Invented back in 1829, the musical yoke known as the moothie, the gubiron, the harp or the French harp has turned out to be one of the most effective little instruments around. Also known as the harmonica or mouth-organ, it has come to mean many things. I first heard its melodious possibilities in the hands of a drunk man who performed regularly in my home town. I later heard it played in an equally gauche manner by Bob Dylan. And of course we all recognise it as a lonesome wailing presence in any half-decent cowboy picture where beans are heated under the stars. It's good for train scenes, too.
We can go back even further, however. Some 4,000 years ago Emperor Haungtai of China is said to have come up with an instrument which worked on the principle of vibrating reeds. That started it. Then an Irishman called Richard Pockrick progressed things considerably, and then Benjamin Franklin took it further again - although these instruments bore little similarity to today's instruments. They got much closer, however, with the "aeolina" - a series of reeds in a metal box - invented by Sir Charles Wheatsone back in 1829. A German company, Frederick Hotz, was the first to manufacture them, and when Hotz later merged with Hohner, harmonicas (and accordions) became very big business indeed.
Viewed by many as a novelty or a toy, the main attraction of the harmonica was that it was cheap. It was also portable and capable of glorious volume. This is precisely why the humble harp was so ideally placed to be a major part of the development of black American music at the end of the 19th century. The added appeal was the instrument's vocal quality. As black musicians had already done with the trumpets and other instruments which had become available at the end of the civil war, they took to making the harmonica talk, sing and wail. The brass instruments became the soul of jazz. The harmonica became the expressive heart of the blues and it wasn't long before virtuosos appeared ready to mimic a train, chickens or a foxhunt at the drop of a hat.
In the early days of country blues the harp was used as a kind of rhythmic support, often competing to be heard over a racket of jugs, banjoes and kazoos. Its own voice slowly began to emerge as harmonica soloists came to prominence - with perhaps Sonny Terry the best known. Sonny Boy Williamson I was another highly influential player from the early days - not to be confused with Sonny Boy Williamson II, an equally influential player in later years. Between them, they developed all sorts of techniques for getting the most out of this tiny instrument. They came up with ways
of changing tone, bending notes, hammering out rhythms and, when called for, screaming and wailing to the greatest possible effect.
The only possible threat to the harmonica's position might have been that famous migration north. As the music moved with the people to cities such as Chicago, blues became heavily electrified and considerably louder. But thanks to some clever adaptation the harmonica not only survived the change, but became an essential part of the new sound. The most significant figure was Little Walter, whose classic Juke is still aired at the hipper nightclubs. Walter played using his own amplifier and the PA microphone. He held both the mike and the harmonica in his hands and wailed.
More and more white musicians took note. In fact, Walter's music was introduced to the rest of the world when his songs were covered by Paul Butterfield - himself a fine harmonica player who famously performed Mystery Train on The Band's Last Waltz. Mentioned in the same movie is Sonny Boy Williamson II (Rice Miller) - possibly the inspiration of the Bob Dylan line: "You gotta play your harp until your lips bleed". Williamson was a virtuoso and a showman and a huge influence on the 1960s R'n'B groups on this side of the Atlantic. His Help Me was an R'n'B staple and remained for many years in the repertoire of Van Morrison, whose own playing is a mixture of Terry, Williamson and Walter.
The harmonica, meanwhile, developed in several directions musically, and consequently there are many models to meet specific needs. If, for instance, you have a small Marine Band blues harp and you wonder why you can't play like Stevie Wonder, it's not at all your fault. Basically you have the wrong instrument. What you need is a larger version which will provide you with more notes.
The basic harp used for blues has 10 holes and 20 reeds. There are bigger ones, but most folk or urban blues players tend to play with the smaller model - ultimately owning one in every key. What Stevie Wonder uses is a chromatic harp which gives the player a lot more notes to play with. In fact Little Walter, who perfected the chromatic harp as a blues instrument, sometimes used one with a range of four chromatic octaves, thus confounding anybody who ever tried to copy him.
The Belgian jazz virtuoso Toots Thielemans (who, among other things, composed plays on the themes to both Midnight Cowboy and Sesame Street) is another who seems to do near-impossible things with the instrument. Country player Charlie McCoy has proved quite invaluable in Nashville with his ferocious harmonica attacks. Contemporary American outfit Blues Traveller is fronted by an extraordinary player called John Pepper who wears two bandoleers full of harps. In Ireland, we have Brendan Power who takes on reels and jigs with mind-boggling skill - and of course Don Baker, who is second to none when it come to a trick or two on the tin sandwich.
A word, too, for the indefatigable Larry Adler who perhaps did most to popularise the instrument during a very long career indeed. Born in 1914, Adler turned professional at 14 years old - that's why he can be found on compilations which also feature The Memphis Jug Band and Blind Lemon Jefferson! As a soloist, he is recognised as the one who took the harmonica into the concert hall, playing with the world's leading symphony orchestras. He also turned his hand to film scores and forced those who still considered the gubiron a novelty item to think again.
But having given one history of the harmonica, it's worth noting another one. In 1821, 16-year-old Christian Friedrich Buschmann patented his "Aura" - a series of steel reeds blown at through small channels. As he described it, it was "a new instrument that is truly remarkable. In its entirety it measures but four inches in diameter, but gives 21 notes, and all the pianissimos and crescendos one could want without a keyboard, harmonies of six tones, and the ability to hold a note as long as one would wish to."
His instrument was worked on by a Bohemian instrument maker called Richter, which then led to Matthias Hohner abandoning clocks for the new Mund harmonika. Maybe so. But I prefer the version which includes Emperor Haungtai of China, Benjamin Franklin and, perhaps more importantly, that mysterious Irishman called Richard Pockrick.