I, like many people, have always wanted to be a musician. As a kid I had played the piano and later in Jr. High School, the trumpet. When I was 16 I was loaned a guitar "in-case I'd like to learn". Over the next 20 years I must have owned about eight guitars of various quality and worth. I never did learn to play very well, but I did love the sound of the acoustic, national steel, electric slide and pedal steel guitars. My influences were artists such as Chester Burnett (Howlin' Wolf), Clapton, The Band, Van Morrison, Poco, Taj Mahal and dozens of other bands of the late sixties and early seventies. Hours and hours I would spend jamming with all the best guitarist, mostly acoustic guitarists like David Bromberg, Ry Cooder, Rev. Gary Davis and others. The Band was my favorite band longer than I can remember. Robbie Robertson remains one of my favorite artists. Steve Goodman was my favorite solo artist and song writer. I actually cried the day that he died from leukemia. Other bands and solo artists that were the center of my musical world can be found in Influences .
On a cold and snowy January morning in 1988 (my daughter's 2nd birthday) I made the foolish and costly mistake of reaching into the blower chute of my snowblower. I had become the newest member of The Short Finger Club of America . It's a long story that I love to tell, but the result was losing the top half of the index and middle fingers on my left hand. I'm fine, have been for years, and have some great jokes about it. Let's just say that I'll never play a Bbm7 guitar chord again (the origin of my irc nickname). I found myself trying to play slide guitar again after a few years, and began to make tapes to jam with. Using my old harmonicas (from my hippie days) to determine the key of songs, I soon found that I enjoyed playing the harp. Within two weeks even my wife told that I already played better harp than I had ever played guitar. Who knew? I finally found the instrument that would allow me to continue to play music and be able to express myself better than ever before. Must be that silver lining every cloud's supposed to have.
Major Harmonica influences have been among others: Charlie Musselwhite, Rod Piazza, James Cotton and Howlin' Wolf, Sonny Boy Williamson II, and Pierre Lacocque of Mississippi Heat. I recommend going back and listening to the masters such as Sonny Boy Williamson I, Sonny Boy Williamson II (Rice Miller), Sonny Terry, Big Walter Horton, Little Walter Jacobs, Harmonica George Smith, Jimmy Reed, Howlin' Wolf and Junior Wells. Modern harp players of note include Sugar Blue, the late William Clarke, James Harmon and the great Kim Wilson. I play Lee Oskar Harmonica's in the key of Bb,F,C,G,D,A in cross harp and the Hohner 12-hole chromatic and their big 64 16-hole chromatic. As far as chromatic artists go, Stevie Wonder and Toots Theilemans are the best, then come Carey Bell, George Smith, Rod Piazza and James Cotton, not necessarily in that order. I had the opportunity to see James Cotton recently, and actually saw Howlin'Wolf with John Lee Hooker back in 1972 at the Queens College Auditorium in NY. I sat on stage in Central Park for Dr. John, but that's another story.
My nickname, it helps to have a unique nickname on the undernet chat channels. I used to be "largt", my internet address name, but people kept asking me if I had large *&%$#'s or a large @#$%^. I figured Bbm7 was pretty unique and besides, it keeps my name up near the top of the list on the channels, an ego thing :)
