When I opened for Nappy Roots recently it struck me on stage like a bolt of lightning that I should start offering free harmonica lessons at shows. Folks just need to bring a decent harmonica down to the shows and I’ll send em’ home smiling with a valuable lesson or two.
It’s good to keep the art form alive and it’s invaluable for me in turn, to have more motivation to study an instrument I regret not yet having practiced 10,000 hours like I should have. I’m good, but by now I should be great. But I’ll get there. If you’re lucky, a music career is a marathon.
LESSON #1
This video knocks me out because you can really see what Sonny Boy Williamson is doing while he plays. Sonny Boy was baaaaaaaaaad. He stole the original Sonny Boy’s name and sent him backing a broken man after whooping his ass in a harmonica duel (that’s just cruel). And according to the Led Zeppelin book Hammer of The Gods, Sonny Boy showed future members of Zep how to really f#ck sh#t up when he allegedly,
“set his English hotel room on fire while trying to cook a rabbit in a coffee percolator.”
I won’t sign off on this guys character, and I wouldn’t let him crash at my house (I’d get him a room near the exit). But he’s a crowned Prince of the Blues and one of the real Godfathers of Rock & Roll. Black Sabbath ain’t got sh#t on Sonny Boy.
– Davin Michael Stedman of The Staxx Brothers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBrucXQxeUo
