I'm restless. Nothing good to read. I sit down at the keyboard with my harmonica and started typing what came to mind. I'm sure the narrative is boring as often personal pieces are. You are fore warned this is not worth your time and if i'd thought first about it, would not have posted it for public view. ***************************** If I had plenty of money and a few more years to live, I’d like to buy six or seven good harmonicas. By good I mean top of the lines of two companies, maybe I’d get ten or twelve. Now I own and play seventeen harps. It has taken me a long time but I have come to the conclusion as to which are the best harps because I have played most of them. Musicians are funny people. There’s been a lot of them in my family. I’ll start with a close cousin, Truman, whom I was raised up with. He was musician, played the lowly guitar. He started with a three dollar guitar bought in a Wichita Falls pawn shop. I’ve seen few musicians when they were getting started, who didn’t think they would make better music if only they had a better instrument. Truman was good. He auditioned with two bands that went on to be popular and make some money. Back in the day they all played honky-tonks. That’s the way they got started, if they were good enough to entertain a group of country fans, and they liked to dance to their music, you could usually find work. The pay wasn’t good but they wanted to play their instrument, maybe sing the songs of the day. Truman was offered job with Billy Walker’s band and lager with Webb Pierce. But he didn’t have the money or the clothes to travel. And he had no transportation. He didn’t think he was prepared to travel. My youngest brother raised a family with a band. When the music business got slow, he barbered or sold cars. He owned several car lots over the years. He had several bands, owned several clubs, made a little money. Around Wichita Falls he was known as the guitar man. At his funeral in August, 2013, I saw numerous grown men stand up with tears running down their cheeks, saying I loved that guy, he gave me my first break or he taught me how to play. Jimmy was a good musician. He and his band were in the movie, The Last Picture Show, starring Jeff Bridges, Cybill Shepherd, and Ben Johnson, among others. Jimmy was always trading instruments, buying more instruments, learning to play something new. My son, Bruce, was/is a musician. I got him a set of drums when he was seven or eight years old because he was always keeping times with his fingers ora pencil and because my brother told me Bruce had a lot of rhythm in him. He learned to play the drums keep time playing. Next thing I knew he wanted a guitar. I said, son, do you think you could learn to play guitar? He said I already can. I borrowed a guitar and said, show me. I let him pick one out. He could play well;l enough I knew he’d be good some day if he wanted to be. One day my brother drove the hundred handsome odd miles from Wichita Falls to Memphis, Tx wagging a pedal steel in the house. He said my steel played bought anew steel and i got this one for Bruce. Bruce listened to steel on the tv and radio I got him a bunch of tapes of Buddy Green and several other well known steel players. One day I came home from work and I could hear one of those toes playing in his room. I opened his door and the music was not a tape but was Bruce playing. When Bruce graduated high school I wanted him to go to college. I couldn’t afford to send Bruce away to college but he could go to Texas Tech, stay at home and work part-time if he wanted. We’d work something out. He took off with a band that came to Lubbock for a week’s gig. Their steel player was laid up ill and didn’t want to play anymore. They were looking for a steel player. They all came out to the house one night after the club closed, They auditioned Bruce in our garage, set up their amps, mic’s, listened to Bruce and had him play with them on some of their songs. They normally played the Dallas-Ft Worth area, Waco, Austin and Houston and had come out to Lubbock to check out the music scene. Bruce was gone a ear, playing in Texas and Colorado and New Mexico. He came home, said he was to school. I told him I’d get his first year. He said he appreciated it but he had saved enough money to cover his schooling for a year anyway. He got a job playing in Lubbock at the best club in town, The Red Raider Club. He played there six years with the Larry Johnson band. He put himself through six years of college. Bruce could probably retire if he had kept some of the instruments has traded for or bought. Some of them would have been worth a pretty penny. I guess we could all say that or at least some of us. Bruce is a teacher now. For a while he and a couple of other professors got together a group and played in a jazz club a couple nights a week. He sold his steel and his sax. For pleasure when he has time he plays an acoustic or his Spanish guitar. He says in his best days he couldn’t hold a light to his son who plays in the OU marching band, their Jazz band. He plays flute, sax and clarinet beautifully. He also plays the piano well and he has five expensive guitars he plays well. Some peope have a knack for certain things. I never did. I’m not a musician but I would like to own four of Suzuki’s top harps. I’d love to play the top Bushman harp. I’d get a couple of Seydel’s, and I’d have one Lee Oskar’s customized. I started blowing on the harmonica because my lungs were diseased and bad and I was told to exercise them. I thought the harmonica was a better way. I suppose I would buy those harps and then I’d be a happy camper, if I wasn’t so old. But how knows.
I can't imagine anything better than playing an instrument, there's only one I don't like the sound of all others I embrace
I suppose in some settings they are alright but to me they sound and look like something out of a science fiction movie. Strange alien creatures who seem to attack and feed on people who wear kilts. They stick one of their tentacles into the mouth of it’s prey and suck out his brains.
I can readily understand how many instruments were developed and why but the bag pipes? It had to be an attempt at an invention which went horribly wrong and instead of admitting defeat, the ego driven inventor said it was a musical instrument instead of what he actually intended. Or, the inventor had a @Bill Boggs night and didn’t have anything else to do and was simply bored.
Can you believe the Queen is woken up to the sound of them every morning !! You think she'd have said something by now ……………….
Ya mean that something can be RIGHT about haggis? Like most foods, I am willing to try just about anything and I did try haggis. Nope, maybe some other time I’ll try it again but I am not going to rush it.