Sept. 16, 2022

Herbert Quelle interview

Herbert Quelle joins me on episode 69. Herbert is a German who worked as a diplomat for 40 years. This included 10 years as the German Consul in the US, where he met several distinguished harmonica names. With a deep interest in the harmonica, Herbert has researched the instrument to great depth, using this information to litter facts into his two fictional works centred on our beloved instrument. He tells us of the huge export of harmonicas from Germany to the US, and how the early marketing...

Herbert Quelle joins me on episode 69.

Herbert is a German who worked as a diplomat for 40 years. This included 10 years as the German Consul in the US, where he met several distinguished harmonica names. With a deep interest in the harmonica, Herbert has researched the instrument to great depth, using this information to litter facts into his two fictional works centred on our beloved instrument. He tells us of the huge export of harmonicas from Germany to the US, and how the early marketing often described harmonicas as toys.

Herbert regularly makes readings from his books, with some in this podcast episode.

Links:

Herbert’s website:
https://www.harpambassador.com

Monika’s Blues book:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Monikas-Blues-Harmonica-African-American-Culture/dp/1880788276

Harmonica History article for Harmonica Happenings magazine:
https://jimdo-storage.global.ssl.fastly.net/file/059116cb-8889-486c-adab-ddc013dcf638/Texte%20280122.pdf

Early harmonica recordings by The Archivist (Roger Trobridge), introduced by Joe Filisko:
https://www.mixcloud.com/PodKast/rare-early-harmonica-recordings-by-vocalists-and-instrumentalists-introduced-by-joe-filisko/

Adam Gussow book:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mister-Satans-Apprentice-Blues-Memoir/dp/0816667756

Pat Missin’s recordings of Arthur Turelly and Pete Hampton:
https://www.patmissin.com/78rpm/78rpm.html

Herbert playing the German National Anthem:
https://thomasguntherproductions.bandcamp.com/track/german-national-anthem-deutschland-lied

Mundharmonika Live (Seydel harmonica convention):
https://mundharmonika-live.de/

Videos:

Herbert’s YouTube Channel:
https://www.youtube.com/user/herbieqkeys

A German American Love Story (Harmonica exports to the US):
https://youtu.be/pGigFF1Zkn8

Herbert playing I Feel Free:
https://youtu.be/AYnRdgX77gY

Podcast website:
https://www.harmonicahappyhour.com

Donations:
If you want to make a voluntary donation to help support the running costs of the podcast then please use this link (or visit the podcast website link above):
https://paypal.me/harmonicahappyhour?locale.x=en_GB

Spotify Playlist:
Also check out the Spotify Playlist, which contains most of the songs discussed in the podcast:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5QC6RF2VTfs4iPuasJBqwT?si=M-j3IkiISeefhR7ybm9qIQ

Podcast sponsors:
This podcast is sponsored by SEYDEL harmonicas - visit the oldest harmonica factory in the world at www.seydel1847.com or on Facebook or Instagram at SEYDEL HARMONICAS
and Blows Me Away Productions: http://www.blowsmea

Support the show

00:59 - Reading from Herbert of the Billy Branch foreword to his book: Monika’s Blues

01:50 - Herbert has research the history of the harmonica deeply and written two fictional books on harmonica (incorporating facts about harmonica)

02:09 - Herbert worked as a diplomat for 40 years

02:52 - Harp ambassador website derives from diplomatic career

03:11 - Met Queen Elizabeth II on two occasions, but unfortunately couldn’t give her a gift as outside protocol

04:14 - Eisenhower’s Golden Harmonica presented to him by Hohner

05:38 - Can anybody help track down the Golden Harmonica?

05:57 - Tremolo was the first type of harmonica Herbert received but quickly realised he needed a diatonic to emulate blues players

06:41 - Started playing age 15, but focused on job and other instruments for a few years

07:06 - Returned to playing harmonica when moved to Chicago where he met Joe Filisko and Howard Levy

08:38 - Herbert’s uncle was a professional composer and pianist, and inspired Herbert not to pursue music professionally

09:58 - How Herbert came up with the idea for his first book: Monika’s Blues

12:24 - Had lessons through Howard Levy’s ArtistWorks online site

13:30 - Vienna, Austria, was the place the first harmonica as we know it today, was manufactured, in the 1820s

13:39 - Then moved into different areas in Germany and the Czech Republic

14:19 - Where Mr Richter came from and his role in designing the note layout for the diatonic harmonica

14:53 - Letter in Trossingen Harmonica museum states the Richter tuning was derived around 1860

15:14 - Date it first got into the hands of African Americans in the 1870s, which is before blues came into existence (around 1900)

16:56 - Where Richter tuning was first used

17:18 - The Marine Band 1896 model popularised Richter tuning

17:49 - Richter tuning was not invented with bending in mind

19:54 - Probably learned to bend notes intuitively as educational material was rare back then

20:43 - German - American love affair: where huge amounts of harmonicas were exported to the US from Germany

22:15 - Second novel is not translated into English yet

22:44 - Believes the number of harmonicas exported from Germany to US is 250 million

23:07 - Harmonica orchestras was one reason US market was so dominant for German harmonica exports

24:41 - Many of these harmonicas were exported as toys, which helps explain the reputation as harmonicas as toys

25:31 - Accessories on harmonicas were added to make them more toy like

26:32 - More serious approach to harmonica exports came from 1920s

27:03 - Marine Band 1896 was probably the harmonica picked up by black players

27:59 - Monika’s Blues: Herbert’s first book

29:12 - Herbert visited sites of the famous harmonica players included in the book

29:44 - Adam Gussow’s book and other Mississippi blues musicians

30:46 - Herbert was conscious of telling the Monika’s Blues story from a white man’s perspective

30:57 - Billy Branch wrote the foreword to the book, and appears on the cover

31:12 - Chicago Bo is another contributor to the story

32:12 - Herbert believes blues music is worthy of world heritage status, as the rumba (Cuban music) has

32:56 - White studio owners made the money out of African American blues music

34:23 - Monika’s Blues covers how playing blues harmonica was seen as a bad thing due to religious reasons

34:53 - Blues became less popular in African American society due to increased emancipation

35:29 - British Blues invasion in the US raised popularity of blues again

36:00 - Monika’s Blues was written in 2017 has the US as the location, with the sequel moving to Germany

38:09 - Early endorsers for Hohner (Seydel never used endorsers in the early days - the do now)

38:38 - Arthur Turelly is a lesser known endorser, who could be the first known early Hohner endorsee

39:57 - Herbert hopes to gain access to Hohner’s US archives to find details of African American endorser deals

40:50 - Hohner didn’t have much interest in blues music until the 1960s with first blues category in Trossingen competition in 1969

41:51 - Aiming to have the second book translated into English by 2023

42:07 - Herbert does readings from his books

43:12 - More people should write books about harmonica

43:25 - Herbert has recorded a Christmas album with a pianist

44:40 - Some more of Herbert’s recordings

45:51 - Writes some lyrics, including about social injustice

46:12 - Has done lots of travelling to discover blues locations (partly for the books), including SPAH destinations

46:47 - Attends SPAH festivals and also harmonica conventions in Germany

47:43 - 10 minute question

48:07 - Irish music works so well on harmonica

48:53 - Plays Seydel harmonicas and doesn’t play any chromatic (although does own one)

49:21 - Different tunings

49:46 - Doesn’t play customised harmonicas and does some adjustments himself

50:02 - Does play overblows

50:40 - Embouchre

51:24 - Herbert gives us a demo of German / Alpine folk music (for which diatonic were originally designed for)

52:32 - Amps and mics

53:29 - Future plans including some readings on harmonica

WEBVTT

00:00:00.002 --> 00:00:02.104
Herbert Quelle joins me on episode 69.

00:00:02.403 --> 00:00:05.886
Herbert is a German who worked as a diplomat for 40 years.

00:00:06.326 --> 00:00:12.233
This included 10 years as a German consul in the US, where he met several distinguished harmonica names.

00:00:12.813 --> 00:00:22.481
With a deep interest in the harmonica, Herbert has researched the instrument to great depth, using this information to litter facts into his two fictional works centred on our beloved instrument.

00:00:22.861 --> 00:00:33.692
He tells us of the huge export of harmonicas from Germany to the US and how the early marketing often described harmonicas as toys He also looked at some of the early endorsers of harmonicas.

00:00:34.091 --> 00:00:39.057
Herbert regularly makes readings from his books, with some included in this podcast episode.

00:00:39.557 --> 00:00:46.244
After the sponsorship announcement, Herbert makes a reading from the foreword from his book, written by Billy Branch.

00:00:47.005 --> 00:00:49.588
This podcast is sponsored by Seidel Harmonicas.

00:00:50.008 --> 00:00:58.993
Visit the oldest harmonica factory in the world at www.seidel1847.com or on Facebook or Instagram

00:00:59.954 --> 00:01:14.986
at Seidel Harmonicas.

00:01:25.775 --> 00:01:33.409
Although Monica's Blues does not make these themes the central focus of the novel, it wisely, nonetheless, does not avoid them.

00:01:34.171 --> 00:01:39.359
After all, the blues, according to Willie Dixon, is the facts of life.

00:01:40.221 --> 00:01:42.525
Hello, Herbert Quelle, and welcome to the podcast.

00:01:42.689 --> 00:01:44.772
Hi Neil, great to meet you.

00:01:44.813 --> 00:01:46.637
Thanks so much for joining today.

00:01:46.677 --> 00:01:49.460
So a little bit about yourself to begin with.

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So you are a harmonica enthusiast and you've delved deeply into the history of the harmonica and written a couple of books on the harmonica.

00:01:57.334 --> 00:01:58.777
I have indeed,

00:01:58.816 --> 00:01:59.057
yes.

00:01:59.585 --> 00:02:09.025
So we'll get into definitely the history of the harmonica and its important part, particularly in American society and, of course, blues music in general across the world.

00:02:09.485 --> 00:02:13.073
So you were a diplomat in your professional career, yeah?

00:02:13.353 --> 00:02:14.515
I was indeed, yeah.

00:02:14.536 --> 00:02:16.218
40 years in the German

00:02:16.299 --> 00:02:16.980
Foreign Service.

00:02:17.581 --> 00:02:21.530
And that took you to, I think you lived in the US for, what, 10 years or so?

00:02:21.794 --> 00:02:22.735
I lived in the U.S.

00:02:22.775 --> 00:02:32.085
a total of 10 years, counting in one year as a student at a small undergraduate college in Virginia in the 70s.

00:02:32.324 --> 00:02:51.126
And then in my professional diplomatic career, I had my first posting at the end of Route 66 in Los Angeles, then one year sabbatical at Harvard, Boston, and then the last five years at the beginning of Route 66 in Chicago, of all places.

00:02:51.713 --> 00:02:55.236
Right, and so you have a, your website is called The Harp Ambassador.

00:02:55.317 --> 00:02:57.519
That's linked to your career, I take it.

00:02:58.259 --> 00:03:03.084
Well, I just, I was looking for a catchy word, as everybody does.

00:03:03.104 --> 00:03:08.407
I got an email from a friend of mine, from Ben Bowman, who's the harp master, as you know.

00:03:09.770 --> 00:03:11.230
So everybody finds their title.

00:03:11.811 --> 00:03:18.818
Probably worth mentioning as a timely thing here, that as part of this role you met Queen Elizabeth II, who of course recently passed away.

00:03:19.478 --> 00:03:57.959
I did indeed, and I'm not a royal but I was impressed when I met her when I had the chance to even say hello in a small very short private conversation while my ambassador presented his credentials to Her Majesty the Queen and then she takes in the two other personnel that the ambassador is entitled to take along in a private meeting and so I had a brief exchange with her I met her on another occasion during the regular ambassadorial receptions that she did in

00:03:58.639 --> 00:03:59.439
Buckingham Palace.

00:04:00.061 --> 00:04:04.885
So the question is, did you give the Queen a harmonica as a gift when you

00:04:04.906 --> 00:04:05.045
met her?

00:04:05.066 --> 00:04:13.675
No, I think protocol at the palace would be very mindful not to permit gestures of that kind.

00:04:14.056 --> 00:04:19.942
But I mean, there have been examples in history, especially Hohner is famous for that.

00:04:19.982 --> 00:04:51.315
I'm just thinking of the episode when they presented the recently elected President Eisenhower in the US, early 53, with a golden harmonica that plays a role in my latest book, Kein Fallschatz, Sonnenschlag, No Translate That Black Music Matters, where I construed a meeting with an American guy, a soldier, who was proud to announce I am Ike, because he was named after Ike.

00:04:51.536 --> 00:04:54.980
Because that was Eisenhower's nickname, Eich.

00:04:55.560 --> 00:05:01.387
So they chat in the German Harmonica Museum with one of the heroes of my book.

00:05:01.526 --> 00:05:16.081
And the story there is that this golden harmonica that Eisenhower was presented with at the initiative of Hohner via the president of the state of Baden-Württemberg in Germany, where Hohner is located in Trossingen.

00:05:16.423 --> 00:05:26.394
And the golden harmonica that I tried to find in the presidential library for Abilene, Kansas, for President Eisenhower is not there.

00:05:26.535 --> 00:05:28.197
So it's a mystery.

00:05:28.478 --> 00:05:34.004
And one of the tasks will be to hopefully locate the harmonica.

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What became of the golden harmonica presented to President Eisenhower?

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If anybody listening to this podcast knows, then do let us know and maybe we'll help track it down.

00:05:44.519 --> 00:05:45.880
Of course, you do play the harmonica.

00:05:57.314 --> 00:06:00.939
Was it a tremolo harmonica you first got when you were a young teenager?

00:06:01.360 --> 00:06:01.940
I was, yeah.

00:06:03.083 --> 00:06:07.048
In other podcasts I heard with you, that's a typical story.

00:06:07.129 --> 00:06:09.894
I got one from my father, but I wasn't happy with it.

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I was 13, I think, at the time.

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And then a few years later, I heard the first blues musicians from the UK, John Mayle, the Blues Blakers.

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.

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Some

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others in Canteed from the US, and I said that tremolo is not the instrument to imitate that on, so I got a blues harp at the time.

00:06:41.057 --> 00:06:44.521
You've been playing blues harp since about 15, I think.

00:06:44.800 --> 00:06:46.983
I guess so, maybe a little later.

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But then I put it away and I think I touched it, of course, occasionally, but I never focused on it.

00:06:53.749 --> 00:07:02.076
I was more focused on my career and I'm also playing keyboard, piano and guitar.

00:07:02.497 --> 00:07:06.500
So those were instruments of my choice of the time.

00:07:06.540 --> 00:07:10.903
But then I seriously picked it up again before...

00:07:11.024 --> 00:07:27.367
Shortly before I went to Chicago, I mean, Chicago is one of the places, if not the best place, to take up harmonica because there are so many famous players there, players who have revolutionized the instrument.

00:07:27.889 --> 00:07:34.899
Take Joe Felisco out of Joliet, Chicago, as a customizer for Horner.

00:07:34.918 --> 00:08:00.576
¶¶ And without Joe, I guess, Hohner would have suffered in the 90s when they had terrible problems with the introduction of blues harp series.

00:08:00.937 --> 00:08:12.990
And you have, of course, Howard Levy, who about the same time in the early 90s, systematized the chromatic playing on the diatonic.

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They became not only teachers in a way, but real friends.

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And what better place can you be?

00:08:32.097 --> 00:08:32.879
No, absolutely.

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The home of the blues, for sure.

00:08:34.299 --> 00:08:37.903
Well, the home of the blues in the north of the US, at least.

00:08:37.942 --> 00:08:41.645
One of your relatives, your uncle, I think, was a composer and pianist, yeah?

00:08:41.907 --> 00:08:44.489
Yeah, he lives in Munich.

00:08:45.249 --> 00:08:57.019
He was a great inspiration to me, in a way, first as a classical pianist, and then he went into what we call Unterhaltungsmusik, easy listening music with his compositions.

00:08:57.340 --> 00:09:09.432
Yeah, he was a benchmark in my decision at the time, not becoming a professional musician because I knew that I couldn't meet the standards.

00:09:09.991 --> 00:09:14.456
I'm sure you probably made more money as a diplomat than musicians.

00:09:14.537 --> 00:09:16.318
It's a tough life.

00:09:17.259 --> 00:09:19.863
Did you have piano lessons and follow that route?

00:09:20.123 --> 00:09:24.227
I had piano lessons, but only for two and a half years.

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Then my teacher noticed that I was tempted to improvise too much and that didn't go along with her classical training rigidity.

00:09:38.104 --> 00:09:40.667
And so we quit.

00:09:40.908 --> 00:09:43.191
Then I picked up guitar playing.

00:09:43.211 --> 00:09:48.837
I tried to learn bass and played in bands and keyboard in bands.

00:09:49.339 --> 00:09:53.004
I would consider myself a mediocre piano player.

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It's fine to entertain around the Christmas table and have you

00:09:58.145 --> 00:10:01.188
Yeah, so what made you switch across to the harmonica?

00:10:01.208 --> 00:10:04.692
And then obviously your great interest in researching the history of the harmonica.

00:10:05.231 --> 00:10:29.212
When I was posted to Chicago, I got the idea that I should do an exhibition on the history of this instrument from German lands at the time, beginning in the 1820s, and the adaptation of it by American musicians mostly blues musicians.

00:10:29.332 --> 00:10:36.461
So the relationship between the hardware, the instrument and the software, the music as it were.

00:10:36.480 --> 00:11:03.788
And I found out very, very soon after having spoken with a couple of experts in Germany who had published books on side aspects of that and spoken with the director of the German Harmonica Museum, Martin Heffner, and was the director of the Music Instrument Museum here in Berlin that there had even been an exhibition already on the subject a few years prior.

00:11:04.110 --> 00:11:07.613
But still, I wanted to focus it on the Chicago area.

00:11:07.793 --> 00:11:26.269
And when I developed this, going along with picking up the harp again and trying to imitate some of the players of the Chicago area, Little Walter and Sunny Boys and Junior Wells...

00:11:31.426 --> 00:11:32.125
Thank you.

00:11:39.841 --> 00:11:45.907
And then I found out that I was not a designer of an exhibition.

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I lacked the skills to do that, and I did not have the resources to find somebody to do that for me.

00:11:54.134 --> 00:12:01.780
But I had sampled so much material already for what I considered to be the structure, at least, of a book.

00:12:01.941 --> 00:12:05.865
And then I said, well, let me try and write a novel.

00:12:05.965 --> 00:12:14.453
And a novel very soon developed, which was my My first book then published in 2017 in Indianapolis.

00:12:14.634 --> 00:12:17.278
I found a publisher for that, Monica's Blues.

00:12:18.340 --> 00:12:21.464
All along, I worked on my playing.

00:12:21.484 --> 00:12:24.288
I met Joe Filisco.

00:12:24.307 --> 00:12:25.428
I met Howard Levy.

00:12:25.708 --> 00:12:28.833
I started subscribing to...

00:12:29.186 --> 00:12:33.715
Howard's channel on artist works and took online lessons with him.

00:12:33.735 --> 00:12:39.706
So a whole new world developed that I wanted to get into.

00:12:39.826 --> 00:12:46.299
So the chromatic playing on the diatonic fascinated me beyond learning some blues licks.

00:12:47.457 --> 00:12:56.052
Since then, I've been crazy, and I'm fortunate enough to have so much time.

00:12:56.072 --> 00:13:09.538
I mean, one of the reasons for retirees, I mean, we say we never have time, and that is true because most of us, fortunately, have hobbies that keep us busy, and mine is certainly playing harmonica, and I do it for hours every day.

00:13:09.953 --> 00:13:10.394
Great.

00:13:10.474 --> 00:13:10.975
Good to hear.

00:13:11.434 --> 00:13:19.923
So before we get into your book, let's talk a bit more about the harmonica history, which you've looked into in some depth, and which I know plays an important part of your book.

00:13:19.962 --> 00:13:27.749
So you touched on this a little bit when I interviewed the product managers from Seidel and Hohner on a few episodes back.

00:13:27.830 --> 00:13:30.071
But yeah, it'd be good if we can dig into that.

00:13:30.392 --> 00:13:32.312
Austria was the first place.

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Vienna had the beginnings of the industry in the 1820s.

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Then a little Later, it was this place north of Stuttgart, Klingin.

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And then a little later, it was Trossingen, just about the same distance, 100 kilometers south of Stuttgart.

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In Saxony, you had this area which is called the Vogtland.

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There is a Bavarian and a Thuringian and a Saxon Vogtland.

00:14:02.443 --> 00:14:13.775
But it's like a little triangle that goes into the northern border or the northern territory of the Czech Republic which historically is known as Bohemia, Böhmen.

00:14:14.216 --> 00:14:20.462
And at the eastern end of Bohemia, you have a place called Haida.

00:14:20.724 --> 00:14:23.225
I think it's Nowy Bór these days.

00:14:23.265 --> 00:14:36.440
And that's the place where this Josef Richter lived, who plays an important role in the history of harmonica design, because he's the inventor of the ten-hole harmonica.

00:14:36.460 --> 00:15:06.552
If you go to the German Harmonica Museum in There are excerpts from a letter by the then boss of Hohner, Matthias Hohner, from 83, if I'm not mistaken, who states clearly that the ten-hole harmonica with the Richter tuning goes back to this Josef Richter and that it first appeared, he speaks of 20 to 25 years.

00:15:07.052 --> 00:16:13.024
So that has always been the date that I given for the origin of it it's around 1860 then it also a little later got into the hands most probably of African Americans and there are a couple of dates that are proven these days which proven by mentions in the local newspapers which speak of a I have to use this derogatory term so I put in quotation marks a darkie that's a quotation from this newspaper in Kansas playing the harmonica in a local prison and that goes back to the 1870s and so we can date more or less when you have the first meeting with the most influential players of the instrument for our taste I would say these days namely the blues which is about that time, but the blues, of course, did not yet exist.

00:16:13.124 --> 00:16:21.251
The blues came into being around the turn of the century, but the instrument was in the hand of African Americans earlier than that.

00:16:21.592 --> 00:16:23.514
If you take, for instance, W.C.

00:16:23.575 --> 00:16:28.779
Handy's autobiography, where he gives examples that prove that.

00:16:28.921 --> 00:16:34.346
So we've touched my long reply to your answer on two things.

00:16:34.426 --> 00:16:56.562
When did the instrument meet the African American player, get into its And what is the most likely date of the, we have no exact year, but most likely date, the invention of the Richter harmonica, which is the most style formative and the one we use these days all the time.

00:16:56.802 --> 00:17:00.284
So was the Richter tuning picked up by Horner for the first time?

00:17:00.784 --> 00:17:22.564
No, it was developed by this guy in Haida, which was a different company, but then taken up by manufacturers in the Klingenthal area, where Seidel, the producer of my choice, resides, and in Trossing, because Matthias Horner just realized the potential of the instrument.

00:17:22.644 --> 00:17:28.329
And then the Marine Band, which is based on the Richter tuning of course, came only out in 1896.

00:17:29.270 --> 00:17:34.576
What happened in the gap between, we don't know, or at least I do not know.

00:17:34.615 --> 00:17:48.411
I've never particularly researched that because I was most interested in what do we know exactly about the origin, the date of the Richter harmonica, and then its usage in the United States.

00:17:48.832 --> 00:18:01.845
You know, a question we're always fascinated as diatonic players is, you know, how did the Richter tuning turn into this great sort of vehicle for blues and I think it's clear that it wasn't the intention that when they made it that they would be able to bend it in that way.

00:18:02.185 --> 00:18:11.536
I think we all agree that none of these guys had in their heads, because they couldn't at the time, the blues did not exist.

00:18:11.736 --> 00:18:13.817
That is the first thing to realize.

00:18:14.018 --> 00:18:15.440
It was too early for that.

00:18:15.779 --> 00:18:24.269
So the instrument with its capacity for the blues was there before the blues, which tells us that the instrument was not built for the blues.

00:18:25.750 --> 00:18:38.505
Gerd Müller corrected describes playing technique that in the middle register you play the melody and if you want you throw in the chords that give you the deep register or the left register.

00:18:39.025 --> 00:18:40.547
They didn't think of anything else.

00:18:41.188 --> 00:18:44.250
So it was just a happy coincidence that the chords...

00:18:44.730 --> 00:18:59.027
It was the way that this harmonic feeling or the scale feeling that comes with your genes, with your ancestors having come to the United States as slaves.

00:18:59.747 --> 00:19:10.878
You have different semitones in your hair, which are, as we know, with a third halfway between or somewhere between the minor and the major scale.

00:19:11.339 --> 00:19:25.575
And that note is so easy to hit if you do not apply the playing technique that the builders of the instrument or designers, constructors, whatever you want to call them, of the instrument had in mind.

00:19:25.714 --> 00:20:00.152
They mostly blowing I would argue they thought of the instrument although it always had the draw reeds built in but they thought of it mostly as a blow instrument whereas suddenly the African Americans discovered this is for us a draw instrument because the draw bends are there and we can play the major seventh scale of the fifth of the key that the harmonic is in whether they theorize it as in the same way as we do these days, I very much doubt.

00:20:00.192 --> 00:20:06.117
I think it was just intuitively that they heard that because at the time there were no schools.

00:20:06.659 --> 00:20:08.401
There were no books.

00:20:08.820 --> 00:20:13.286
You had to learn it, which makes the instrument also so great intuitively.

00:20:13.605 --> 00:20:17.430
And just by their intuition, they discovered this.

00:20:17.830 --> 00:20:19.311
They thought, wow, this is it.

00:20:19.573 --> 00:20:40.835
And again, this was not in 1860 because the blues with its scale was maybe there in well the scale was certainly there but the blues pattern that we know this sequence of first fourth and then fifth and fourth and going back to one that

00:20:40.996 --> 00:20:57.573
only developed around 1900 A huge part and again of your work and what you've researched as you've touched on a little bit is this kind of what you've called this German American love affair and the fact that the US was the main place where the harmonicas were exported from Germany and the Exactly.

00:20:57.593 --> 00:21:01.237
I think I've read that sort of 100 million harmonicas have been exported from

00:21:01.396 --> 00:21:17.654
Germany to the US.

00:21:26.384 --> 00:21:33.511
They have the records of this most amazing institution in history that I discovered, the U.S.

00:21:33.612 --> 00:21:49.568
Consular Agency in Markneukirchen, which is the larger entity where also Klingenthal, next to Klingenthal, they had this consular agency there from 1893 to 1916, so shortly before the U.S.

00:21:49.709 --> 00:21:53.192
entered into First World War against Germany.

00:21:53.673 --> 00:22:07.988
And these archives are so important because They detail and compile the export figures of the harmonica from that part of Germany to the United States.

00:22:08.409 --> 00:22:21.563
And as I said, I didn't have these data when I wrote the first novel, but I used it for my second novel, Kein Falscher Zunschlag, Black Music Matters, which is only in German so far.

00:22:21.583 --> 00:22:26.288
I'm working with friends in the United States, maybe to find a topic.

00:22:26.288 --> 00:22:33.736
translator, but I can't invest 10,000 euro, which normally would cost for an official translation.

00:22:33.996 --> 00:22:35.738
Your English sounds pretty good to me, Herbert.

00:22:36.419 --> 00:22:37.339
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:22:37.359 --> 00:22:43.306
But still, I mean, I had a friend who said, you should never try to translate your own stuff.

00:22:44.047 --> 00:23:02.809
So I've now come up with the more concrete figure of 250 million harmonicas that were imported by the US from Yeah, so that's always played

00:23:02.869 --> 00:23:07.277
a massive part in the harmonica music that we know and love, particularly the blues.

00:23:07.297 --> 00:23:12.905
Do you know why the US is, you know, so strong, you know, dominant as part of that exported from Germany?

00:23:13.185 --> 00:23:22.653
Well, first we had this craze of the harmonica orchestras, which did not, to my knowledge, exist.

00:23:22.933 --> 00:23:28.199
Maybe a little bit in the United Kingdom, but certainly not on that scale.

00:23:28.219 --> 00:23:36.306
You had thousands of harmonica orchestras in the US between the 20s and the early 40s.

00:23:36.926 --> 00:23:52.355
And if you have thousands of orchestras with up to 100 players, I mean, That alone explains that you need massive loads of instruments to equip these orchestras.

00:24:12.865 --> 00:24:16.048
They would largely be orchestral harmonicas though, would they?

00:24:16.068 --> 00:24:20.152
So were you talking mainly chromatics, bass and chords or not diatonics?

00:24:20.673 --> 00:24:29.319
Well, I think you always had at least one diatonic in it and then you had chromatic and you had the chord harmonicas, of course, and the bass harmonica.

00:24:29.800 --> 00:24:35.305
When we talk about 250 million, we're not talking 250 million diatonic harmonicas.

00:24:35.365 --> 00:24:37.507
It's the total of all harmonics.

00:24:37.527 --> 00:24:46.655
Breaking it down to diatonics would be a little difficult because there were also parts of the exports, which were more like toys.

00:24:46.836 --> 00:24:59.450
And there's a definition by American customs that harmonica is counted as far as customs goes as an instrument if it has more than one octave.

00:24:59.930 --> 00:25:02.333
And I think there was a price involved with it.

00:25:02.532 --> 00:25:05.435
It escapes me at the moment.

00:25:05.736 --> 00:25:20.009
But anyway, the industry itself for some time was interested in rather marketing the harmonica as a toy because it gave them the scale, but not the import duties.

00:25:20.230 --> 00:25:24.513
It was cheaper if they counted as toys, so they could sell more.

00:25:24.894 --> 00:25:25.214
Right.

00:25:25.275 --> 00:25:31.019
So that might be a big contribution to this kind of reputation of it being a toy, then it was marketed in that way.

00:25:31.460 --> 00:25:32.141
It was indeed.

00:25:32.260 --> 00:25:46.721
And I mean, if you look at some of the models that have these bells added on, or these, well, all sorts of gimmicks and the shapes that came in as postcards or what have you.

00:25:47.122 --> 00:25:58.652
In a way to me, it shows they themselves considered this a consumer article, which was attractive and brought in a lot of money.

00:25:59.112 --> 00:26:11.182
And they tried to outdo each other with original packing material and colorful boxes and what have you, but also the outer shape of the instrument.

00:26:11.222 --> 00:26:26.077
They did not focus on so much in my understanding on the playability, giving a congenial player the possibility to really develop his musical skills on the instrument.

00:26:26.358 --> 00:26:29.642
They focused for a long time on other aspects.

00:26:30.021 --> 00:26:39.152
And I would say that the serious approach to the instrument side of it goes along with, I would say, 1920s.

00:26:39.952 --> 00:26:43.257
So before that, it was a pretty mixed bag

00:26:43.517 --> 00:27:10.806
yeah I think a lot you look at other instruments don't you when they become very popular you get lots of cheap versions made don't you you can see that across many different instruments so you know and you kind of flood the market with cheap instruments and then you know and then obviously there's some quality ones in there as well but if you're looking for some of that they're quite hard to find so I guess it was the same with the harmonicas as well so you know was it the marine band from Hohner which kind of took the mantle as being the first good quality that you know was picked up by the sort of you know the black blues players

00:27:11.046 --> 00:27:11.406
I would say

00:27:11.826 --> 00:27:12.688
yeah

00:27:12.688 --> 00:27:28.863
Yeah, of course, not only by them.

00:27:29.042 --> 00:27:37.891
I would still argue that at the time there were many folk, white folk music players in the US who appreciated that instrument.

00:27:40.834 --> 00:27:44.509
piano plays Thank you.

00:27:49.377 --> 00:27:58.425
but certainly was the characteristics of playing that we appreciate until today in the hands of African-American players.

00:27:58.726 --> 00:28:01.729
Yeah, so let's get on to your book now, which again we mentioned.

00:28:01.749 --> 00:28:02.789
It's called Monica's Blues.

00:28:02.809 --> 00:28:07.314
Of course, Monica being a female name, which is this kind of shortening of harmonica.

00:28:07.354 --> 00:28:08.694
I assume that's why you chose it.

00:28:10.135 --> 00:28:15.381
So on the trail of the German harmonica and African-American blues culture is a kind of subtitle.

00:28:15.441 --> 00:28:19.845
So it's a fictional story, isn't it, about kind of weaving the It is.

00:28:20.045 --> 00:28:24.088
It

00:28:28.953 --> 00:29:05.854
was this attempt to look at the origin of some of the players in the Mississippi Delta and see what we find if we go there and the state of Mississippi, although being a very traditional minded state for a long time, developing this blues trail and now marketing itself also with the wealth of immaterial wealth, I should say, with the ideas and the ingenuity of players coming from it.

00:29:06.034 --> 00:29:19.048
And so you have across the state all these markers and it was my goal to actually travel to many of these markers of famous harmonica players.

00:29:19.248 --> 00:29:20.770
Which players?

00:29:20.951 --> 00:29:22.253
You can name a few of them for us.

00:29:22.836 --> 00:29:23.537
Howlin' Wolf,

00:29:23.717 --> 00:29:29.128
for instance, comes from Charlie Musselwhite, comes from Kosciuszko.

00:29:33.178 --> 00:29:38.990
Howlin' Wolf

00:29:41.153 --> 00:29:56.366
And I was planning to meet one guy who teaches in Oxford at the Universal Reads at Oxford, Mississippi, Adam Gousseau, who is a very nice guy and great, great lector.

00:29:56.446 --> 00:29:58.769
I appreciate his online courses.

00:29:58.888 --> 00:30:00.871
I never met him in person.

00:30:01.111 --> 00:30:02.332
I spoke with him on the phone.

00:30:02.352 --> 00:30:06.096
I had email exchanges with him on his book, Mr.

00:30:06.135 --> 00:30:08.758
Satan's Apprentice, which is a great book to read.

00:30:08.978 --> 00:30:10.278
He is there.

00:30:10.538 --> 00:30:16.506
There are In Clarksdale, there's Roger Stolle, who published a book himself.

00:30:16.566 --> 00:30:23.053
And there are these blues festivals in Clarksdale and other places down there.

00:30:23.073 --> 00:30:25.935
I mean, other blues musicians, of course.

00:30:26.415 --> 00:30:26.696
B.B.

00:30:26.737 --> 00:30:29.298
King hailed from Mississippi.

00:30:29.480 --> 00:30:32.182
And I name all of them in the book.

00:30:32.462 --> 00:30:33.624
So many more, yeah.

00:30:34.164 --> 00:30:42.653
So again, the story kind of tracks the kind of struggle of African-Americans and the kind of, you know, it's linked to slaves and then how blues evolved.

00:30:42.713 --> 00:30:45.517
So maybe give us an insight into that.

00:30:45.817 --> 00:30:55.547
First, I was conscious that I'm a white person and that I should not be arrogant and try to tell a story which is African-American.

00:30:56.028 --> 00:30:58.671
That's why I had African-American friends.

00:30:58.770 --> 00:31:01.834
Fortunately, Billy Branch is a great harmonica player.

00:31:02.315 --> 00:31:04.376
So yeah, of course, Billy Branch is on the cover, isn't he?

00:31:04.396 --> 00:31:06.900
And also wrote the foreword for the book as well.

00:31:07.059 --> 00:31:07.500
He is, yeah.

00:31:07.619 --> 00:31:13.378
And there's another guy whom I whom I quote, Lincoln T.

00:31:13.460 --> 00:31:17.345
Beauchamp and the Chicago Bull, and maybe I can read that.

00:31:17.761 --> 00:31:22.967
There is no exact person, time or location which actually gave birth to the blues.

00:31:23.467 --> 00:31:30.752
Certainly we did not leap off slave ships and onto the auction block playing harmonicas and doing the jitterbug.

00:31:30.772 --> 00:31:38.319
The souls of black folks have innate characteristics and blues is a manifestation of those affected by certain conditions.

00:31:38.960 --> 00:31:47.228
I took that in and so I wrote this with consciousness of their story, which is not...

00:31:47.728 --> 00:31:49.128
Certainly not my story.

00:31:49.470 --> 00:32:02.364
When I had the draft ready, I went to Chicago Bowl and I went to Billy Branch and said, go over this, please, for me, whether I'm insulting anybody of your ethnicity.

00:32:02.844 --> 00:32:04.326
That's certainly not my intention.

00:32:04.766 --> 00:32:17.680
But I want to tell the story which so far nobody has told in this directness that we actually, we totally owe the blues, which is for me on the same level, at least.

00:32:17.680 --> 00:32:22.704
as the Roomba as an immaterial world treasure.

00:32:23.105 --> 00:32:27.730
And unfortunately, the United States has never taken this up with the UNESCO.

00:32:27.770 --> 00:32:40.424
The blues should be there with that distinction and that honor, at least as I said, the Roomba, which Cuba achieved, which is with its clever policy in the United Nations.

00:32:45.210 --> 00:32:54.205
Music Thank you.

00:32:56.834 --> 00:33:03.460
So the blues is one that we owe to African Americans originally.

00:33:03.640 --> 00:33:06.541
They were not the first to make money with it.

00:33:07.143 --> 00:33:10.786
The first to make money with it were, again, whites.

00:33:11.125 --> 00:33:14.028
Producers were white guys.

00:33:14.568 --> 00:33:18.792
The owners of record studios were white guys.

00:33:19.252 --> 00:33:34.008
These players came into the 60s, I would argue, with their instruments, and they were paid for the session and if they had a great idea and the idea was taken up, they didn't get any credits for it.

00:33:34.407 --> 00:33:40.233
The credits went to the producer who was very often the owner of the studio.

00:33:40.253 --> 00:34:01.538
One has to bear all that in mind that there's also a certain feeling that goes along with a white guy like me taking up the issue and writing about it because it's very sensitive which hardly any white person who has never befriended an African American is aware of.

00:34:02.157 --> 00:34:11.409
So, again, so the book, you know, it picks on, you know, why black Americans picked up the instrument, I assume, because it was cheap and readily available was the main reason for that.

00:34:11.650 --> 00:34:11.969
Exactly.

00:34:12.230 --> 00:34:18.677
And then culturally, you know, does it touch on, you know, why the reason that blues became so strong and that they became such a dominant force with that?

00:34:19.170 --> 00:34:32.360
Well, it touches on the basic idea of playing it, but also that it was criticized in the African-American culture itself as being anti-Christian.

00:34:32.400 --> 00:34:36.565
It was, in many circles, it was forbidden.

00:34:36.605 --> 00:34:43.210
You were permitted to play gospel music, if you could, on the harmonica or hymns.

00:34:43.610 --> 00:34:49.135
But blues music was, even within the own culture, sort of was not forbidden.

00:34:49.135 --> 00:34:49.996
accepted.

00:34:50.016 --> 00:34:53.320
It changed very, very slowly.

00:34:53.340 --> 00:35:09.193
I touched on the fact that in the 60s, with the political emancipation of African Americans, blues became even less popular than it had been before.

00:35:09.273 --> 00:35:18.101
And blacks who acquired some wealth and made some progress in society even looked down on it.

00:35:18.400 --> 00:35:25.188
They would then switch in their musical likings to soul music or to jazz.

00:35:25.630 --> 00:35:41.103
The popularity of blues Again, with the instrument, in many cases, then happened by, the Americans call it the British invasion, by British groups performing in the US.

00:35:41.465 --> 00:35:57.110
The British groups, the Stems and others, they opened the way for black blues musicians to perform in venues that had been closed to them before.

00:35:57.505 --> 00:35:58.065
you

00:35:58.106 --> 00:35:58.907
wrote this book here

00:35:58.987 --> 00:35:59.628
in what year now?

00:35:59.668 --> 00:37:06.574
Monika's Blues was written in 2017 and the sequel which builds I mean this Monika's Blues is the story of this guy traveling to the 70 year old retired college professor traveling to the Mississippi Delta in search of the sites where a famous harmonica player is hailed from and then he meets this African American family and he gets involved in their story and this guy just passed way where there's a wedding ceremony happened to be an officer, a black officer of American forces in Germany and he was a harmonica collector, has his own private museum and he has a grandson who develops a liking to this white college professor and then the condition for taking up the inheritance for this grandson and inheriting the harmonica collection is that he should visit the sites of Seidel, Klingenthal and of Hohner, Trossingen in Germany.

00:37:07.034 --> 00:37:10.797
His grandfather leaves money to this guy whose name is James.

00:37:11.259 --> 00:37:23.952
He then says, well, in order to meet the requirements of the last will, just ask this professor who is a German immigrant to give me a tour to these sites.

00:37:24.293 --> 00:37:31.099
So that's where Monica's Blues ends and where The new book, which was published in 2020, kicks in.

00:37:31.239 --> 00:37:45.454
So that is then the travel to Germany and tells the story of the end of the Second World War with the role the Americans played in the liberation of it and starting in Frankfurt.

00:37:45.574 --> 00:37:50.840
And then we go to Stuttgart and we go to the sites, to Trossingen and to Klingenthal.

00:37:51.221 --> 00:37:53.443
And lots of things happen in between.

00:37:53.483 --> 00:37:57.148
And I build in the research of the archives.

00:37:57.327 --> 00:38:02.753
in Stuttgart of Hohner and of College Park, Maryland, the U.S.

00:38:02.773 --> 00:38:12.724
Archives, when we visit Klingenthal, just giving the figures of exports and discovering the endorser-producer relationship.

00:38:12.905 --> 00:38:24.117
Because there was a lot of material I found on some endorsers which existed since the 1920s, at least on the side of Hohner.

00:38:24.436 --> 00:38:25.438
Seidel, never.

00:38:26.599 --> 00:38:27.280
That has been confirmed.

00:38:27.280 --> 00:38:35.574
firm by Lars Seifert, by the CEO, apparently never had the concept of endorsers, but Hohner had it.

00:38:35.934 --> 00:38:41.983
Famous endorsers like Larry Adler and other lesser known, like Arthur

00:38:42.003 --> 00:38:53.021
Torelli.

00:38:54.050 --> 00:39:07.081
That is fascinating to me, just to know what did they get in the case of Arthur Torelli, which again plays into the figures, the huge numbers of instruments that we talked about earlier.

00:39:07.681 --> 00:39:10.543
I mean, he could just demand and get anything.

00:39:10.563 --> 00:39:19.871
He got hundreds of harmonicas, sometimes within a month, which he used for himself and gave away.

00:39:19.891 --> 00:39:24.016
He passed, I think, in the 1990s.

00:39:24.016 --> 00:39:24.818
1950s.

00:39:25.179 --> 00:39:32.021
There's this one picture with him where he teaches Cary Grant playing harmonica for the movie.

00:39:32.081 --> 00:39:36.074
So he's arbitrarily the first known Hohner and Dorsey?

00:39:36.594 --> 00:39:40.778
Well, he's the one with the most documented letter exchange.

00:39:40.978 --> 00:39:46.043
There are others I mentioned which I didn't find more record on, like Mr.

00:39:46.143 --> 00:39:46.864
Sisto.

00:39:47.505 --> 00:39:48.425
Some are not known.

00:39:48.666 --> 00:40:15.510
But what is interesting and what I'm still after, and maybe you earlier invited the audience to contribute with their knowledge, I had the hope to get access to the archives of Hohner which exist in the United States Because I could never find any letter exchange with African-American players, although we know that TV Wonder was and is a Hohner endorser.

00:40:15.711 --> 00:40:21.617
There were others of African-American scene played only Hohner instruments.

00:40:21.797 --> 00:40:34.831
So what I would love to find is some exchange with them on the conditions that they struck with the producer for playing Hohner.

00:40:34.831 --> 00:41:04.784
And it is also obvious in this context that especially Hohner, and maybe it's only because it's the only records that we have, the only correspondence that we have to date, which reveals that they didn't care much until the late 60s about the blues, although at that time, I mean, they produced the blues harp, and they made a lot of money through this instrument.

00:41:04.784 --> 00:41:16.416
But in the competitions in Trossingen, I think the first year was 1969 or so, that they had blues as a genre in the competition there.

00:41:17.557 --> 00:41:19.179
And I find it crazy.

00:41:19.579 --> 00:41:23.224
Or this being taken care of by the American side.

00:41:23.324 --> 00:41:28.369
But as I say, I've tried through Hohner to get to the archives.

00:41:28.469 --> 00:41:32.434
I don't even know whether they exist and where they might be in the US.

00:41:32.753 --> 00:41:34.396
I've so far not been successful.

00:41:34.416 --> 00:41:34.735
Yeah.

00:41:34.735 --> 00:41:57.025
think maybe some of the earlier harmonica festivals focused on chromatics more didn't they and reading music and maybe that's why and diatonic sort of came into it a bit later because of that focus on you know kind of music reading chromatic side and orchestral So as you say, you've got your two books and your Black Music Matters one, the second one, that is currently awaiting translation into English.

00:41:57.065 --> 00:41:59.068
When might that be out for people to read?

00:41:59.208 --> 00:42:00.148
I promised some friends

00:42:00.248 --> 00:42:01.969
it should be out this year.

00:42:02.090 --> 00:42:03.731
Well, let's say next year.

00:42:03.992 --> 00:42:04.413
Sure, yeah.

00:42:04.532 --> 00:42:06.855
And the books are available on Amazon.

00:42:07.235 --> 00:42:09.336
And you do readings from the books, don't you?

00:42:09.516 --> 00:42:09.797
I do.

00:42:09.976 --> 00:42:10.378
I do what

00:42:10.418 --> 00:42:29.195
I call musical readings where I just give a brief overview of the history of the instrument currently characteristics, being the smallest instrument that you have, on which you can play three octaves, the only one with blow and draw playing possibility, and then getting into the particular story.

00:42:29.275 --> 00:43:00.300
And I illustrate it by some of the first recordings that we have, first fox chases on records, and the first blues record in 1925 by Dandy Stovepipe, Henry Witter, and then there was this guy, Pete Hampton, who lived in Missouri, I think, who lived in London for seven or eight years, and he did a recording that Pat Misson has on his website from 1904.

00:43:10.114 --> 00:43:11.496
has nothing to do with blues.

00:43:12.317 --> 00:43:13.077
So yeah, so thanks.

00:43:13.157 --> 00:43:15.360
Great that you've done some writing on harmonica.

00:43:15.380 --> 00:43:17.264
You know, it's great to see that that's available.

00:43:17.463 --> 00:43:24.434
And you know, there's not so many books available on harmonica, or some, but yeah, good to encourage more people to get out writing about harmonica as well.

00:43:24.914 --> 00:43:27.597
A little bit onto some of the music that you play.

00:43:27.657 --> 00:43:33.987
Obviously, you've recorded one album, which is a Christmas album with Thomas Gunter, I assume he's a German colleague of yours.

00:43:34.146 --> 00:43:34.347
Yeah.

00:43:38.733 --> 00:43:38.813
Yeah.

00:43:39.938 --> 00:43:51.005
Composer and arranger is a great player.

00:43:51.025 --> 00:43:57.581
He is from Stuttgart, Germany and has lived in the United States for two decades.

00:43:57.954 --> 00:44:00.697
Yeah, so how did this Christmas album of yours come about?

00:44:00.958 --> 00:44:05.804
Well, we knew each other for a while, and we both had the idea.

00:44:05.824 --> 00:44:12.893
We just, when we had a coffee together, chatted about what one could do, and it just coincided.

00:44:13.034 --> 00:44:17.440
And he said, well, that's the idea that I've had for a long time, and let's get together.

00:44:17.480 --> 00:44:20.563
And he said, I'll do some arrangements.

00:44:20.583 --> 00:44:22.246
So that's how it happened.

00:44:22.487 --> 00:44:27.172
Yeah, and I do think Harmonica does Christmas songs very well, so it's always nice.

00:44:28.673 --> 00:44:36.190
Thank you.

00:44:40.418 --> 00:44:48.206
you've got a youtube channel with various clips on as well so um there's a there's a funny one of you playing i feel free at the end of the covid lockdown

00:44:48.887 --> 00:44:49.608
yeah

00:44:50.208 --> 00:45:30.088
you look very happy but you you didn't look i don't think you were happy being locked up by the by the looks of things no show me anybody who was happy being locked up and um you know you played this book there are a few as well which is uh you know an altar joy so certainly not just playing blues, and also the German national anthem as well.

00:45:30.668 --> 00:45:35.838
Yeah, it's not commonly applied, but I think it's great to play some anthems on harmonica.

00:45:36.038 --> 00:45:42.750
Yeah, yeah, definitely, yeah.

00:45:51.074 --> 00:45:52.898
you like to write some lyrics as well, yeah?

00:45:53.418 --> 00:45:54.400
I do, I do, yeah.

00:45:54.641 --> 00:45:56.585
I think Western Honeymoon is about a...

00:45:56.985 --> 00:45:57.226
Western

00:45:57.246 --> 00:46:13.057
Honeymoon, yeah, the killing of, so-called honor killing, which was one of the most terrible things that you can have if a family member kills a girl within the family because she is behaving in a way contra, against the norms.

00:46:13.697 --> 00:46:15.500
And, you know, you've done loads of travel.

00:46:15.639 --> 00:46:18.422
Obviously, you've worked as a diplomat in numerous countries.

00:46:18.523 --> 00:46:20.704
We talked about the U.S., but you've worked in other countries.

00:46:20.744 --> 00:46:23.527
But also, I think you've traveled around the U.S.

00:46:23.568 --> 00:46:29.755
a lot, searching out these places, you know, these kind of blues places as part of your novel research and other things, yeah?

00:46:29.775 --> 00:46:31.376
And that's kind of documented on your website.

00:46:32.056 --> 00:46:34.039
I have, yeah.

00:46:34.059 --> 00:46:35.521
So is that mainly around the U.S.

00:46:35.541 --> 00:46:40.606
that you're looking around and you're going to put on, you're sort of building this for your website now, yeah?

00:46:40.961 --> 00:46:51.090
Yeah, the travels were, as I said earlier, to the Mississippi Delta and places where the SPA convention took place.

00:46:51.510 --> 00:46:53.733
So I was in St.

00:46:53.753 --> 00:46:57.195
Louis, Missouri, participating.

00:46:57.235 --> 00:47:09.206
Maybe not everybody knows what SPA stands for, the Society for the Preservation and the Advancement of the Harmonica, which is the largest harmonica association in the United States.

00:47:10.166 --> 00:47:10.927
Also the largest network.

00:47:10.927 --> 00:47:12.550
Yeah,

00:47:12.670 --> 00:47:12.849
yeah.

00:47:13.190 --> 00:47:25.242
And there was another convention in Tulsa that I went to, and I traveled to the harmonica workshops that we have in Germany, too.

00:47:25.402 --> 00:47:40.880
So the Hohner Master Workshops, and I'll go to Klingenthal later this week to join the Mundharmonica Live, which is sponsored by Seidel and organized by aficionados

00:47:40.880 --> 00:47:42.601
of the harmonica in Klingenthal.

00:47:42.621 --> 00:47:47.726
The question I ask each time is if you had 10 minutes to practice, what would you spend those 10 minutes doing?

00:47:48.128 --> 00:48:07.929
If I have only 10 minutes, I would still do chord and octave playing practice or maybe fifth practice on Irish tunes because I attended a class with Joel Anderson, whom you also had on your great podcast.

00:48:08.389 --> 00:48:18.661
I just find Irish music with the accentuation, the rhythm and the melody so appealing to harmonica playing.

00:48:18.862 --> 00:48:30.557
And I got some easy third tunings that I just love because this minor sounding harmonica is just fantastic.

00:48:30.677 --> 00:48:31.478
Yeah, no, it's great.

00:48:31.699 --> 00:48:35.824
As you say, those Irish tunes and other sorts of tunes work so great in the harmonica as well.

00:48:39.489 --> 00:48:39.550
And...

00:48:52.802 --> 00:48:55.713
So you mentioned already you play Seidel harmonicas, yeah?

00:48:55.773 --> 00:48:56.335
So that's your...

00:48:56.637 --> 00:48:57.059
I do, yeah.

00:48:57.420 --> 00:48:57.621
Yeah,

00:48:57.981 --> 00:48:58.324
yeah.

00:48:58.344 --> 00:49:02.740
Do you play just diatonics or do you play anything else, chromatics or anything?

00:49:03.233 --> 00:49:04.556
Well, I have a chromatic.

00:49:04.596 --> 00:49:10.105
I have an old Hohner chromatic, but I hardly ever use it.

00:49:10.344 --> 00:49:20.019
I've decided that there's enough to learn on a diatonic and I don't want to confuse myself with the wider holes on a chromatic.

00:49:20.221 --> 00:49:21.121
Yeah, no, that's great.

00:49:21.663 --> 00:49:23.925
And you mentioned the easy third tuning there.

00:49:24.025 --> 00:49:26.010

Herbert Quelle interview

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