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Date: Tue, 5 Mar 2002 06:02:44 EST
From: Gatorha~ol.com
Subject: Re: Don't badmouth the players (Rant Warning!)

ironm~ronmancurtis.com writes:

<< Stevie Wonder and Charlie Musselwhite come to mind. Also Huey Lewis.
Jimmy Z has been on a few million sellers (e.g. Yes, etc.). >>

okay, i guess i should've included words like "consistently" and "still".
lewis hasn't sold that many albums in a lonnnng time, otherwise he wouldn't
be on the relatively small silvertone label also, of his string of hits,
only the early "workin' for a livin' " had harp...nearly twenty years ago.
stevie wonder...okay, but still known to most people for his singing and
songwriting. nobody has ever heard of jimmy z, and the only yes record i
can
think of with harp is "love will find a way", and that's over 15 years ago.
like lewis, they also don't sell particularly well today. i'll have to
trust
you on musselwhite.

actually, i should've used the more common bench mark of "going gold," which
would've required many more units to be sold. my unfortunate point remains,
that because of mass taste, demographics, publicity and other factors, there
are few folks known for their harp playing. the same could be said of
mandolinists, banjo players, and flautists. if this were any year other
than
the year of the "o brother" soundtrack, then you wouldn't have seen the
mandolin or banjo on the grammys this year either. there were no featured
flute players.

the music typically associated with harp hasn't been commercial for a long
time, especially in its more traditional forms. the most prevalent forms of
music today don't (for the most part) feature harp. i think harp ~could~
work very well on some of this, but it's not happening.
after the grammys, though, i imagined what if someone would market a blues
based album the same same way that the "o brother" and "buena vista"
soundtracks have been promoted over the last couple of years. whether it
would be anything other than an anomaly, indeed, whether these two
soundtracks are, is something else...

stevenj...the gator-man