Happy Hour Harmonica Podcast

Episode 100 is a retrospective on the greatest ever blues harmonica player, Marion Walter Jacobs, aka Little Walter. Little Walter was born in 1930, probably, and started playing harmonica age 8. He was busking on the streets of New Orleans by age 12, spent some time in Helena, before heading north to Chicago to make his indelible mark on blues and the harmonica. Little Walter teamed up with Muddy...

Dennis Gruenling joins me on episode 99. Dennis is originally from the New York area, where he  began his love affair with record collecting, listening to a wide range of music, from country to rhythm and blues and beyond before it all came together when he heard his first harmonica on the great Harp Attack album.  Dennis cut his teeth with the support of local harp players before releasing his fi...

Michael Pettersen And James Waldron join me on episode 98. In this episode we talk about the iconic Green Bullet microphone, which is celebrating its 75th anniversary in 2024.  Michael is the Director of Corporate History at Shure microphones , and he tells us about the early design of the mic, what it was used for and about how it took years before Shure became aware that it was such an important...

Vitor Lopes joins me on episode 97. He is a Brazilian chromatic player who specialises in Choro music. Vitor tells us about the history of the harmonica in Brazil, starting out when Hohner opened a factory there in 1923, which later became the Hering factory. The availability of harmonicas in Brazil made the instrument very popular and spawned some tremendous players. In 2008 Vitor was awarded the...

Paddy Wells joins me on episode 96. Paddy is based in the north of England, where he started out as a singer playing a little harp before hearing amplified harmonica, which really turned him on to the instrument. Paddy is also a freelance music journalist, having written regular articles for several music magazines in the UK, including Blues in Britain. He also wrote an article, Blowin’ Off The Du...

Michael Rubin joins me on episode 95. Michael moved to Austin as a young man, initially as a blues player. He found that by diversifying the genres he played on harmonica he became much more in demand in the vibrant music scene in Austin. He added to t his versatility by playing different types of harmonica, including plenty of chromatic in addition to the diatonic being his main axe. Michael has...

The interview with Jason Ricci continues on episode 94, part 2. Jason shares how he has matured into his music, including on his 2021 album, City Country City, playing jazz, funk and blues with New Orleans musician Joe Krown.  Jason goes on to share what he considers to be his best work on harmonica, and the elements that make up a great performance. He’s recorded two albums with JJ Appleton, and...

Jason Ricci joins me on episode 93 (and on episode 94) In part one: Jason tells us how he started out in a punk band, with his bandmates suggesting he take up the harmonica. Of course, he took to it quickly, to become quite possibly the leading diatonic harmonica player of his generation.  After initially developing his blues playing via the classic players, Jason moved to Memphis and developed hi...

Erland Westerstrom joins me on episode 92. Erland is from Sweden, where he studied Swedish folk music on the harmonica at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, with Filip Jers as one of his teachers there. Erland released a solo harmonica album in 2020, Andas! (Swedish for breathe), where he makes use of drones, polyphonic rhythms, tongue spilts and other techniques to create self-accompaniment...

Tom Halchak joins me on episode 91. Tom tells us how he grew his successful company, Blue Moon Harmonicas, started in 2009.  Tom started out selling custom combs, and then covers in different materials and colours. Tom went on to develop his customisation skills to offer fully fledged custom harmonicas using his Blue Moon product lines.  Tom also started offering pre-war Marine Band harmonicas for...

Tom Ellis joins me (again) on episode 90. This is part two of the Paul Butterfield retrospective where Tom takes us even deeper into Paul’s career and talks us through more of his incredible output. About how Butter, while paying his due respect to the greats before him, took the blues in a new direction, with his experimentation and innovation. Butter’s music and bands evolved as he developed, wi...

Mike Stevens joins me on episode 89. Mike is a Canadian who made his name playing Bluegrass harmonica, performing with some of the biggest names in Bluegrass and playing at The Grand Old Opry over 300 times. Mike toured with Bluegrass legends, Jim & Jesse McReynolds, and recently played two songs on harmonica at Jesse’s funeral. Mike won the Canadian Bluegrass artist of the year for five conse...

Jim Hughes joins me (again) on episode 88. Jim is a chromatic player who was last interviewed on the podcast in October 2020, back on episode 26. He is now at the grand age of 93 years young, and he shares the wisdom he has developed over many years of playing the chromatic harmonica. Jim has has become blind since the last interview and after being a life long sight reader has now had to learn ho...

Paul Harrington joins me on episode 87. Paul has a long and illustrious recording career, having had great success on the vibrant session scene in Dallas where he recorded on many commercials. He also played on the hit song Timber by rapper Pit Bull, possibly the most listened to song with harmonica in the last decade, with over one billion streams on Spotify.  Paul met and performed with many gre...

Marcos Coll joins me on episode 86. Marcos is a Spaniard who has been living in Berlin for the last twenty years. Marcos rose to fame at a young age on the Spanish blues scene playing with the Tonky Blues Band before forming the the Los Reyes del KO band, touring the world and sharing the stage with many famous names. Moving to Berlin in 2004, Marcos became a regular on the vibrant blues scene in...

Ed Hopwood joins me on episode 85. Ed is from the UK where he started out playing drums and he shares some tips on how to bring some rhythm into our harmonica playing.  Ed loves early styles of harmonica and performs a range genres, including jug band, early blues, cajun, bluegrass and old-timey music. Ed has a one man band show where he plays harmonica, guitar, sings and a whole host of percussio...

Hendrik Meurkens joins me on episode 84. Hendrik is a German chromatic player who has been living in New York since the early 1990s. Toots Thielemans was Hendrik’s inspiration to take up the chromatic and he performed a live radio show in Germany with Toots. Hendrik is also a vibraphone player, which he studied at the Berklee College of Music. Shortly after this he spent a year in Brazil to immers...

Annie Raines joins me on episode 83. Annie is an early pioneer as a female blues harmonica player. Hailing from the Boston area of the US, she drew on the rich source of harmonica inspiration from nearby Cambridge, regularly attending a jam there in her youth, and meeting many great players and joining the Cambridge Harmonica Orchestra.  Annie then teamed-up with her long time musical partner, Pau...

Steve Guyger joins me on episode 82. Steve is from the Philadelphia area of the US and he absorbed the blues harmonica players when he first got into playing, with John Lee Williamson a big early inspiration. Steve was also great friends with the late Paul Oscher, making  three albums with him. Steve also teamed up with the legendary Jimmy Rogers, over the course of fourteen years.  Steve has rele...

Ben Bouman joins me on episode 81. Ben is a Dutch blues player who always strives for originality in his playing, partly inspired by his admiration for the playing of Paul deLay. Ben’s current band is The Marble Tones, who took their name from the amplifier company, with Ben helping develop their range of harmonica amps. Ben also helped Seydel prototype their steel reeds before they released them...

Todd Parrot joins me on episode 80. Todd is a gospel harmonica player who was inspired to play harmonica after first hearing it in church. He went on to join the church band and has gone on to develop a heavenly tone on the instrument. Todd listened to a lot of country harmonica and was influenced from several players from that genre, including Terry McMillan.  Todd released a self-produced solo a...

Rocky Lok joins me on episode 79. Rocky lives in Hong Kong, where there is a vibrant harmonica scene. Harmonica is taught in many schools there, which is how Rocky got started playing himself almost 50 years ago. He went on to become part of the King's Harmonica Quintet which has played many prestigious concerts, including in front of an audience of twenty thousand, as part of the 2008 Beijin...

Marko Jovanovic joins me on episode 78. Marko is a German player with Serbian roots, from where he developed an interest in playing Balkan music on the harmonica, returning to the region to team up with several acts to release some great music in that genre. He’s also an expert blues player, has played chamber music, Arabic music and much more on both diatonic and chromatic harmonicas. Marko also...

Rob Paparozzi joins me on episode 77. Rob is based around the New York area where he started out playing in blues bands before quickly adding the chromatic to his harp arsenal. He took lessons with Robert Bonfiglio and then had Toots Thielemans giving him tips over the telephone. The versatility afforded to Rob by playing both diatonic and chromatic allowed him to enjoy a tremendous career on the...

Will Pound joins me on episode 76. Will first started playing harmonica age 10 to help with his breathing after he underwent two major heart operations as a child. Since then he has rose to fame on the English folk scene, being nominated for folk musician of the year three times. He now plays harmonica and melodeon, diversifying his musical output to cover many different acoustic genres. Will has...