How a Gang of Harmonica Geeks Saved the Soul of the Blues Harp

Harmonica players will suck and harmonica players will blow, but mastering the harmonica is tougher than its diminutive size and simple mechanics suggests. “The harmonica is actually pretty hard to play well,” says harmonica virtuoso Mickey Raphael, who has shared the stage with Willie Nelson for the better part of 40 years. “If you have a harmonica in the right key for a song, you can play any note and it’ll sound good. But to be able play melody on it is a whole different skill set.”

Of course, it doesn’t help if your harmonica is so poorly designed that you couldn’t play it well even if you were a pro, which describes the state of the instrument from the mid-1970s until the early 1990s, when Hohner, the largest harmonica manufacturer in the world, made a single, seemingly small change to its ubiquitous Marine Band harmonica. Hohner’s bottom-line gambit was to slightly enlarge the slots through which a harmonica’s reeds vibrate. It made the instrument’s pair of reed plates cheaper to assemble but the instrument itself virtually impossible to control, thanks to all the extra air that was now being blown into and drawn out of it. Hohner eventually corrected its error, but it took a ragtag group of harmonica customizers and music geeks from around the world to force the 150-year-old German firm to face the music.

Above: Kinya Pollard, aka the Harpsmith, testing a harmonica in his workshop. Top: Mini harmonicas from Harland Crain’s collection. Makers include Hohner, Schlott, Koch, and Seydel.

Even if a musician gets his hands on a well-designed harmonica and learns to play it as fluidly and expressively as Raphael, it’s hardly a sure-fire ticket to the big time. Unlike windmill-arm guitarists (Pete Townshend), 360-degree drummers (Neal Peart), and flamboyant keyboardists (Elton John), harmonica players anchor themselves to a single spot on the stage, hunched over, eyes shut, their hands obscuring their faces as they huff and puff until they’re soaked to the skin with sweat.

It’s often not a pretty sight, and you don’t even want to know about the tonguing techniques employed to block certain holes while blowing out or drawing in, let alone a prolonged period of bloody lips. “That was kind of a rite of passage,” laughs harmonica maker and technician Kinya Pollard. “If your lips weren’t bleeding after a gig, you were considered a weenie.”

Not surprisingly, kids everywhere aren’t exactly clamoring to learn how to play the harmonica, nor are the airwaves crowded with the instrument’s sometimes cheerful, sometimes melancholy, sound. Yet despite their low profile in the culture at large, following those decades of poor quality by Hohner, harmonicas are enjoying a full-blown renaissance right now, as major manufacturers and boutique customizers alike battle to perfect the beloved instrument. In a weird way, harmonicas are cool again precisely because they aren’t hogging the limelight, giving them an underground, back-to-the-roots cachet.

by Ben Marks, CW |  Read more:

Images: uncredited