

00:57:12.929 --> 00:57:14.193
And it doesn't feed back.

00:57:14.492 --> 00:57:17.400
And so final question, just about your future plans.

00:57:17.460 --> 00:57:19.905
I see you've got some things lined up for 2023.

00:57:20.226 --> 00:57:23.753
You've got a Van Morrison tribute coming up in March.

00:57:23.773 --> 00:57:26.760
You've got a Shanghai Jazz and there's a Hartfest in May.

00:57:26.780 --> 00:57:29.226
So you've got plenty of things coming up later this year.

00:57:29.570 --> 00:57:30.610
Yeah, there's a lot of stuff.

00:57:30.931 --> 00:57:35.735
I haven't gotten any tour calls for the Blues Brothers and who knows what the future brings for that.

00:57:36.155 --> 00:57:41.099
But I've got little projects that I do like the Van Morrison tribute and the Bob Dylan tribute.

00:57:41.280 --> 00:57:46.244
And I teach, I'll continue teaching from home, playing local gigs at my Shanghai Jazz Club.

00:57:46.585 --> 00:57:48.726
And I'm being more selective as I'm older now.

00:57:48.786 --> 00:57:49.887
I just turned 70.

00:57:49.947 --> 00:57:56.172
So I don't want to just go out and play really loud, rock'em, sock'em gigs anymore.

00:57:56.193 --> 00:57:57.634
I want to do stuff that I want to do.

00:57:57.934 --> 00:57:59.936
So it looks like a good mixture ahead.

00:58:00.376 --> 00:58:03.081
So thanks so much for joining me today, Rob Paparazzi.

00:58:03.501 --> 00:58:03.802
Thanks.

00:58:03.922 --> 00:58:06.726
Great being here, Neil, and good luck with the podcast.

00:58:06.847 --> 00:58:07.728
Proud to be part of it.

00:58:08.489 --> 00:58:11.054
Once again, thanks to Zydle for sponsoring the podcast.

00:58:11.333 --> 00:58:21.230
Be sure to check out their great range of harmonicas and products at www.zydle1847.com or on Facebook or Instagram at Zydle Harmonicas.

00:58:22.018 --> 00:58:24.262
Thanks so much to Rob for joining me today.

00:58:24.302 --> 00:58:29.632
What a career he's had and well deserved with his great playing on both diatonic and chromatic harmonicas.

00:58:30.052 --> 00:58:33.940
And thanks once again to Robert Sawyer for making a donation to the podcast.

00:58:34.300 --> 00:58:35.402
And thanks all for listening.

00:58:35.943 --> 00:58:39.530
Let's sign off now with Rob playing us out with She's Too Good For Me.

00:58:40.010 --> 00:58:43.617
That cannot be true, Rob.

00:58:43.637 --> 00:58:43.677
No.

00:58:45.409 --> 00:59:12.094
Little girl's too good for me, yeah