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Date: Mon, 06 Aug 2001 15:08:47 -0400
From: Pat Missin
Subject: Re: prewar texas harp players/Att Tom Ball

At 10:07 AM 8/6/2001 -0700, Tom Ball wrote:
>
>Other than William McCoy, only other one I can think of is Freeman
>Stowers, who is thought to have been from Texas, but who recorded in
>Indiana....

Well, I know Paul Oliver has suggested that he may have been Texan, but
I don't think that there is any real evidence for it, other than the fact
that some of the material he recorded was popular in the Texas local
traditions.

And thanks to Jim Greenwald for reminding me that Palmer McAbee was also
from Alabama. You can check out his two sides on Document DOCD-5100 "The
Great Harp Players" also featuring fellow Alabamian George Bullet Williams,
as well as a ton of other essential pre-war harp stuff.

Tom continues:
>
>But getting back to Texas, t'is simply a mystery, innit? Where were all
>the harmonica players?

Well, I've heard at least one armchair theorist muse that blues harp was
most popular in areas where there was a large German population. Sadly,
this falls apart when we consider Texas, as I believe there has always been
a lot of folks of German descent in Texas. There again, I'm not sure that
commercially recorded 78s give us any real indication of how many folks
there
were in a given area that actually played the harp. This list's focus on the
harmonica does tend to distort the fact that it has always been a minority
instrument when compared with the amount of guitars and pianos that made it
on to early recordings. Also blues history is filled with people who started
out on the harmonica, then progressed to the guitar - such as Robert
Johnson,
Muddy Waters and many more. Maybe all the harp players in Texas went out and
got a guitar so they could be just like Blind Lemon Jefferson.

-- Pat.