Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Plunges into Music by Bathroom Readers’ Institute

Author:Bathroom Readers’ Institute
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bathroom Readers’ Press
Published: 2013-02-20T18:59:40+00:00

More than 50% of S. Korea’s music sales are in the form of downloads—the most of any country.

ELECTRIFIED

The harmonica went into decline in the 1950s, but bluesmen like Little Walter, Howlin’ Wolf, and Sonny Boy Williamson kept it alive, creating a modern blues-harp sound that would be carried on by James Cotton and Charlie Musselwhite. By the 1960s, the harmonica was back, thanks first to the folk music craze and then to Beatlemania.

Since then, harmonica players like Stevie Wonder, John Mayall, Huey Lewis, Delbert McClinton, Magic Dick (J. Geils Band), Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen, Charlie McCoy, Mickey Rafael (Willie Nelson’s band), and John Popper (Blues Traveler) continue to show the world what one little instrument can do.

HARMONICA TRIVIA

• Nicknames for the harmonica: the Harp, the Tin Sandwich (Cowboy dialect), the Mississippi Saxophone (Blues lingo), and the Mouth Organ (from the German mundharmonika or mundorgan).

• Presidents Lincoln, Wilson, Coolidge, and Reagan were all harp players of varying ability. Lincoln reportedly wrote a letter to Hohner, telling how he enjoyed playing the harmonica to relax.

• The best-selling record of 1947 was “Peg O’ My Heart” by a harmonica trio called the Harmonicats. After the Harmonicats’ success, the musicians union decided to classify the harmonica as an instrument. Before that, they called it a toy.

• On December 16, 1965, astronaut Wally Schirra played “Jingle Bells” on the harmonica—from Gemini VI, at an altitude of 160 miles above Earth.

• In 1986 the M. Hohner Company sold their billionth harmonica.

• Currently, the most expensive harmonica in the Hohner catalog is a “Chord 48” (the size of a baseball bat, with hundreds of reeds). Cost: $1,500.

• More expensive, but not in the catalog: the solid gold, gemencrusted model that Hohner presented to Pope Pius XI in the 1930s.

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