Harmonica Buzz: Buzz Words & Videos

I hate to admit it, but I don't practice that much. In fact ... one night Jacob Clyde and I were playing at this place and some of the people who worked in the kitchen came out to watch us. We were picking around and having a good time and I asked them what they would like to hear. Well ... he asked us to play a tune that we pick around with when we are just kicking back at home. Clyde and I both looked at each other and neither of us had the heart to tell the guy that we don't really do that. I mean ... that's why I got into music and I picked around on couches with friends for years, but a lot of the guitar players I play with are a couple of hours away or work really strange schedules and we just don't get much time to hang out with each other unless it is before, during or after a gig.

So most of the time things just kind of develop naturally and we put in a new song or two either before a gig or when we "redisover them" during one. With Cornbread Night I'm rotating in a couple of different guitar players to keep things "the same and different." It's fun for me. I like playing accompianment to a lot of different styles of songs ... then hard part is finding time to .... what are we talking about? PRACTICE arrangements to tunes we know and like.

Well I found one here the other day on YOUTUBE that Jon Gindick put up. It's a historically significant harmonica song because it's the one that allowed Delbert McClinton the opportunity to teach John Lennon some harmonica while he was touring with Bruce Channel.

That said ... I'm going to type my best Casey Kasem with this long distance dedication to Medicine Crow in Eaton Rapids. "This comes from a harmonica player in Lansing who wonders ... 'Hey, can we do this song?'"

HARMONICA BUZZ INTERVIEWS PHIL WIGGINS

The following interview took place in March of 2000 while Cephas and Wiggins played on The Masters of the Steel String Guitar Tour ... Harmonica Buzz , Lansing, Michigan

BUZZ : When did you start playing harmonica?

PHIL WIGGINS : I picked up the instrument, probably, when I was 16. I mean,
every kid has them, but that's when I really picked it up with the intention of trying to make music, express myself and jam with other people ... when I was 16.

BUZZ : Why the harmonica?

PHIL WIGGINS : Well ... I liked the range of it because I liked saxophone
and the harmonica has a similar kind of range to it like the saxophone. That's
one thing ... and another thing in the beginning, of course, is that it was cheap and portable. So that's part of it too.

But the thing about harmonica is that it is so expressive. The reason I got into it was that I wanted to express myself. I had something to say and
that instrument seemed to be flexible and work like a voice for me. When I
heard it, it grabbed me because it is like directly connected and rooted to
your emotions and your feelings and all. It's just like straight out . . . a very short distance from your heart to those holes. And it's so flexible. I mean, once you bend a note it just feels right ... like it comes from a very deep part of you.

BUZZ: You mean it's not a toy?

PHIL WIGGINS : No, no . . . definitely not. But having said that, it brings up an important point about it. Once you get what cross harp sounds like, you can put the harmonica in your mouth, wiggle it around and draw on it, and it is hard to hit a wrong note. Basically, it just fits in. Or you can be like a human bellow and just huff and puff on the harmonica. It's hard to hit a wrong note if you grab the right one and that is part of the challenge of it.

So the real challenge of the instrument is to make it express what you want it to rather than let the harmonica play itself ... and that's something that I'm still learning. For me every time I hit a note I want to make it count for something. Make it have the shape that I want not just the shape that happens. I want the shape, the sound, the timber and the kind of expression that I want . . . and that's the trick, because it will play itself.

BUZZ : So that Richter guy was pretty smart, but he didn't put the soul in it.

PHIL WIGGINS : Huff and puff on it ... slide if up and down and you can make music, but to really know your way around the harmonica and make it say what you want it to ... that's the challenge of it.

BUZZ : So after you picked up the harmonica, at 16 or so, how long did it take you to play with somebody else?

PHIL WIGGINS : First off, I guess I spent a lot of time with it. With it not costing that much and being small, portable and flexible I used to keep one in my pocket all the time and I loved to walk. When I was in high school I was living in Northern Virginia and I was living right close to the Potomac River and so I'd walk down there playing.

And there was this park that I would go to. You had to walk through this tunnel to get to it and it echoed. So I would go in that tunnel there, this little walking tunnel, and when I would hit a note it would just totally surround you. I would spend hours in there playing.

BUZZ : Do you remember the first musician you played with?

PHIL WIGGINS : When I was learning ... I was lucky in that I have an older brother who is a really good guitar player and all of the best musicians in my neighborhood were coming around my house to play with him. I would kind of slip in on the side and just nibble around until they would chase me away. And after a while, I could start to notice that they weren't kicking me out anymore.

BUZZ : What a great way to start out. You start hanging around the sides and . . .

PHIL WIGGINS : I feel really fortunate because I think that's one of the best ways to learn ... if you can find other people to play with. It's one thing to listen to records and ideas and all, but it's another thing to actually have a musical conversation with someone and actually play with other people. To actually sit and play with other people is what I feel is one of the best ways to learn.

BUZZ : Do you remember, when you were playing around your house, the first time you got the nod? Or did you just take the nod right away?

PHIL WIGGINS : It's funny, but my brother he never really said much to me about my playing . . . I just noticed that he quit chasing me off after a while. But he used to keep a journal and I remember one time he had left it sitting out and I just looked at the open page and read "Man, Phil's starting to get pretty good on the harp." It was very cool.

BUZZ : How old were you then?

PHIL WIGGINS : Probably not much more than 16. I had been playing a little while, but not that much really.

BUZZ : What were you listening to then?

PHIL WIGGINS : I always loved blues and this girl that I knew had a Mance Lipskin record, he's a Texas acoustic player, and I listened to that. My mother had bought
some Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee records and I just loved that acoustic blues and there was no one around listening to that.

I mean all of the kids were into the psycadelic thing was happening and
Motown. Disco was starting to come in and I was listening to all of this
great acoustic blues stuff. Then there was the folk club at school and
there were all of these people who were playing what they considered folk
music. I don't know what all of the names were . . . Peter, Paul and Mary,
Judy Collins, Joni Mitchell. . . that kind of stuff . . . and there was
a guy there who was named Robert Borum who had heard of Merle Travis so that was the closest thing that I heard anybody doing what sounded like, you know, blues to me.

So I grabbed that guy and said "Hey look, man . . . I'll to show you some stuff." And I started showing him all of these old blues records and he said
"Alright man . . . cool." So we started getting together and practicing.
We did a couple little shows, you know the folk club would have a couple of concerts, and we'd go up and do some stuff. I would do "A Turkey Through the Corn" and stuff like that. You know, all that kind of stuff that Sonny Terry did would do the guy I was playing with thought it was pretty cool.
So we would do that kind of stuff and we would do Travis stuff. He had good
taste in music . . . so that is where I really started playing.

So there was him and then there was this guy named Tom Rivers, another
schoolmate, who was also a Travis-styled picker. He was getting into that
and Tom Rivers introduced me to a guy a guy named Ed Morris. Ed Morris was
an older guy, out of school, who then introduced me to Flora Molton . . . a
street musician and all ... who was the lady that I actually consider I did
my first serious playing with.

Now the funny thing about Flora is that I had known Flora, or had known of
her and seen her and actually talked to her, but not as a musician, but just
as a kid who was living in DC and walking around downtown. She was an
institution ... I mean, she was a fixture there for years and years.

Now my sister, she was a real kind of free spirited and real kind person,
whenever she would go downtown I would kind of go with her as a chaperone.
And she would always, whenever she was downtown in the summer, make a point of stopping by Flora's little stand on the street, bring her some lemonade and just spend a little time visiting with her. That's how I actually got to meet Flora. (photo w/ Flora Molton, Festival of American Folklife, 1976.)

But then Ed Morris introduced me to her as a musician. He took me over to her house one evening and we sat around and played music together. And she
really liked my playing and I really fell in love with her. And she invited
me to come and do some playing with her at different places. And we wound up getting hired, or she got hired by the Smithsonian Folk Festival and then she asked somebody to see if I could come and play. And they said yeah, and they thought it would be good because she would need help.

BUZZ : Well that's a tradition of harmonica players, leading the blind
around, and Sonny Boy Williamson did that. He was like 8 to 10 years old and his job was to move around get some money. Where did Flora used to play?

PHIL WIGGINS : Right around 5th and F. She played there for years.
Anybody who came from D.C. knows about Flora.

BUZZ : So you were 17 or 18.

PHIL WIGGINS : Probably I was introduced to Flora towards the end of my 16th
year. And then when I was 17 or 18 I started playing with her at this festival. Then I went off to school and I would come back in the summer and go play with her.

BUZZ : Where did you go to school at?

PHIL WIGGINS : I went to a community college for a couple of years. Then I
went a year to Howard University ... I dropped out my third year.

BUZZ : What were you studying back then?

PHIL WIGGINS : Political Science (laughing).

BUZZ : Yeah, a wishy-washy degree.

PHIL WIGGINS : Yeah.

BUZZ : They had great shows at Howard. Did you ever see any shows when you were there?

PHIL WIGGINS : Not so much, I mean I did some playing there. But what I
used to do, I used skip class a lot and go hang out at the jazz department
cause they had a really good jazz department. And I used to go snoop around the practice rooms and just see who was playing. I met a lot of really good musicians. Noble Jolly was a really excellent guitar player and I think he got the first jazz degree given out by Howard.

BUZZ : So they don't have a harmonica program at Howard?

PHIL WIGGINS : No, no, (laughing) ... but actually its funny because
there's so many folklorists and musicologists and all that, but there are
not that many African American musicologists and folklorists that are
considered to be authorities of our own culture. And that's a shame. And I think that Howard University could be really instrumental in assembling those kind of people. I think it would be good, you know, for everyone.

BUZZ : So we talked a while back and when you said that there were a couple of things that happened when you were younger that kind of made you the way you are.

PHIL WIGGINS : I used to get asked a lot, not so much anymore now that I'm
getting older, but people used to always ask me how someone my age got into
blues? I really had to sit down and thing about that ... wonder how that
got in my blood?

For instance when John (Cephas) was growing up that was what was happening at the time... blues... especially living in segregated society. The black communities were real close knit and that's what you heard, that's what was being created, that's what was being played.

When I was the age that John was when he first started learning music, the
black community was more dispersed and I had access to all sorts of music.
I had classical music in my home, I had gospel music, I had R&B, you know
soul music, pop music, you name it, psychedelic . . . like I say Hendrix and
all that was in . . . and yet, for some reason, I just loved, and could
never get enough of just the rawest acoustic blues that I could get next to.

So I was trying to figure out how that got into my blood and it has to be
from my Grandmother. My father when he was a kid he worked on the trains.
I was born in D.C., but my family roots are in Alabama and Birmingham ...
Tinisville actually, which is right outside of Birmingham. And when I was a kid, my parents would take us to Union Station put us on the train from Washington to Birmingham. The oldest one of us was my sister and she would have been maybe 10 years old, or so. All the pullman porters would look out for us because they new my father from having worked in the train yards in
Birmingham ... so they knew we were safe on the train. And we did that a
lot for a lot of years.

My Grandmother would meet us at the station in Birmingham. She used to sing to us, do prayer meetings at in her home and she would sing these hymns with family and us. We spent a lot of summers down there and I used to walk her to the church, which was practically in her back yard.

Like on Wednesday evenings I would hang out outside of the church and wait for her to come out and they would have prayer meetings which were called line and hymns where one person would sing the lead line and then the congregation, mostly kind of older women that would be in these prayer
meetings, and then one person would sing the verse and the rest of the women, the rest of the congregation would answer back, and even thought it was gospel music, it was just really deep blues phrasing. And I really feel like that if I had to look back that's one of the things that really got me hooked on it.

Another thing is, and it's funny how it kind of goes around church living,
when my family came back from overseas, we lived in northern Virginia, but
we still went to church in D.C. And my step-father, who is not a music lover at all, one thing that he used to do in the summer was he always in the summer made a point of taking us by the Smithsonian Folklife Festival after church and we would just snoop around there listen to people playing. At that time I was maybe 12, 13 . . . 9 or 10 like that . . . and I would
hear these guys they would get from the deep south, playing blues, and it
was like they were super-human to me.

It's like . . . wow. And that's the other thing that got into my blood. Just seeing those guys and hearing them. It's just like a real awaking. So when other people were collecting Hendrix records I was going around trying
to find as many Mance Lipskin, and Hammy Nixon and Sleepy John Estes and all those kind of records that I could get a hold of.

BUZZ : With Cephas and Wiggins you kind of have the generational thing going. You guys are doing the generational thing and you haven't shied away from that your whole life.

PHIL WIGGINS : I've always . . . even when I was in high school ... spent
more time with people like twenty years older than. Well, for one thing I
related to my grandmother a lot stronger and we understood each other. My father I can't really say because he passed when I was 7 years old. My stepfather, we never really began communicating until later. My mother, we've always been close, but when I was in high school I spent more time people like 45, between 45 and 90, than I did with people my own age.

BUZZ : Musicians or just anybody?

PHIL WIGGINS : Well, musicians mainly . . . because that's what I spent most of my time
doing. This guy, Ed Morris, who was this crazy guy that played guitar,
acoustic guitar, and was a blues fanatic. He lived in this project just outside of Alexandria, Virginia and he was just a really voracious collector of old recordings and tapes of old blues players ... and he had this really crazy convoluted card catalog system of all of his recordings. So instead
of hanging out with my friends at the Seven Eleven I'd hitchhike to his house and sit around there and play music with him and listen to all of his
recordings.

It was a trip, but he was a good guitar player. He liked Skip James and he
liked Piedmont stuff. There were a couple schools the blues revivalists flocked to. One was the Reverend Gary Davis and he was more into Blind Boy Fuller.

But it was great to go and hang with him because for one thing he had met
Gary Davis and Skip James and a lot of those people and he had known them
personally so I could hear about them. And then he had an incredible collection of recordings. Stuff that he had recorded himself with Flora
Molton, and Skip James and a guy named Ed Green that they used to go around together. And John Hurt who lived in D.C. for a long time and people like that. You name it. As a matter of fact, a lot of my LPs that I have, that are really good LPs, he gave to me because he worked in a record store and a lot of them they reissued and his original copies were so badly scratched that he would replace them with the reissues. And he just gave me the originals. So some of them I still have.

And he died suddenly, it was really strange, he had an aneurisms. But I was
like in high school and he was like 45 or so. I spent a lot of time with him. I spent a lot of time with Flora.

I played with a woman named Mother Scott; she was eighty years old when I
met her. She lived in D.C. but she was originally from Mississippi. And she had run away when she was 13 years old and joined up with the Rabbit's Foot Minstrel Show, which was the same one that Bessie Smith was in. And she learned guitar from Bessie Smith and so I was hanging out with her, playing with her.

I had met Archie Edwards who was a Piedmont styled player. I had met John
Jackson who's another Piedmont player. And all of these people I would go
and hang out with. I
would hitchhike or take a cab or whatever and go where they were and hang
out with them and listen to them play and if they would let me sit in . . .
I mean some of them were really generous with me . . . like John Jackson,
for instance, was one of the most generous people that I've ever met in
terms of like . . ."Come, I'm playing here this weekend, come and play with
me." And they'd just welcome me to their gigs. (photo w/ John Jackson 2001) And those were the people I spent my time with. More so than people my age.

I mean I had friends, high school friends too and we go around and did some
jammin' and stuff, but I spent a lot more time with people older than myself.

BUZZ : You learned a lot that way and it supports the generational, father/son image Cephas and Wiggins have had since you first started playing. Now you are the guy teaching and passing on the information. Sally (tour manager and friend) says you don't age much ... I don't know ... you're getting that old blues man type of look now ...

PHIL WIGGINS : . Yeah, I'm starting to ...

BUZZ : Starting to come into it ... you know you are coming into it gracefully.

PHIL WIGGINS : Ahhh, but you've got to resist it.

-------
This article donated by JT Sunden copyright 2003.