I had just a very limited knowledge of what this music was. Gathering only bits and pieces from what I heard my father and uncles talking about at small family gatherings and friendly get togethers.
They were talking about groups and bluesmen from faraway places that they would hear played by great DJ's in places like Memphis and Denver and Chicago. The Squirrel Nut Zippers, Tom Petty, and Muddy "Mississippi" Waters.
It was this last man, Waters (who's Christian name turned out to be Mckinley Morganfield), was whom my father held in highest regard. He would always turn up Water's songs on the truck radio when they were rarely played by our own local DJ's. I knew by the reverence my father held for this man that he must be something special. He'd retell the tale of when he was in college and went to see one of his last concerts in Lawrence, KS.
It would take me about a decade of constant study of this music, what I came to understand as the blues, to begin to comprehend Water's greatness. He is my favorite bluesman now.
I will never forget the moment I first heard that sound though.
THAT SOUND.
I had really taken an interest in music by about sixth grade. I had exhausted my Beatles cassettes, they were beginning to sound pretty bad and warbly as I had played them, rewound them, fast-forwarded them countless times.
Taking to the radio I had found I really liked the sound of Pink Floyd and loved when "Another Brick In The Wall Pt. 2" would come on. I started collecting their CD's, but could only afford maybe one once a month.
I knew my Dad had vinyl records somewhere and my hopes were that there'd be some Floyd albums in that collection.
I finally convinced my father I wanted to get them out and had to promise to take good care of them. We made a late night journey to one of his two rental houses in town and made our way into the attic there. The attic's only contents were an old Pioneer turntable and a cardboard box.
It was at this moment that I learned vinyl records are fucking heavy.
We took the contents to the back of my old clothes closet in the second story of our house where we set up the stereo over my computer that was also set up back there, it was a very large closet. After getting the old LXI stereo and the Pioneer. My father choose The Rolling Stones "Some Girls" album and cranked the stereo on the final track, "Shattered." My father hates playing music loud unless it's on one of his stereos, this is when it's okay to rattle the house down.
I was actually disappointed at first, there ere no Floyd albums... But my father pointed out a few albums that he said he thought I may like, "Zuma" by Neil Young, "Rare Earth Anthology," numerous Steppenwolf, "Ice Pickin'" by Albert Collins, and the last one was "Future Blues."
It was the last one in this list I remember trying first. It had a cover verging on the taboo: Astronauts erecting an American flag, Iwo Jima style, on a barren wastland that one would first take to be the moon... Until you realize that ther is a full moon on the horizon... Yes, a very early enviromental album (I knew even then that this album long preceded the Ozone scare that we were dealing with at my age in the late 1990's).
This was shocking to me being as sheltered as I was: the American flag was upside down.
Fumbling with the 12" record trying to figure out which side was the first side of the album. Lucky I got it right because as I clumsily dropped the needle down I heard that sound and was forever changed.
It was a simple blues walk up, though I didn't know it at the time. A man blared four simple notes into an old microphone plugged into a cranked-up tube amplifier. Though I did not know even these details. But that sound...
I light bulb exploded in my head. I had heard my Dad's cousin Marty talk about this before... Something called an "electric harp." This, this sound... "This is an electric harp" I thought to myself.
I listened intently to the song preceding these notes as an electric country guitar joined in and a man began to sing.
"Sugar bee, sugar bee
Sugar bee, sugar bee
Sugar bee, sugar bee
Sugar bee, sugar bee
Sugar bee, sugar bee
Look what you done to me"
The country guitars join the man and begin to duel and then the sound comes back. A short lead, followed by more lyrics and another lead. You can hear the harp man's distorted inhales as he draws breath to work the harmonica. It is absolutely striking when you hear this for the first time.
The man on the harp was Alan "Blind Owl" Wilson, leading member of the band Canned heat when the album was recorded in 1970.
As I've studied the blues more and more and the men that play it, I've really began to identify with The Blind Owl. His biggest influence was the work of John Lee Hooker, probably the best known of all the North Mississippi Hill Country bluesmen. Wilson's guitar style is the closest to Hooker's I've yet heard. A lot of Blind Owl's personal struggles are ones that I myself have had. I do identify with this man greatly.
I pursued rock and roll music for a time in high school and college, but I discovered Hill Country Blues which truly took me deep into the blues obsession. I found Hooker's music for myself and that in turn brought me back to Canned Heat and back to that same sound. That sound.
I picked up harmonica as my own instrument, now wanting to emulate that sound. Marty told me to get that sound "you have to have a Green Bullet." I now have a Green Bullet, but I'm still looking for that sound, but I've found my own along the way though, and the pursuit has kind of subsided.
But I know what and where it all started.
With that sound.
That sound.
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