Blues Harmonica

By Peter Lenkefi

It's impossible to imagine the blues without the Mississippi sax -- otherwise known as the blues harp. The harmonica has a voice that cuts through - when the guitar player will turn down, of course.

The blues harp possibly reached it's highest level of perfection with Little Walter, know to the Bureau of Statistics as Marion Walter Jacobs.

The harmonica goes back to an invention by the Chinese empress Nyn-Kwa, a reed instrument known as the Sheng (meaning sublime voice). This was about 3,000 BCE, so there probably wasn't much blues jamming going on around the palace.The more modern version came from the work of Christian Friedrich Ludwig Bushmann in 1821. Bushmann was a 16 year old clockmaker in Germany who lashed together 15 separate pitch pipes and called it a "mund-eaoline" which means "mouth harp."

The harp loved by classic blues players, the Marine Band, came along in 1896 and could be yours for a mere fifty cents.

The move into blues for the harp happened over a period of time and there are various theories and "firsts" to contend with. Owing to the instrument's ability to sound like a train gave it a place in early pieces such as Railroad Piece by Palmer Bailey or Railroad Blues by Freeman Stowers. According to some, the "mama" sound the harmonica makes put it in several songs, along with its ability to sound like yelping dogs (especially the way some play it), a natural for blues about prisons and escapes.

Maybe the first real blues-blues comes from Jaybird Coleman who recorded between 1927 and 1930. The songs were very much in the blues vein and, as a strange aside, it is said that Jaybird Coleman was managed by the Ku Klux Klan in 1929.

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