Feb. 14, 2024

Mike Turk interview

Mike Turk joins me on episode 104. Mike is a Boston-based player who started out playing blues harmonica, inspired by the great Paul Butterfield, before becoming interested in playing jazz on the chromatic. He recorded some session work in New York and recorded through the 1970s with various artists, with many of those tracks available on anthology albums Mike has put out. He released his first solo album, Harmonica Salad, in 1991. Mike went on to record several more albums, with a letter fro...

Mike Turk joins me on episode 104.

Mike is a Boston-based player who started out playing blues harmonica, inspired by the great Paul Butterfield, before becoming interested in playing jazz on the chromatic. He recorded some session work in New York and recorded through the 1970s with various artists, with many of those tracks available on anthology albums Mike has put out. He released his first solo album, Harmonica Salad, in 1991. Mike went on to record several more albums, with a letter from Toots Thielemans included in the liner notes for Turk’s Works. He also toured Europe and recorded some albums with the Italian band he was working with while in Europe.

Links:
Mike’s website:
https://www.tinsandwichmusic.com/

Toots Thielmans testimonial on Mike’s website:
https://www.tinsandwichmusic.com/?page_id=265

Polyphonia harmonica:
https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/nmah_1306456

Great interview with Mike:
https://blues.gr/profiles/blogs/harmonica-virtuoso-mike-turk-talks-about-jazz-blues-lowel-fulsom

Videos:

Don Brooks session recordings:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDGSb5NxtJY&list=PLGbKWi5veb_nwSHBWYjEgDPtHfYbFFufY&index=4

Honeydripper film opening credits:
https://youtu.be/BO5eP6XsF9M

Douglas Tate playing at the NHL Festival in 1988 (not on a Renaissance):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=th1PbXWfoY8

Mike trio gig from March 2022:
https://www.facebook.com/themadmonkfish/videos/1593252841059782

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

or sign-up to a monthly subscription to the podcast:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/995536/support

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

Support the show

01:45 - Now living in Boston, originally from New York

02:38 - Mike got involved in the great music scene in Boston, playing with many of the great players there, including Bonnie Raitt and Hound Dog Taylor

03:21 - Was working as a janitor at a Cambridge, Massachusetts blues music club called Joe’s Place (which had a lot of brawls) and he sat in with a lot of bands

04:17 - Sat in a lot with Hound Dog Taylor and thought he would get hired to play with them but there was a big fight so Hound Dog Taylor never went back

04:49 - Mike’s father was a professional jazz vocalist and bass player, although Mike wasn’t that aware of this until later

05:27 - Lost half his little finger at age four, limiting his ability to play some instruments, and hence he choose the harmonica later

05:43 - Learnt saxophone when younger, but missing part of finger inhibited his playing, so he picked up the harmonica

06:21 - Discovered Paul Butterfield in the late 1960s

06:41 - Father had a music store, where Mike was able to obtain free harmonica

07:02 - Left New York and started playing in the coffee houses of Cambridge and Boston

07:27 - Met John Kolstadt and that’s when Mike started concentrating on the harmonica

08:28 - Was given a Paul Butterfield album at a dance, which is where he first discovered harmonica

09:42 - Started learning the harmonica by playing along with records

10:33 - When Mike started to play chromatic and how he made sense of it initially

11:55 - The moment of revelation for understanding the chromatic was listening to James Cotton play I’m Ready

12:41 - Then heard Little Walter playing a C chromatic in the key of G, opening up the idea that you can play different keys beyond D minor on the chromatic

13:26 - Playing blues on chromatic is a good entry point for diatonic players

13:58 - The influence of Toots on Mike after his father insisted he listen to one of his recordings

15:19 - First recording on a non-blues harmonica, using a Koch, was with Richard Johnson, Old Man Adams, which Richard Hunter included in his Jazz Harp book

16:37 - Released an album with John Kolstadt in 1975, Beans Taste Fine

18:32 - Joined a Country and Western band who had a violinist who was into jazz, and encouraged Mike in that direction

19:17 - Attended the Berklee School of Music from 1978-1980, where he had to play saxophone as they wouldn’t allow chromatic harmonica

19:43 - Had to transpose the Alto saxophone parts to the chromatic, which wasn’t easy

20:32 - Would join in music activities at Berklee playing the chromatic

21:08 - Anthology of recordings through the 1970s and early 1980s: The Mouth That Roared, when was doing sessions in New York

22:17 - Had to sight reading in the New York scene, with some intense competition, such as Robert Bonfiglio

23:52 - Donny Brooks was the really successful studio harmonica player in New York

24:23 - Donny Brooks was instrumental in creating the score for the musical Big River, which Mike later played in a Boston production

25:09 - Mike improved his sight reading abilities by studying with a saxophone educator

26:25 - Harmonica Salad, released in 1991, is the first collection of Mike’s solo work, including tracks with Ronnie Earl

28:28 - Turk’s Works was released in 1996, with a letter from Toots Thielemans as part of the album liner notes, who Mike got to know and hung out with him

29:31 - Toots gave Mike some general tips on playing the chromatic, but no actual lessons

31:23 - Recorded some albums in Europe after the success of the Harmonica Salad album over there and Mike toured with the band in Italy and Germany

33:47 - Reached a high-level in his jazz chromatic playing

34:18 - Very satisfied with The Italian Job album, which Mike produced himself

35:52 - Includes some diatonic on the later jazz albums, and how his jazz playing has influenced his approach to the diatonic

36:10 - Tin Sandwich Swing song (from Harmonica Salad album) sees Mike playing in the key of each chord, including use of overblows

37:31 - Mike started using overblows in the 1970s, having originally learnt about them from Richard Hunter, although Mike wouldn’t describe himself as an accomplished overblow player

38:56 - Use of overblows brings the diatonic closer to how the chromatic functions

39:02 - Charlie Musselwhite book which described how all the chromatic notes can be achieved on the diatonic

40:26 - Played a classical piece with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, although doesn’t consider himself a classical musician

42:33 - Mike used a Polyphonia to play the glissando part for the orchestra

43:01 - Has recorded two movie soundtracks

44:04 - 10 minute question

45:29 - Pandemic has limited playing abilities somewhat, although still has a monthly residency in Cambridge, which is broadcast on Facebook

47:19 - Diatonic of choice

47:44 - Joe Filisko used to maintain Mike’s chromatics

47:51 - Played the Hohner Toots model chromatics, and two of Joe Filisko’s custom Marine Bands

48:25 - Recently been playing the Hohner Crossover, which he likes

48:35 - How Mike started playing the Renaissance chromatic, created by Douglas Tate and his partner Bobby Giordano

49:16 - Douglas lent Mike a Renaissance to try at a SPH convention

50:18 - Can use any chromatic reed plate on the Renaissance, with Mike using Toots Hard Bopper or Mellow Tone plates on his

51:25 - Seydel manufactured the Renaissance for a few years, but this ended after their craftsman stopped making them by hand

51:49 - Fifty Renaissance chromatics were made by Douglas Tate

52:07 - Contact the podcast if own a Renaissance, or know someone who does

52:15 - Mike lost one of his Renaissance chromatics, which turned up on eBay, and he managed to retrieve it

53:39 - Amp of choice is a Gallien-Krueger studio monitor amplifier with an analogue Nanoverb pedal

54:23 - Uses a Peavey PVM45 microphone

54:53 - Experimented with the DM48 MIDI chromatic for a while

55:20 - Uses the Nanoverb for effects

56:03 - Likes to use his own equipment, as he knows how that sounds, and works

56:29 - Embouchre is mostly pucker, but uses some tongue blocking

WEBVTT

00:00:00.226 --> 00:00:02.068
Mike Turk joins me on episode 104.

00:00:03.568 --> 00:00:12.176
Mike is a Boston-based player who started out playing blues harmonica, inspired by the great Paul Butterfield, before becoming interested in playing jazz on the chromatic.

00:00:12.936 --> 00:00:22.946
He recorded some session work in New York and recorded through the 1970s with various artists, with many of those tracks available on anthology albums that Mike has put out.

00:00:23.646 --> 00:00:26.748
He released his first solo album, Harmonica Salad, in 1991.

00:00:28.269 --> 00:00:34.838
Mike went on to record several more albums with a letter from Toots Thielmans included in the liner notes for Turk's works.

00:00:35.598 --> 00:00:40.804
He also toured Europe and recorded some albums with the Italian band he was working with whilst in Europe.

00:01:29.986 --> 00:01:32.049
Hello, Mike Turk, and welcome to the podcast.

00:01:32.549 --> 00:01:33.129
How are you, Neil?

00:01:33.531 --> 00:01:33.992
I'm great.

00:01:34.231 --> 00:01:35.332
Good to get you on, Mike.

00:01:35.393 --> 00:01:43.545
I've had several people recommend that interview you, so it's great to speak to you at last, and obviously you're well-regarded in harmonica circles, that's for sure.

00:01:43.745 --> 00:01:44.887
Well, that's nice to hear.

00:01:45.888 --> 00:01:51.736
Yeah, so you're now living in Boston, and you were originally from New York, the Bronx, I think.

00:01:52.236 --> 00:01:52.977
Yeah, that's correct.

00:01:53.218 --> 00:01:55.340
I'm from New York, grew up in the Bronx.

00:01:55.941 --> 00:02:05.897
Oh, I left the Bronx at about age 19 and came to Boston, and I pretty much stayed here since, except for a few sojourns back to New York City.

00:02:05.918 --> 00:02:11.006
I stayed in New York, oh, around 1980 through 88.

00:02:11.425 --> 00:02:18.156
to a couple of years, staying down there trying to break into the commercial world at that time.

00:02:18.175 --> 00:02:25.526
And I got a little frustrated with it, so I came back to Boston and decided to stay here over the years.

00:02:25.586 --> 00:02:38.265
I've been fortunate to maybe travel around a little bit, go to Europe, and just simply come back here and stay here for a good long time, just being a working musician in the music scene here.

00:02:38.722 --> 00:02:48.998
I've talked to a few players from Boston and it's got a great scene, yeah, and you tapped into that music scene when you first moved there, yeah, when about age, as you say, about age 19, was it?

00:02:49.881 --> 00:02:50.121
Yeah.

00:02:50.882 --> 00:02:54.729
So, yeah, so tell us about that early time when you moved to Boston and some of the good players.

00:02:54.788 --> 00:03:00.538
I think you played with Bonnie Raitt, for one, and Hound Dog Taylor, and so you got yourself on the scene there quite soon.

00:03:01.379 --> 00:03:01.860
Well, you know...

00:03:02.657 --> 00:03:09.967
I got myself on the scene, but back then, that was around 1970, 71, 72.

00:03:10.227 --> 00:03:15.693
I was just starting out, and I didn't have a band or anything.

00:03:15.713 --> 00:03:21.121
I was just playing my harp and asking people if I could sit in all the time.

00:03:21.782 --> 00:03:23.663
So I wound up being a...

00:03:24.384 --> 00:03:26.328
I don't know, maybe this is kind of funny.

00:03:26.747 --> 00:03:31.253
I was the janitor of a place called Joe's Place, which was...

00:03:31.617 --> 00:03:39.479
Reputable for the blues artists they brought in, but not so much for its environment, as there were numerous.

00:03:40.098 --> 00:03:42.382
riots and brawls in the place.

00:03:42.842 --> 00:03:44.627
And it wasn't always safe to be there.

00:03:45.048 --> 00:03:48.555
And which is a funny thing to say about Cambridge, Massachusetts, you know.

00:03:48.995 --> 00:03:58.152
But, you know, in that section of East Cambridge, yeah, there was a lot of, I guess, gangs, motorcycle gangs would come through and they'd want to cause trouble.

00:03:58.713 --> 00:04:00.698
In any case, I was the janitor.

00:04:01.258 --> 00:04:06.491
And I got to meet A lot of people who I mentioned to you in the resume thing that I sent you.

00:04:07.193 --> 00:04:08.055
And they'd let me sit in.

00:04:08.134 --> 00:04:12.044
I'd walk up and very unselfconsciously say, hey, can I sit in?

00:04:12.686 --> 00:04:14.590
I got to sit in with a few people there.

00:04:14.610 --> 00:04:16.915
And it was pretty interesting.

00:04:17.416 --> 00:04:19.401
I sat in a lot with Hound Dog Teller.

00:04:19.713 --> 00:04:21.375
And it was a funny thing.

00:04:21.396 --> 00:04:23.560
I thought maybe they were going to hire me.

00:04:23.959 --> 00:04:28.788
And then that very night was a brawl that was so violent.

00:04:29.108 --> 00:04:43.990
It was like a Popeye cartoon where people, just a rumble of people in a cloud of all this stuff being thrown around and arms coming out of it, pulling people back in.

00:04:44.069 --> 00:04:45.172
And it was a hairy thing.

00:04:45.252 --> 00:04:49.278
It scared the hell out of Hound Dog Taylor and his band, and they never came back.

00:04:49.762 --> 00:04:57.709
So before then, we carry on talking about your career shortly, but your father was a working jazz bassist and vocalist sort of for 30 years.

00:04:57.949 --> 00:05:01.031
So does that have an influence on your interest in music?

00:05:01.591 --> 00:05:03.293
Well, in a sense, yes.

00:05:03.994 --> 00:05:17.005
Much later in the realization of who my father was and what he did, but I guess there was a little bit of a non-acceptance of my father being a jazz musician and singer and things were not that happy.

00:05:17.685 --> 00:05:22.526
And he didn't really have an opportunity to to really share what he did with me.

00:05:23.810 --> 00:05:35.759
You know, I sort of took the inspiration, and when I was a child, about four years old, I had a childhood accident where I lost half of one finger.

00:05:36.040 --> 00:05:42.065
And it's always been kind of a discouragement for trying to learn so-called legitimate instruments.

00:05:42.625 --> 00:05:43.127
Guitar.

00:05:43.387 --> 00:05:54.497
I gave saxophone a really good long time, but on my left hand, this small pinky finger, which is the half finger, never had the reach, and I couldn't get the dexterity I wanted.

00:05:54.757 --> 00:06:02.754
And I just didn't have the determination like, you know, Django Reinhardt, you know, to adapt my fingers to work all the keys.

00:06:02.874 --> 00:06:03.915
It just didn't work for me.

00:06:03.995 --> 00:06:08.384
So it got me closer and closer to just saying, hey, why don't you just play harmonica?

00:06:21.569 --> 00:06:27.995
In the late 1960s, I discovered Paul Butterfield Band, and that was my inspiration.

00:06:28.276 --> 00:06:31.720
Yeah, like to many of your generation, he was a great inspiration, yeah.

00:06:42.129 --> 00:06:44.151
My father actually had a music store.

00:06:44.271 --> 00:06:48.976
There was a great source of blues, harps, and marine bands that I didn't have to pay for.

00:06:48.997 --> 00:06:49.958
And so...

00:06:50.529 --> 00:06:51.411
They let me have that.

00:06:51.451 --> 00:06:56.338
My father was kind of like, well, you know, at least you're involved in something.

00:06:56.358 --> 00:06:57.701
You're interested in music.

00:06:57.800 --> 00:06:59.163
Let's see how far he goes with it.

00:06:59.783 --> 00:07:11.060
So, you know, I kept on playing until I left New York City and I came to Boston and got involved in playing in the coffee houses of Charles Street.

00:07:11.553 --> 00:07:26.607
And, you know, I needed money, got the job as the janitor at Joe's Place and sat with all those great blues musicians and occasionally, you know, other more famous people who would wander through.

00:07:26.627 --> 00:07:28.528
Then I met John Kolstad.

00:07:29.048 --> 00:07:33.093
And John Kolstad and I got along really well for a number of years.

00:07:33.632 --> 00:07:41.519
And that's where I feel like I really kind of started to concentrate on what I wanted to do because Kolstad was attending the Berklee College of Music.

00:07:41.519 --> 00:07:51.158
He'd come back with all of this newfound musical knowledge, you know.

00:07:53.663 --> 00:07:54.064
Yeah.

00:08:00.898 --> 00:08:10.668
You know, we'd start messing around and he'd bring in these chord changes and I would try to adapt the blues harp to it and maybe add a little chromatic harmonica.

00:08:11.408 --> 00:08:16.213
So yeah, I wanted to pick up about how you, you know, you said you were inspired by Paul Busfield.

00:08:16.252 --> 00:08:21.497
You started playing diatonic first, yeah, and you were into playing blues and then later got into jazz, yeah.

00:08:21.517 --> 00:08:27.283
So if we talk about that transition now and obviously, again, you started out as a diatonic blues player, yeah?

00:08:28.305 --> 00:08:29.245
Yeah, yeah.

00:08:29.442 --> 00:08:32.785
I was about 14 going on 15.

00:08:33.287 --> 00:08:39.955
I went to a community dance Saturday night thing called, you know, The Bronx House.

00:08:41.015 --> 00:08:53.090
And there was not the regular rock and roll band where they play Louie Louie and Wipeout and all those things that, you know, we all wanted to watch the, you know, the rock and roll bands do and stomp around.

00:08:53.110 --> 00:08:59.357
I walked in that one night and there was this substitute band and they were playing this...

00:08:59.490 --> 00:09:01.673
I guess it was blues music at the time.

00:09:01.693 --> 00:09:08.306
I couldn't really recognize what it was, but it sounded way more sophisticated and way more interesting.

00:09:09.207 --> 00:09:20.788
And so on the break or maybe at the end of the night, you know, the guy who was playing the Paul Butterfield part, you know, the harp player, vocalist, I asked him, what is this music?

00:09:21.282 --> 00:09:29.888
And he reached in back of his Fender amplifier and flung the Paul Butterfield blues band album at me and said, here, this is what it is.

00:09:30.785 --> 00:09:39.734
And I went the next day, ran right down to the record store and bought the record and kept on going back there day after day to see what else they had.

00:09:40.114 --> 00:09:41.775
So that was my introduction.

00:09:42.375 --> 00:09:47.279
So how did you start learning the harmonica then when you're playing along to Butter and, you know, doing it that way?

00:09:47.961 --> 00:09:48.520
Yeah, that's it.

00:09:48.741 --> 00:09:53.505
I just, I got a few different keys from my, my father who had the music store.

00:09:53.985 --> 00:09:58.529
I would try to guess what the keys were by, you know, by ear.

00:09:59.291 --> 00:10:00.572
Some of the notes sounded good.

00:10:00.631 --> 00:10:13.304
Some of them didn't, you know, because I was unknowingly probably playing in odd position, odd key positions, finding a common note, you know, on a draw note or a bend note that sounded right.

00:10:13.804 --> 00:10:20.130
And eventually I got all the keys and I was able to differentiate what keys everything was in.

00:10:20.172 --> 00:10:22.673
That really got me on the right track.

00:10:23.554 --> 00:10:30.522
So playing by ear and then I was able to more copy what Butterfield was doing.

00:10:30.946 --> 00:10:35.750
So you played blues for a few years, and then you got interested in playing chromatic, yeah?

00:10:35.769 --> 00:10:41.235
And you mentioned that your friend, the guy you played with, John Kolstad, he went to the Berklee School of Music.

00:10:41.274 --> 00:10:43.557
So you also went to the Berklee School of Music, didn't you?

00:10:43.576 --> 00:10:48.681
So at what stage did you go there, and was that after you'd started playing chromatic?

00:10:49.182 --> 00:11:00.692
Well, I always had a chromatic, but I never knew what to do with it, because it didn't make any sense in terms of the blues harp, because as we all know, harmonica players, we don't have to...

00:11:00.912 --> 00:11:31.576
blame the difference between the what's called the richter scale and the solo tune scale of the chromatic the chromatic has the the two blow c's and that's really what the big confusion was because you're looking for um the relationship of the of the notes in the richter scale especially when you draw so that you get a chord you know that dominant seventh sound Or even when you blow and you get that major chord thing, you're getting one through five.

00:11:32.619 --> 00:11:36.943
But as we all know, the blues harp changes when you get higher up.

00:11:37.443 --> 00:11:39.246
You only get a complete scale in the middle.

00:11:40.148 --> 00:11:47.456
And the chromatic has a complete scale, one through four, then five through eight, and so on.

00:11:48.017 --> 00:12:25.703
So that was confusing until I began writing to try to figure it out and the moment of revelation was listening to James Cotton playing with Otis Spann on a record I'm Ready and it's in D minor third position on the chromatic I realized that you can do that on the C harmonica third position.

00:12:26.404 --> 00:12:30.149
I began to know what the positions were, the key areas of the diatonic.

00:12:30.629 --> 00:12:37.159
And once I realized that I was in D minor on the chromatic, I began to realize certain things.

00:12:37.259 --> 00:12:41.065
And I listened to Little Walter.

00:12:41.284 --> 00:12:44.490
Little Walter actually plays the chromatic in G.

00:12:45.057 --> 00:12:55.914
on, I think it's the Hate to See You Go album, which was another sort of very important album for me in the development of understanding this harmonica.

00:12:55.934 --> 00:12:58.097
And I can't remember the name of it, of the song.

00:12:59.080 --> 00:13:01.543
Maybe it's called You're So Fine or something like that.

00:13:02.524 --> 00:13:05.208
You know, and he's playing chromatic.

00:13:05.669 --> 00:13:06.791
And it was in G.

00:13:07.091 --> 00:13:20.904
And I thought, if Little Walter understood how to play chromatic in G, which is cross-harp, And if James Cotton can play D minor and make it sound great, what else can we do?

00:13:21.466 --> 00:13:26.291
I began to explore the different positions and then, therefore, the different key areas.

00:13:26.511 --> 00:13:31.736
But it was interesting playing blues on the chromatic that initially got you into the chromatic.

00:13:31.777 --> 00:13:33.840
It's a good routine for a lot of people, isn't it?

00:13:34.179 --> 00:13:34.821
I guess it is.

00:13:35.380 --> 00:13:43.070
Maybe a lot of people still don't quite understand, but I think most experienced or long-term players understand.

00:13:43.394 --> 00:13:45.057
they've come to this realization.

00:13:45.177 --> 00:13:54.539
There's a lot of teaching aides and a lot of great players who have developed teaching methods to explain just this very thing.

00:13:54.600 --> 00:13:58.191
For me, it came all by accident.

00:13:58.871 --> 00:14:08.722
And then you heard the great Toots Tillmans, I think age 17, and he turned you on to the real possibilities of the chromatic, and then you started getting more interested in playing jazz then, did you?

00:14:09.504 --> 00:14:16.312
Well, not at age 17, but my father had insisted that I listen to a Toots Tillman record.

00:14:16.913 --> 00:14:31.331
He said, no, listen to this guy, and tell me what you think, and I said, you know, look, I'm 17, and I'm a hippie, bopping around, and You know, not really being able to appreciate the fine points of great music.

00:14:31.370 --> 00:14:34.054
And I'm thinking, wow, listen to him play this.

00:14:34.394 --> 00:14:37.720
He sounds like a saxophone or a clarinet or a flute.

00:14:38.501 --> 00:14:39.802
And my father goes, yeah, that's right.

00:14:40.384 --> 00:14:42.106
That was his advice to me.

00:14:44.230 --> 00:14:52.221
So, you know, some years later, after I connected with Kolstad, he actually gave me the encouragement to do it.

00:14:52.577 --> 00:15:07.719
and play around, and I listened to more Toots Thielman as we went along, and I discovered the key of F, and, you know, where the, I began to practice scales, and discovered where you use the slide on the thing.

00:15:08.259 --> 00:15:12.926
And it's at this point you were deciding that, you know, you didn't just want to play blues, right?

00:15:12.946 --> 00:15:15.529
You wanted to branch out and start learning jazz, so...

00:15:15.971 --> 00:15:16.191
Yeah.

00:15:16.812 --> 00:15:19.294
We did some, what I call experiments.

00:15:19.895 --> 00:15:21.038
There's one recording...

00:15:21.601 --> 00:15:30.561
I did, which is the first recording I ever played on a non-blues harp with this musician, singer, songwriter named Richard Johnson.

00:15:30.620 --> 00:15:33.407
He wrote a song called Old Man Adams.

00:15:55.234 --> 00:16:04.567
In fact, Richard Hunter cited this tune and used it as an example in his publication called Jazz Harp.

00:16:05.107 --> 00:16:09.033
I use what's called a Koch chromatic or a Koch harmonica.

00:16:09.094 --> 00:16:14.142
It's basically an erector scale diatonic with a slide that takes you up a half step.

00:16:14.942 --> 00:16:22.313
And I was able to discover the minor third, the B flat, and occasionally the F sharp.

00:16:22.850 --> 00:16:27.397
to make the G scale a true major scale on that harmonica.

00:16:28.038 --> 00:16:37.011
That was pretty important in the development of understanding how to play the standard chromatic as well.

00:16:37.812 --> 00:16:48.489
So, as you mentioned a couple of times, you played with John Kolstad after, I think, Richard Johnson first, and then John Kolstad, you released an album in 1975 called Beans Taste Fine.

00:16:49.350 --> 00:16:50.832
So on here, you're playing...

00:16:51.649 --> 00:16:56.254
know some diatonic for sure yeah but some chromatic as well on a song called born your dance

00:17:08.950 --> 00:17:11.173
so that's that's a coke chromatic

00:17:11.614 --> 00:17:11.874
oh yeah

00:17:12.253 --> 00:17:17.375
i think it's a it's a one in tune to g really didn't know what I was doing.

00:17:17.395 --> 00:17:20.359
I just came up with these licks and they seemed to work.

00:17:21.182 --> 00:17:26.710
At the time there was a real craze for folk music transitioning to swing.

00:17:26.750 --> 00:17:34.621
We were getting into Django Reinhardt a lot and we became friends with this great guitarist named Lew London.

00:17:35.586 --> 00:17:40.940
And this fantastic bluegrass band called the Bottle Hill Boys.

00:17:41.803 --> 00:17:45.172
And they really impressed me because they didn't just play bluegrass.

00:17:45.192 --> 00:17:49.041
They played Charlie Parker tunes on bluegrass instruments.

00:17:49.663 --> 00:17:50.506
It was like, wow.

00:17:51.268 --> 00:17:51.489
So...

00:17:52.097 --> 00:17:57.027
try to glean things from them and sit in with them and see if they would let me play with them.

00:17:57.067 --> 00:17:58.630
And they were very encouraging, too.

00:17:58.690 --> 00:17:59.230
They were nice.

00:18:00.172 --> 00:18:07.365
And on the Kolstad record we did, we played with Barry Mitterhoff, who was in the Bottle Hill Boys, and Lou London.

00:18:07.705 --> 00:18:12.433
You know, we tried some things, Lady Be Good, and even a key change.

00:18:14.882 --> 00:18:17.464
just starting out experimenting with the thing.

00:18:17.904 --> 00:18:24.371
And so you played with John Kolstad, and then it was in 1978 you went to the Berklee School of Music.

00:18:24.471 --> 00:18:29.336
You wanted to up your game on your musical knowledge and ability.

00:18:30.557 --> 00:18:31.057
Well, true.

00:18:31.137 --> 00:18:42.429
After that stint with John Kolstad, I joined a country-western band called, the name of the band was John Lincoln Wright and the Sour Mash Boys.

00:18:43.842 --> 00:18:51.852
Much to John Lincoln Wright's chagrin, in the band was a violinist who hated country music and wanted to play jazz.

00:18:52.633 --> 00:18:54.355
So he was a bad influence on me.

00:18:55.435 --> 00:19:02.104
While we were in the band, we would always be trying to throw jazz things into the country arrangements.

00:19:02.525 --> 00:19:07.190
Maybe it was a little bit too avant-garde or on the edge.

00:19:09.252 --> 00:19:10.433
I didn't stay very long.

00:19:10.473 --> 00:19:13.417
I stayed about, I don't know, nine months with that band.

00:19:14.241 --> 00:19:21.751
I decided that I really just wanted to move on, so I enrolled at the Berklee College of Music, and I had to play alto saxophone.

00:19:22.272 --> 00:19:26.417
They wouldn't accept me on the chromatic harmonica, because nobody knew what to do with it.

00:19:26.999 --> 00:19:29.903
So, was that the first time you'd played the alto saxophone?

00:19:30.624 --> 00:19:31.003
Well, no.

00:19:31.045 --> 00:19:42.558
I had owned the saxophone for about, I don't know, five or six years previous, and I would practice my scales on it, and toot along with the radio, I wasn't very good.

00:19:43.299 --> 00:19:55.073
But through the curriculum at Berklee, I had to use the saxophone in the ensembles to play because they wouldn't schedule me to play my harmonica.

00:19:55.653 --> 00:20:01.119
I had to learn how to transpose the alto saxophone to the concert key and all of that.

00:20:01.839 --> 00:20:04.743
I'm really bad with all that kind of stuff, even today.

00:20:04.763 --> 00:20:05.805
And so...

00:20:07.329 --> 00:20:15.721
It was difficult for me, because you play in the key of C concert, and on the alto saxophone, you're playing in A with three sharps.

00:20:16.461 --> 00:20:22.450
You're reading all these F sharp minor to B7, like, Jesus.

00:20:23.250 --> 00:20:27.797
And so it was kind of hard, and I just kind of said, you know...

00:20:28.546 --> 00:20:40.500
I'll do what I can on the alto saxophone, but in my spare time, I would go around from teacher to teacher, ensemble room to ensemble room, and just say, hey, would you let me sit in with you guys?

00:20:40.900 --> 00:20:42.682
I don't want credit or anything.

00:20:43.343 --> 00:20:45.246
Do you mind if I play harmonica with you?

00:20:45.705 --> 00:20:48.910
And there were some nice teachers who said, yeah, come on in, Mike.

00:20:49.570 --> 00:20:55.336
They'd throw these things at me, all these etudes and things or unison arrangements.

00:20:56.097 --> 00:20:59.508
In a guitar ensemble, I'd be the only wind instrument.

00:21:00.028 --> 00:21:06.426
Trying to play these guitar licks on it was also very difficult, but it was good experience for me.

00:21:06.848 --> 00:21:08.614
So I pushed myself that way.

00:21:08.865 --> 00:21:14.292
So you've got a few anthology albums out which covers your career over various periods.

00:21:14.313 --> 00:21:24.707
So you've got one which is called Mouth That Roared, which is an anthology you're playing through the 1970s and the early 1980s, which covers the different acts you played with on there.

00:21:24.767 --> 00:21:26.348
So it's really interesting.

00:21:26.849 --> 00:21:31.916
And it's really great that you've managed to capture the recordings from particularly the 1970s era as well.

00:21:32.416 --> 00:21:35.161
So what about that and the stuff that you've got on there?

00:21:35.181 --> 00:21:37.544
It's quite a variety, isn't it, of diatonic and chromatic?

00:21:38.184 --> 00:21:38.846
Yeah.

00:21:38.882 --> 00:22:04.137
I guess that sort of harkens to the period where I went back to New York City to try to break into the world of commercial music, whereby you try to play everything.

00:22:04.673 --> 00:22:09.763
You play a little bit of classical sounding thing if you can get that beautiful sound off your instrument.

00:22:09.884 --> 00:22:13.511
I was asked to play a lot of diatonic stuff.

00:22:13.992 --> 00:22:16.377
Occasionally, I got some chromatic parts.

00:22:17.338 --> 00:22:19.644
And you have to sight read when you go there.

00:22:19.663 --> 00:22:22.249
And once again, it wasn't really my strong point.

00:22:22.269 --> 00:22:24.133
I did my best.

00:22:24.292 --> 00:22:26.237
And I had a lot of really...

00:22:26.753 --> 00:22:42.294
intense competition, or maybe I was trying to compete with people who were already there, like Robert Bonfilio, who was already really very highly skilled at his sight reading and his classical music ability, and he was well-loved in the studios.

00:22:42.914 --> 00:22:54.750
So I did get calls, and it was a great experience for me, and I managed to capture some of the spots for posterity, so I thought I'd put them on the anthology page.

00:22:54.913 --> 00:22:59.519
And then by 1981, I did a couple of tracks.

00:23:00.260 --> 00:23:02.703
Towards the end there, I think, is the point.

00:23:13.336 --> 00:23:16.420
And dipping in the duck sauce, which is...

00:23:17.857 --> 00:23:26.613
chromatic in a jazz environment, utilizing what I'd learned in the previous couple of years at Berklee College of Music.

00:23:42.817 --> 00:23:46.545
Now you say you got some commercials, yeah, up in New York as well.

00:23:46.585 --> 00:23:51.472
So you got some, you know, playing some harmonica on some advertisements, yeah?

00:23:52.134 --> 00:23:58.005
Yeah, and the really successful studio harmonica player was Donnie Brooks.

00:23:58.967 --> 00:24:07.741
Donnie Brooks practically invented studio harmonica in New York City, at least for the blues harmonica.

00:24:15.809 --> 00:24:17.211
I went to meet Donnie Brooks once.

00:24:17.251 --> 00:24:18.292
He was very nice to me.

00:24:18.873 --> 00:24:19.875
He had a music store.

00:24:20.115 --> 00:24:22.376
He was relatively old, much older than me.

00:24:23.198 --> 00:24:36.373
Donnie Brooks was very instrumental in creating the harmonica book for Roger Miller's Big River musical, which was a really nice musical.

00:24:36.874 --> 00:24:48.403
And I did have an opportunity to play that book up here in the Boston area in an off, off, off, off, off, off Broadway production on the South Shore.

00:24:48.942 --> 00:24:55.810
But everybody was very enthusiastic about it, and they were really into it, and we gave it a good, honest effort.

00:24:56.672 --> 00:25:08.464
But getting back to Donnie Brooks, I just wanted to say that he was also another influence for me, thinking about how to be a disciplined studio musician.

00:25:09.250 --> 00:25:09.569
Great.

00:25:09.631 --> 00:25:15.598
And so when you mentioned your reading wasn't necessarily the strongest, so is that something that improved as you did more session work?

00:25:15.898 --> 00:25:17.721
And what did you do to work on that?

00:25:18.823 --> 00:25:26.653
Well, after a while, I realized I probably had to go back to Boston, maybe do some more woodshedding.

00:25:27.255 --> 00:25:34.125
So I returned and I studied with saxophone educator Jerry Bergonzi.

00:25:34.525 --> 00:25:37.548
I studied with him for a couple of years, on and off.

00:25:38.210 --> 00:25:43.558
Yeah, he gave me lots of things to practice and exercises and etudes.

00:25:44.500 --> 00:26:03.374
And I would practice some Bach things and some saxophone etudes and flute etudes and things like that, finding things that I thought would be useful for the harmonica, particularly things in the flute range, of course, with the chromatic having virtually the same range as the flute.

00:26:03.617 --> 00:26:18.942
So I would do that, practice that, and session with people, practice playing heads and standard tunes and arrangements and doing things up here for people having to show up and play their arrangements.

00:26:19.442 --> 00:26:29.018
And then you got some, you know, you carried on getting session work and you got another album which kind of covers this period from 1985 to 1991 called Harmonica Salad.

00:26:29.442 --> 00:26:34.009
Was this a session, you know, the studio tracks you did, or was this your own solo project stuff?

00:26:34.429 --> 00:26:36.291
These were all my own solo projects.

00:26:36.893 --> 00:26:45.905
As I went along and met various musicians and had interesting collaborations, I thought, well, let's go in studio and at least record a few tracks.

00:26:46.926 --> 00:26:51.493
But never enough to put together a whole album with anybody, so...

00:26:51.905 --> 00:26:59.915
I guess by the time I got to 1991 or something like that, when that came out, I thought, you know, there's enough material here to put it out.

00:27:14.394 --> 00:27:16.457
I did a session with...

00:27:17.250 --> 00:27:24.517
even with Ronnie Earl and some local blues musicians associated with him that's on that album.

00:27:25.317 --> 00:27:28.540
There's an interesting track on here called the Crow Magnum Man.

00:27:43.214 --> 00:27:47.287
That is a tune that Ronnie Earl brought into the into the session.

00:27:47.647 --> 00:27:59.306
Playing with Ronnie Earl was a little bit stressing because he had a particular way of playing the melodies and you had to play it that way, but we never rehearsed.

00:27:59.365 --> 00:28:05.816
So I had to do my best matching his accents and the rhythmic hits.

00:28:06.416 --> 00:28:10.403
And I thought, well, the actual session wasn't really so good.

00:28:10.502 --> 00:28:15.049
So I went back and rerecorded over it in order to make it work.

00:28:15.490 --> 00:28:19.449
and I used a different key chromatic harmonica.

00:28:19.489 --> 00:28:26.634
It seemed to work, the timbre of that seemed to work Well, maybe I played

00:28:29.577 --> 00:28:49.625
two chromatics on that thing.

00:28:54.337 --> 00:28:55.118
Yeah, that's true.

00:28:55.680 --> 00:29:01.410
He'd come to Boston, and we had a pretty good run of a friendship for a long time.

00:29:01.450 --> 00:29:02.372
He'd come to Boston.

00:29:02.892 --> 00:29:05.998
Him and his manager, they'd call me, and we'd go out for lobster.

00:29:06.038 --> 00:29:08.842
In Belgium, they love lobster.

00:29:09.663 --> 00:29:16.454
When they'd come to Boston, the Boston lobster was probably the most highly regarded.

00:29:16.615 --> 00:29:17.596
So I would take him out.

00:29:18.273 --> 00:29:19.415
Sometimes they took me out.

00:29:19.997 --> 00:29:22.339
We had fun hanging out, and it was nice.

00:29:22.380 --> 00:29:25.525
And Toots was very generous to write that letter.

00:29:25.545 --> 00:29:31.294
I think it helped me to some degree, and he allowed me to put that in the album.

00:29:31.954 --> 00:29:32.596
Yeah, that's great.

00:29:32.615 --> 00:29:34.838
And did he give you any tips on playing the chromatic?

00:29:35.840 --> 00:29:42.391
He would say things in a musical way, and he would describe his approach.

00:29:42.932 --> 00:29:43.673
He had a very...

00:29:44.577 --> 00:29:54.817
personal approach to playing jazz, which involved the harmonic and melodic scales, but starting from a different degree of the scale.

00:29:55.362 --> 00:29:57.544
in order to play on dominant chords.

00:29:58.084 --> 00:30:00.606
It took me a while to really understand what he was saying.

00:30:00.707 --> 00:30:09.914
I think most jazz musicians of Tootsie's caliber and era understand immediately what he's talking about.

00:30:09.954 --> 00:30:16.941
You know, it just harkens all back to Charlie Parker and post-Charlie Parker approach to things, playing on changes.

00:30:17.540 --> 00:30:28.317
And, you know, he would say things like that, and I would play for him some hits, and he'd go, well, Mike, why are you choosing this When you can actually play it better in another key.

00:30:28.919 --> 00:30:30.924
So he offered advice like that.

00:30:31.005 --> 00:30:36.903
But in all honesty, I never really had a bona fide true lesson with Toots.

00:30:37.324 --> 00:30:38.688
We just kept it friends.

00:30:39.586 --> 00:30:40.987
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00:31:23.490 --> 00:31:27.335
And then later on, you did a couple of albums recorded in Europe, yeah?

00:31:27.375 --> 00:31:32.162
So you did one in 1999 in Germany called A Little Taste of Cannonball, Cannonball Adderley.

00:31:32.182 --> 00:31:52.058
A Little Taste of Cannonball In 2007, you did the Italian job, so that's one you recorded with an Italian band in Italy.

00:31:52.118 --> 00:31:56.066
So, yeah, what took you over to Europe and, you know, doing those recordings?

00:31:57.769 --> 00:32:04.661
Well, at the time I put out Harmonica Salad, it made its way to Italy a couple of years later.

00:32:04.701 --> 00:32:09.869
And there was an impresario friend of mine named Warren Blumberg.

00:32:10.892 --> 00:32:11.993
And Warren...

00:32:12.258 --> 00:32:19.548
arranged for a whole bunch of tours for me with various and sundry Italian musicians.

00:32:20.128 --> 00:32:35.390
Inadvertently, I wound up meeting the musicians who were the Alcaline Trio, or Alcaline Trio, as they pronounce it, organ, vibraphone, and drums, and they were from Florence, or Firenze.

00:32:35.746 --> 00:32:42.055
We had a nice little session while I was there on one of the tours that Warren set up in Pisa.

00:32:42.494 --> 00:32:48.784
And sometime later they contacted me and wanted me to come over and do the little Taste of Cannonball record.

00:32:53.590 --> 00:33:16.857
And then we toured around Northern Italy and even as far down as Rome and we went up into Germany where the recording was actually done in Munich, in the Munich area with that band.

00:33:17.498 --> 00:33:27.488
So we toured and got the music together and we rehearsed a little bit when we got to the studio and then we just spent two or three days doing the music.

00:33:28.409 --> 00:33:32.932
You know, definitely at this stage, certainly on the other album you did in 2008, The Nature of Things.

00:33:36.738 --> 00:33:56.134
on the italian job you could in 2007 you know your jazz playing's become very accomplished at this stage yeah so we obviously you'd worked hard and then we you know you're happy with your your chromatic jazz playing at this stage

00:33:56.894 --> 00:34:10.978
i have to say that on most of that yeah i am i mean Listening back on things, you know, we all have a little bit of a self-conscious misgiving of, gee, I think maybe I didn't get that right.

00:34:11.159 --> 00:34:14.704
Or, you know, there's a little nuance here that could have been better.

00:34:15.103 --> 00:34:18.288
But for the most part, yeah, I'm very happy with the way it came out.

00:34:18.829 --> 00:34:23.755
I was very satisfied with how I put together the Italian job.

00:34:25.577 --> 00:34:25.757
Thank you.

00:34:37.826 --> 00:34:45.617
I used two of the same musicians from the Cannibal session, the Cannibal Adelaide Little Taste music session.

00:34:46.018 --> 00:34:54.985
I use a vibraphone player and the drummer, Alessandro Fabri and Alessandro Di Puccio, along with Paolo Biro on piano.

00:34:55.545 --> 00:34:58.268
They were fantastic musicians to this day.

00:34:58.608 --> 00:35:00.030
They're incredible players.

00:35:00.550 --> 00:35:05.315
They're examples of people you don't really get to hear anywhere else but in Italy.

00:35:05.894 --> 00:35:15.443
But they make themselves available, and they've had great experiences playing with great musicians who've come through Italy and toured around with them.

00:35:15.983 --> 00:35:20.929
you know, some experiences going as far back as playing with Chet Baker, you know, and so on.

00:35:21.670 --> 00:35:27.016
I feel very fortunate that they wanted to do this, and I'm very happy.

00:35:27.077 --> 00:35:35.967
I put the arrangements together, chose the repertoire, did a couple of originals by Alessandro Fabri on that record.

00:35:36.007 --> 00:35:37.768
I like the sound of it.

00:35:38.289 --> 00:35:40.050
I produced it myself.

00:35:45.557 --> 00:35:45.918
piano plays softly

00:35:52.898 --> 00:35:56.143
It's interesting, you do still play some diatonic on here.

00:35:56.182 --> 00:36:01.550
So there's a song on The Nature of Things called Pickle in the Bank, and you're playing diatonic on here.

00:36:01.831 --> 00:36:06.257
But you can tell that it's kind of influenced by your jazz learnings.

00:36:06.277 --> 00:36:08.442
You're playing the diatonic more in a sort of jazzy way.

00:36:09.322 --> 00:36:17.014
Well, you know, if you go back to the Harmonica Salad record, on it is called Tin Sandwich Swing, which is what I call it.

00:36:17.094 --> 00:36:17.695
It's a blues.

00:36:21.442 --> 00:36:21.661
MUSIC PLAYS

00:36:23.362 --> 00:37:08.038
and it's a kind of an arrangement blues but pretty much it's a lot of improvisation and what i'm doing my approach is as each blues chord change comes around i try to change position for that and play in that key you know in the one and in the four and then in the five and maybe interject a 2-5, 3-6, 2-5 turnaround on the blues harp, even so much as to use some of what Howard Levy terms the overblows to get notes that don't exist on the, that weren't built into the diatonic.

00:37:08.518 --> 00:37:17.273
So going back to the pickle in the bank is, I guess, another attempt at just keeping my finger in the blues harp.

00:37:31.010 --> 00:37:32.771
Interesting you mentioned overblows there.

00:37:32.791 --> 00:37:36.396
So I think you were quite one of the early pioneers of overblows.

00:37:36.416 --> 00:37:39.800
You mentioned the tin sandwich swing.

00:37:39.900 --> 00:37:42.342
So that was recorded, what, in the 70s, was it?

00:37:42.402 --> 00:37:45.065
So you were using overblows quite early on.

00:37:45.987 --> 00:37:50.952
In the 70s, I was using overblows, and even, in fact, on the Kolstad record.

00:37:51.632 --> 00:37:56.239
And I didn't learn about the overblows from Howard Levy.

00:37:56.278 --> 00:37:58.922
I learned it from Richard Hunter, who was doing it.

00:37:59.297 --> 00:38:04.045
And I just kept on trying to get it to go somewhere.

00:38:04.186 --> 00:38:09.896
And really, I mean, I just kind of used the overblows to expand on cross harp.

00:38:10.077 --> 00:38:24.021
And in no way did I ever get to a point where I became a diatonic overblow player, you know, even close to the caliber of Howard Levy, who is the utmost musical genius of it.

00:38:24.418 --> 00:38:26.507
not to mention his own musical talent.

00:38:26.847 --> 00:38:30.844
He is an absolute genius in music, the harmonica or not.

00:38:31.306 --> 00:38:35.101
For sure, yeah.

00:38:46.146 --> 00:38:48.949
So you're playing Overblows, you know, on the diatonic.

00:38:49.010 --> 00:38:50.632
I see you played it later on as well.

00:38:50.692 --> 00:38:55.577
So you saw the chromatic and diatonic quite closely related in that way.

00:38:56.458 --> 00:38:57.760
Yeah, I did.

00:38:58.342 --> 00:39:01.164
You know, it just became a revelation to me.

00:39:01.224 --> 00:39:03.949
And Charlie Musselwhite put out a book.

00:39:04.969 --> 00:39:08.233
I can't remember the title of it, but it covered all the key areas.

00:39:08.293 --> 00:39:09.235
I'm sure he had some help.

00:39:10.056 --> 00:39:11.097
It was very interesting.

00:39:11.746 --> 00:39:23.117
because he covers the diatonic harmonica chromatically, where you can play all the keys chromatically, and what the key areas are.

00:39:23.157 --> 00:39:34.009
And Howard Levy calls the key areas not by first position, cross position, or second position, third position.

00:39:34.730 --> 00:39:36.711
He calls it by the key position.

00:39:37.552 --> 00:39:45.079
When you play C diatonic and F you're in the F position or in the B flat position or the A position and so on.

00:39:45.980 --> 00:39:53.891
And this is how I came to really realize how you can be musical and get along on the chromatic.

00:39:53.951 --> 00:40:15.039
Of course, being in Berklee College of Music and going through all of that, I was required to follow the proficiency curriculum and do all these scales, arpeggios, arpeggios in thirds, four-part, even five-part chords.

00:40:15.681 --> 00:40:19.985
and extensions and then learn some etudes and things like that.

00:40:20.025 --> 00:40:26.371
So, you know, you really have to do the whole thing, practice as if you were a saxophone or a flute.

00:40:26.791 --> 00:40:28.652
So you mentioned earlier on you played some classical music.

00:40:28.693 --> 00:40:31.376
So you have played with the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

00:40:31.436 --> 00:40:33.998
So how did that come about and what did you play with them?

00:40:34.538 --> 00:40:45.347
Well, I put my classical playing and experience in a very sort of light and incidental way because I'm not really...

00:40:45.648 --> 00:40:53.478
and never have been a classical musician, but trying to play that kind of stuff or practicing it can never be harmful.

00:40:53.797 --> 00:40:55.800
It can only help you be a better musician.

00:40:56.422 --> 00:41:09.057
And I got a call out of the blue from the managers of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and they were recording the Carnival of the Animals, a very strange situation.

00:41:09.697 --> 00:41:22.034
Seiji Ozawa wanted to record this Saint-Saëns Carnival of the Animals, the way it was written in the music they had in their music library.

00:41:22.373 --> 00:41:24.195
Historically correct.

00:41:24.536 --> 00:41:32.045
And when they went through the orchestral parts, they found the harmonica part in the movement called the Aquarium.

00:41:32.465 --> 00:41:41.958
And Saint-Saëns had this beautifully printed, almost 100-year-old piece of sheet music, and at the top of it said, harmonica.

00:41:42.530 --> 00:41:46.032
And you almost never hear it played by harmonica.

00:41:46.574 --> 00:41:52.539
In fact, you never hear it played by harmonica, except this one recording that I played for them.

00:41:53.179 --> 00:41:54.481
And it's a very simple part.

00:41:54.822 --> 00:41:57.583
You know, you just sort of call and answer kind of thing.

00:41:58.684 --> 00:42:02.628
The solo part for the harmonica is this glissando in the middle.

00:42:03.130 --> 00:42:11.998
And there's no way any harmonica made can play that glissando unless you have a harmonica that plays all blow harmonica.

00:42:12.193 --> 00:42:17.000
in a major scale, and it has to be the C scale in order to do that.

00:42:17.721 --> 00:42:27.353
I think it was from E to E, and that's the glissando, and you have to glissando like, you know, it's really fast.

00:42:28.054 --> 00:42:32.822
I think maybe there are some people who can claim they can do that on a blow drawer instrument.

00:42:33.282 --> 00:42:40.014
What I did was I used a polyphonia, which is a chromatic instrument, all blow, And I'll draw.

00:42:40.074 --> 00:42:43.661
You get the same chromatic scale as you swipe up the thing.

00:42:43.981 --> 00:42:50.211
So I used that for the solo and I showed it to Seiji and he scratched his head and he goes, OK, we'll try it.

00:42:50.592 --> 00:42:53.476
And they were all very satisfied with it.

00:42:53.536 --> 00:42:56.101
I was impressed at the compliments I got.

00:42:56.461 --> 00:42:57.364
Well, you found some of the work.

00:42:57.423 --> 00:42:57.844
That's good.

00:42:58.324 --> 00:43:00.789
But that's the extent of my classical experience.

00:43:01.793 --> 00:43:04.400
You've also done some film scores, haven't you?

00:43:04.460 --> 00:43:07.347
A film called Honey Dripper and another one called Walking on a Cloud.

00:43:07.467 --> 00:43:14.262

Mike Turk interview

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