July 1, 2015 • 27 mins
The deceptively simple harmonica has roots as far back as ancient China, though it really came into its own in Europe in the 1800s.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to stuff you missed in history class from works
dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Hey, Tracy, do you
know how to play the harmonica? Uh? Know? How would
(00:21):
be a very generous description. Almost anyone can get a
noise out of it. If I may not be melodic,
I can put a harmonica in my mouth and cause
it to make noise. There you go. Yeah, I'm pretty
much the same. That's not an area of musical skill
that I have ever developed. Uh. And we're going to
talk about harmonicas today and sort of how the harmonica
(00:44):
came to be as popular as it is. And we're
even going to talk about a couple of sort of
important harmonica musicians. Uh. For clarity, the German word harmonica,
spelled with a k U is used to apply to
several different things. Harmonica is, like we're talking about today,
glass harmonicas and accordions. Uh. And the glass harmonica, which
(01:06):
Benjamin Franklin played a part in developing, uses a series
of glass bowls arranged together and graduated sizes and U
uses friction to produce to produce notes. And UH, that's
not what we're talking about today though. And as for
the accordion, uh, the accordion harmony and the harmonica are
two instruments that are kind of intertwined in terms of development.
(01:27):
They both appeared on the scene in the eighteen twenties,
and they were kind of developed in tandem throughout the
eighteen hundreds. But today we're going to talk about the
harmonica in the sense of what is sometimes also called
a mouth harp. Uh. You know, the probably the image
that most people think of when you say the word,
and probably like something they had a toy version of
(01:47):
as a kid. I love those things. When I was
a child, I was a danger to myself and others
with my toy harmonicas, some of those toys. I'm like,
I did start to put it in my stocking if
everybody hates me playing it so much. But there you go.
So first, we're just going to kind of talk about
harmonicas and and their ancient history roots. Harmonicas are found
(02:12):
all over the world and they are part of the
music of numerous cultures. And that's do at least in
part to the fact that it is an exceptionally portable
musical instrument. I mean it's like you have the harmonica
because you I don't know the triangle. Yeah, like you can.
You can put Papa harmonica in your pocket and off
you go. And later on that portability we're going to
(02:33):
talk about kind of how that helped it spread. Another
part of the harmonicas appeal is it's simplicity. Like we
just said, almost anyone can make a noise on it.
It creates a sound when air has passed over a
metal read that's fixed on one end but not the others,
so it allows for vibration. The oldest known harmonica like
instrument is the Chinese shung, and one of these was
(02:54):
found in the tomb of a fifth century BC emperor
of China. The oldest known writing about the instruments goes
all the way back to eleven hundred BCS, So these
have been around for a really long time. Yeah, we
um uh definitely know that they were popular for quite
a while in China. And the shung really, if you
(03:15):
look at it, it doesn't look that much like a harmonica.
It more closely sort of resembles a mini handheld pipe
organ in terms of form, But when you hear one played,
the audible resemblance between a shung and a harmonica is unmistakable,
and we're gonna link to a video in our show
notes of someone playing a shong so you can kind
of hear it for yourself. Free read. Instruments similar to
(03:37):
this young spread all through Southeast Asia and then to
Korea and Japan prior to the eighteenth century. Harmonicas appeared
in Europe in the seventeen hundreds, but it's not totally
clear whether this was descended from the Chinese shung, which
was the you know, brought to Europe by a trade
and travel or whether they were developed in Europe on
their own independently. Yeah, you'll sometimes see it, uh described
(04:02):
one way or the other, depending on what history you're reading.
Some will say yes, and then Asian instruments like the
harmonica traveled into Europe and Europeans were inspired to create
their own versions, and others kind of say, we're not
entirely clear that that's how it worked. They may have
been working on similar instruments can currently before they were
exposed to things like the show. But what we do
(04:24):
know is that in eighteen twenty Christian Friedrich Lidwig Bushman
bundled a group of pitch pipes together into kind of
a squarish rectangular shape, creating an instrument that he called
an aura. And this instrument could only be played by blowing,
so similar to harmonica, but with no option to draw
air through the instruments to create tones with an inhale.
(04:47):
Scandinavia and Central Europe gave us the first instruments that
look like what we think of as a Harmonicas a
day mun harmonicas or mouth organs appeared in Vienna and
Berlin in eighteen twenties, and these usually had one read
per hole in the instrument, whereas later models would significantly
expand the number of notes that could be played using
additional reads. Yeah, the first to read harmonica appeared in
(05:14):
and So with this design, one read plays a note
when the player exhales or blows into the instrument, and
another read that plays a different note. Sometimes we'll talk
about this morning detail in a moment when the player
inhales or draws through the instrument. And this new design
of a blowing versus a an inhaling and having both
(05:36):
options was the brainchild of a man named Joseph Richter,
and there's still today a thing called Richter tuning, which
is named after him based on some of these ideas. Uh.
And since we're kind of getting into sort of how
these work in terms of blowing and drawing, we're gonna
step away from the history chronology for just a moment
and talk about the actual physical makeup of harmonica. But
(05:59):
before we dive into that, let's have a quick word
from a sponsor. So now that we've reached the point
in history where their harmonica is actually a harmonica as
we would recognize it, we're going to talk a little
bit more about how they're constructed and how they actually work.
Harmonicas are free read instruments, and that means that the
red is fixed at one end and it's set over
(06:20):
an opening that's barely larger than the read. Yeah, if
you take a part of harmonica, you're gonna see a
pretty simple assortment of pieces. There. The top and bottom
cover plates, which provide the exterior housing for the whole thing.
The comb is the thick centerpiece of the instrument, and
it contains the holes that a player blows into her
(06:41):
draws through. And combs were made of wood originally, but
now they're sometimes made of plastic or metal. The reed
plates sit on either side of the column in between
the comb and the cover plates. The reds are affixed
to these read plates, and the length of the reads vary.
That's what creates the different oats. They're also screws holding
(07:02):
the whole business together. Read plates on most harmonical harmonicas
are made out of metal. They can also be made
of plastic, but that usually relegates the instrument into the
realm of toys. Yeah, those are the ones that I
was making adults crazy with when I was a child
slash teenager slash young adult. There are four common types
(07:24):
of harmonica, the diatonic, the chromatic, the tremolo, and the octave.
So diatonic harmonicas contained ten holes. The four middle holes
make up an octave, and then the holes on either
side of that center group extend the scale. These are
the harmonicas that you normally hear in country your blues music.
Joseph Richter instrument was a diatonic harmonica. Chromatics, which are
(07:49):
favored often for classical and jazz music, have more options
for the number of holes that can be in the comb.
They can come in ten, twelve or sixteen whole varieties
and can play all twelve notes on the chromatic scale.
Both tremolo and octave harmonicas have double holes. In tremolo models,
which are commonly used in Latin, Asian, international folk and
(08:11):
gospel music, each double hole has two reads tuned to
the same note, but one is slightly higher to create
a vibrating effect. Octave harmonicas, which are often favored for
Irish or Cajun music, have two reads in each double
hole like the tremolo, but the reads are tuned in
octave apart. The harmonica is deceptively simple. Almost anyone who
(08:34):
blows into one can make a noise out of it,
but there are true masters of the instrument who spend
years perfecting their ambisher and technique. Yeah, I mean the
way that people form their mouth muscles to make noises
is uh. It varies and you can get different tones
from different ways that you shape your mouth, and different
players have kind of signature sounds that they create because
(08:57):
their ambishure is is so specific to the way they play.
It's really quite fascinating. But now that we kind of
understand how it all works, we're going to get back
into the history of it. And we left off in
the chronology with Joseph Richter having developed the two read
system for harmonicas, and despite this huge jump in harmonica
technology and harmonicas to this day retain Richter's design. H
(09:23):
There was actually some difficulty, though, getting any serious attention
for this mouth organ um. Established musicians at the time
were a little snooty. They kind of viewed it as
a plaything, and the fact that it was available to
anyone because of its simplicity and relatively low price point
compared to other musical instruments really did not help in
this regard. I feel like that probably pertains to like
(09:45):
the forty seven other extremely easy to carry musical instruments.
But I've thought of since we recorded the intro, I
feel like folks are gonna email us lots of other
easy to carry instruments. That's great. Sure. Eventually businessmen saw
the appeal of offering musicality to the masses, and harmonicas
(10:05):
were manufactured for retail sale. One of the businessmen who
did this was Christian Messner of Troughingen, and when Messner
founded his harmonica company in eighteen seven, he was a
very secretive and extremely protective of how these small instruments
were made. So much so that only members of his
family were even allowed information about his factory and how
(10:27):
it worked. Unfortunately, his family members were not quite as
careful with the secret as he was. Messner's business did
really well for years, but in the eighteen fifties his nephew,
Christian Weiss joined the company. After working with his uncle
for a year, Wiss started his own factory. A former
school friend of Weiss's, Matthias Hohner, stopped by the new
(10:49):
factory in eighteen fifty six to visit, but it was
not just a social call. By the time Weiss realized
that owner was carefully observing and taking in the family's
trade seek it, it was too late to do anything
about it. Yep, Mattia's owner opened up his own harmonica
factory the next year, eighteen fifty seven, using to some
(11:10):
degree the knowledge that he gleaned on his visit to
Weiss and wife's factory to make his product. And owner,
like both Messner and Weiss, had been a clockmaker prior
to this venture, and he apparently was not particularly musically inclined.
But what he really did have on his side was
that he was a better businessman than Messner and Weiss.
He figured out not only how to make harmonicas, but
(11:33):
how to mass produce harmonicas. And this was a huge
departure from the normal musical instrument manufacture process, as you know,
is still in many ways the case. It's a trade
that was always focused on handcrafted work. Because he had
this large output of harmonicas, that also meant that he
could sell them in bulk. But volume sales weren't the
(11:53):
only way he was outpacing the other entrepreneurs. He recognized
the United States had a large commune of German immigrants
who might want to carry a little piece of home
with them in their new country. Harmonicas would fit right
into their pockets. So in eighteen sixty two, this former
clockmaker sent a shipment of his harmonica products to members
(12:14):
of his family who had already emigrated to the US.
And his belief was that if these cousins of his
could just promote the harmonica to other immigrants, demand would
naturally grow. And Hohner was right, and his US market
quickly became his biggest market. Once harmonicas had traveled to
the United States, they soon spread all through the country.
(12:36):
As harmonicas made their way into the American South and Southwest.
The sound really became an integral part of folk music.
New playing techniques also developed along the way. Blues musicians
started cutting their hands around their harmonicas just to experiment
with sort of slurring the notes. Yeah, there was a
lot of musical development in this time and and technique
(12:58):
development around the harmonic. Uh uh that we're not going
super deep into, but it's really interesting and it's it's
kind of one of those things where this instrument was
designed to be played one way, but when it got
to the US, particularly in the South and in you know,
as you said, a lot of blues culture, they really
just sort of found their own ways to play it.
(13:18):
It was like they did not have this European music tradition,
so they just kind of approached it as a completely
new thing. Uh. And in the meantime, Owner really continued
to do extremely well for himself. Twenty years into his
business venture as a harmonica manufacturer, he had basically reached
mogul status. So at that point he was turning out
a million harmonicas each year. In Owner introduced the marine
(13:41):
band harmonica, and this model has been popular ever since
with musicians and collectors. The diatonic marine band model had
brass reads and a pair wood comb and had has
been played by everyone from Bob Dylan to blues legend
Big Mama Thornton. Yeah it. It remains one of the
most popular models of all time. The Owner company innovated
(14:04):
again by introducing the chromatic harmonica, which we talked about
a little bit when we were discussing different types. After
forty years in business as a harmonica maker, Owner bought
out Messner's company. Uh. Much as Messner ran his business
as a family affair, Owner built his empire along with
his sons and eventually handed the company off to them.
(14:26):
Trossing in Germany became known as a harmonica city. Uh.
And next up, we're going to talk a little bit
about a couple of the musicians who made names to
themselves playing harmonica. There have been many, but we're only
gonna cover a couple. But first we're gonna pause once
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(16:13):
we promised we would discuss harmonica players here for a moment.
And as the harmonica became integrated into the developing blues
and country scene that was starting to really grow in
the United States, skilled players began to emerge as famous musicians.
One of the first of these famous harmonica masters was
DeFord Bailey. Bailey had been playing harmonica since the age
(16:34):
of three. His parents were musical and he allegedly was
given instruments instead of toys when he was a child.
A Nashville radio show called barn Dance started featuring him
and his incredible talent. In nine Bailey became a regular
performer when this show called barn Dance changed its name
to something you're probably going to recognize, which is the
(16:56):
Grand ol Opry in n and he appeared on that
for fifteen years and was actually one of its best
paid stars. He was the first African American country star,
and in many ways he served as a bridge between
the rural folk tradition which he had grown up in
and popular music, which he sort of became a huge
icon in. Bailey's music career continued until nineteen forty one,
(17:20):
when the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers or ASCAP,
and the radio industry started a dispute over licensing fees
for performing on the air. Because there was no licensing
contract in place. While the dispute was underway, the Ford
Bailey couldn't play many of the songs that had come
to be favorites of the opery audience. Yeah, this really
(17:41):
was a very volatile time. Uh, you know. It was
basically like he wanted to play music, He wanted to
play for his his audience and his fans, and they
were like, you can't do that, Like the risks are
too great, you cannot possibly do this. And it was
really frustrating. And as this coral kind of lumbered on,
the radio station ended up in some pretty dire fiscal
states and they had to let people go and Bailey
(18:04):
was one of those people. So at that point in
he left his music career behind more or less entirely,
and he opened a shoeshine parlor, although he would occasionally
return to the radio show. After all of the legal
battles had died down for guest appearances. De Ford Bailey
died in July two and he was inducted into the
Country Music Hall of Fame in two thousand five. And
(18:27):
the next person that we're going to talk about is
really colorful and interesting, uh and has a very hazy
biography because we'll talk about why. At the same time
that DeFord Bailey was enjoying his popularity with the Opery,
there was another blues harmonica player who was also gaining recognition,
and this was sunny Boy Williamson. The second who was
(18:47):
born we believe, Alec Miller, and he made his name
on a radio show called King Biscuit Time. And Sunny
Boy is really interesting, uh, though historically frustrating because it
appears that he really delighted in planting false information about
himself in the press. He went by numerous names. In
addition to Sunny Boy, he was also sometimes called Rice, Reverend,
(19:10):
Reverend Blue, Willie Miller, and Willie Williamson. To make matters
even more confusing, there was another sunny Boy Williamson who
played blues harmonica at the same time and who was
around at the same age, based mainly out of Chicago,
but to eventually came to be known as sunny Boy
Williamson one and sunny Boy Williamson two. For the purpose
(19:30):
of today's episode, when we referenced sunny Boy, we're talking
about number two. Yeah, there. I mean their stories run
so parallel in terms of timeline. I think sunny Boy
Williamson one, or the first however you want to say,
it was born in nineteen thirteen, and we think that
sunny Boy Williamson two was born in nineteen twelve, though
there are no question marks there as well. We don't
(19:51):
know that that's an accurate date. So it's very um
tricky to kind of sort out the details sometimes, and
even while doing research, I would stumble across sites that
seemed to be really squared away, and then I would realize, oh,
they've accidentally possibly conflated these two men together, or their
details have crossed the wires and they're not quite accurate.
But so sunny Boy that we're talking about today too,
(20:15):
claims to have appeared on the Grand ol Opry radio
show in the nineteen thirties, but that has never been verified.
But once he started playing harmonica on King Biscuit Time
as sunny Boy Williamson, he kind of became too famous
to make another name change, although I suppose he could
have played UH anonymously somewhere under another name, but sunny
(20:35):
Boy was really his, his recognized name UH. And the
show's sponsor was so delighted with him and his popularity
that they even marketed a corn meal named after him.
So it was his sunny Boy corn meal, and it
had a photo of him on the bag. His career
spanned quite a while, and he was very successful. He
(20:55):
started a recording career in the nineteen fifties and did
really well for himself. Funny Boy died in nineteen sixty
five and was inducted into the Arkansas Entertainer's Hall of Fame.
In two thousand eight, he was given a marker on
the Mississippi Blues Trail. And while those are only two
harmonicists that have gamed fame, there are certainly scores of
(21:16):
others in all genres, from classical to hip hop. It's
an instrument that you know. As we said, it's deceptively simple.
People go oh, harmonica, but the people that play it well,
it's amazing. In December five, astronaut Willie Shara became the
first human being to play a song in space, and
he did so on a harmonica. He played jingle bells
(21:36):
as part of a Christmas joke that he and a
fellow astronaut, Tom Stafford played with Mission Control. The two
of them reported seeing a UFO piloted by a man
in a red suit. Yah, you're having a little bit
of fun. Uh. The Honer tradition in Truss Engine continues
into present day. This company has produced more than a
(21:56):
billion harmonicas since it's beginning in eighteen fifty seven. It
is still going strong. During the nineteen sixties, owner Harmonica
was really smart and signed endorsement deals with some of
the biggest names in music, including the Beatles, Johnny Cash
and Sammy Davis Jr. Trossingen is also home to the
Harmonica Museum, which is funded in a joint partnership by
(22:17):
the German government and the Honer Company. It's homes almost
twenty five thousand different harmonicas from around the world. Yeah,
so you can visit it if you are ever there. Uh.
The harmonica, of course, retains its popularity in part because
it can be so expressive and can sound so different
depending on the person playing it. As we talked about, Uh,
(22:38):
and I read this great interview UH that took place
in and Smithsonian writer Paul Bisiglio interviewed Barry Lee Pearson
about an album called Classic Harmonica Blues that Pearson was
co producing for Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, and in this interview,
Bisseglio asked Pearson what he hoped listeners would take away
(22:59):
from the record being and his response was, I hope
people might want to think more about the harmonica and
maybe try it out. I also would like them to
understand that you can play it in a variety of ways.
You can bend an instrument to your cultural preference. If
you put your mind to it, you can make an
instrument talk for you in the language that you prefer,
in your own cultural idiom. I just love that way
(23:21):
of putting it. So that's our brief history of harmonicas
it's one of those things that there are so many
branches that we could talk about, but I kind of
wanted to give a nice brief overview since it's a
an instrument that maybe doesn't always get the respect it deserves.
But people that love harmonica love harmonica, and it's because
it's kind of awesome. I like to watch when the
(23:43):
somebody plays the harmonica and the guitar at the same time.
Oh yeah, that always kind of blows my mind, like
I can't I feel like my brain can't parse that file,
Like I'm like, how how does it do? But people
are talented and can do many things, it was I'm
just not one of them. Um. I also have a
little bit of listener mail that has nothing to do
(24:03):
with harmonicas. I've been wanting to showcase more of our
awesome um postcards that we get, because we get a
lot of them and sometimes I don't always stop and
read them for the show. So I've been trying to
do more of those lately, more of our actual hard
copy mails, since we often read a lot of emails.
So the first one is from our listener Will, and
he writes, Hi, Holly and Tracy, my name is Will
(24:25):
and I love your podcast. I picked up on it
this past summer and took it with me to Evianne, France,
where I completed a five month study abroad with a
f s USA. Listening to your program has led me
to do my own digging and learn more about where
I was living as well was my hometown. I'm off
to college this June at the US Merchant Marine Academy
in King's Point, New York. And I hope I can
make it to your live show this fall again. I
(24:47):
love the show and for teaching me so much about
history both here and around the world. Will thanks so much.
We hope you make it here to our show in
October as well. That would be awesome. And he sent
us this beautiful postcard of Evianne Laba, which is a
beautiful part of France. And it's a gorgeous postcard. And
our second one is from our listener, Teresa, and this
(25:08):
one is near and dear to my heart because the
postcard is from Disney World, she says. Hi, Ali and
draz First, I love the podcast and the knowledge you
so pleasantly bestow upon its listeners. I listened on my
way to work and pretty much whenever possible. I'm sad
to say I'm nearing the end of the archive. I
picked this card up at the Polynesian Resort at Disney
World on my last vacation well staycation really uh, and
(25:31):
your episode on the Haunted Mansion made my trip even
more interesting. I love the parks as it is and
go whenever possible. I hope you ladies, enjoy the card
and keep up the great work. Thanks for keeping the
podcast interesting and enlightening and it's um. What's interesting about
this postcard for me is that, uh, it is a
picture of the newly redone Great Ceremonial House at the Polynesian.
So for any of our listeners that no Disney World,
(25:54):
and for listeners that don't, the Polynesian was one of
the three original resort hotels at Disney World, and it recently,
in the last year and a half, underwent this huge remodel.
Some people love it, some people do not. But this
is one of the first postcards I've seen of the
actual new version of it, So it's kind of cool.
They took away the big fountain that was in the middle,
(26:14):
which I do kind of miss and now it's kind
of a little bit more of an open area, kind
of more modern space. But we think, to Theresa, I
love it. I love all of our postcards. If you
would like to send us an email, you can do so.
That's at History Podcast at how Stuff Works dot com.
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(26:34):
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And if you would like to learn a little bit
more about what we talked about today, if you go
to the house Stu Works website and you type in
the word Harmonica, one of the articles you will get
is on notable grand ol Opry performers, and one of
(26:57):
those mentioned in the article is DeFord Bailey. You can
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(27:19):
com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Is that how stuff Works dot com. M
Welcome to stuff you missed in history class from works
dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Hey, Tracy, do you
know how to play the harmonica? Uh? Know? How would
(00:21):
be a very generous description. Almost anyone can get a
noise out of it. If I may not be melodic,
I can put a harmonica in my mouth and cause
it to make noise. There you go. Yeah, I'm pretty
much the same. That's not an area of musical skill
that I have ever developed. Uh. And we're going to
talk about harmonicas today and sort of how the harmonica
(00:44):
came to be as popular as it is. And we're
even going to talk about a couple of sort of
important harmonica musicians. Uh. For clarity, the German word harmonica,
spelled with a k U is used to apply to
several different things. Harmonica is, like we're talking about today,
glass harmonicas and accordions. Uh. And the glass harmonica, which
(01:06):
Benjamin Franklin played a part in developing, uses a series
of glass bowls arranged together and graduated sizes and U
uses friction to produce to produce notes. And UH, that's
not what we're talking about today though. And as for
the accordion, uh, the accordion harmony and the harmonica are
two instruments that are kind of intertwined in terms of development.
(01:27):
They both appeared on the scene in the eighteen twenties,
and they were kind of developed in tandem throughout the
eighteen hundreds. But today we're going to talk about the
harmonica in the sense of what is sometimes also called
a mouth harp. Uh. You know, the probably the image
that most people think of when you say the word,
and probably like something they had a toy version of
(01:47):
as a kid. I love those things. When I was
a child, I was a danger to myself and others
with my toy harmonicas, some of those toys. I'm like,
I did start to put it in my stocking if
everybody hates me playing it so much. But there you go.
So first, we're just going to kind of talk about
harmonicas and and their ancient history roots. Harmonicas are found
(02:12):
all over the world and they are part of the
music of numerous cultures. And that's do at least in
part to the fact that it is an exceptionally portable
musical instrument. I mean it's like you have the harmonica
because you I don't know the triangle. Yeah, like you can.
You can put Papa harmonica in your pocket and off
you go. And later on that portability we're going to
(02:33):
talk about kind of how that helped it spread. Another
part of the harmonicas appeal is it's simplicity. Like we
just said, almost anyone can make a noise on it.
It creates a sound when air has passed over a
metal read that's fixed on one end but not the others,
so it allows for vibration. The oldest known harmonica like
instrument is the Chinese shung, and one of these was
(02:54):
found in the tomb of a fifth century BC emperor
of China. The oldest known writing about the instruments goes
all the way back to eleven hundred BCS, So these
have been around for a really long time. Yeah, we
um uh definitely know that they were popular for quite
a while in China. And the shung really, if you
(03:15):
look at it, it doesn't look that much like a harmonica.
It more closely sort of resembles a mini handheld pipe
organ in terms of form, But when you hear one played,
the audible resemblance between a shung and a harmonica is unmistakable,
and we're gonna link to a video in our show
notes of someone playing a shong so you can kind
of hear it for yourself. Free read. Instruments similar to
(03:37):
this young spread all through Southeast Asia and then to
Korea and Japan prior to the eighteenth century. Harmonicas appeared
in Europe in the seventeen hundreds, but it's not totally
clear whether this was descended from the Chinese shung, which
was the you know, brought to Europe by a trade
and travel or whether they were developed in Europe on
their own independently. Yeah, you'll sometimes see it, uh described
(04:02):
one way or the other, depending on what history you're reading.
Some will say yes, and then Asian instruments like the
harmonica traveled into Europe and Europeans were inspired to create
their own versions, and others kind of say, we're not
entirely clear that that's how it worked. They may have
been working on similar instruments can currently before they were
exposed to things like the show. But what we do
(04:24):
know is that in eighteen twenty Christian Friedrich Lidwig Bushman
bundled a group of pitch pipes together into kind of
a squarish rectangular shape, creating an instrument that he called
an aura. And this instrument could only be played by blowing,
so similar to harmonica, but with no option to draw
air through the instruments to create tones with an inhale.
(04:47):
Scandinavia and Central Europe gave us the first instruments that
look like what we think of as a Harmonicas a
day mun harmonicas or mouth organs appeared in Vienna and
Berlin in eighteen twenties, and these usually had one read
per hole in the instrument, whereas later models would significantly
expand the number of notes that could be played using
additional reads. Yeah, the first to read harmonica appeared in
(05:14):
and So with this design, one read plays a note
when the player exhales or blows into the instrument, and
another read that plays a different note. Sometimes we'll talk
about this morning detail in a moment when the player
inhales or draws through the instrument. And this new design
of a blowing versus a an inhaling and having both
(05:36):
options was the brainchild of a man named Joseph Richter,
and there's still today a thing called Richter tuning, which
is named after him based on some of these ideas. Uh.
And since we're kind of getting into sort of how
these work in terms of blowing and drawing, we're gonna
step away from the history chronology for just a moment
and talk about the actual physical makeup of harmonica. But
(05:59):
before we dive into that, let's have a quick word
from a sponsor. So now that we've reached the point
in history where their harmonica is actually a harmonica as
we would recognize it, we're going to talk a little
bit more about how they're constructed and how they actually work.
Harmonicas are free read instruments, and that means that the
red is fixed at one end and it's set over
(06:20):
an opening that's barely larger than the read. Yeah, if
you take a part of harmonica, you're gonna see a
pretty simple assortment of pieces. There. The top and bottom
cover plates, which provide the exterior housing for the whole thing.
The comb is the thick centerpiece of the instrument, and
it contains the holes that a player blows into her
(06:41):
draws through. And combs were made of wood originally, but
now they're sometimes made of plastic or metal. The reed
plates sit on either side of the column in between
the comb and the cover plates. The reds are affixed
to these read plates, and the length of the reads vary.
That's what creates the different oats. They're also screws holding
(07:02):
the whole business together. Read plates on most harmonical harmonicas
are made out of metal. They can also be made
of plastic, but that usually relegates the instrument into the
realm of toys. Yeah, those are the ones that I
was making adults crazy with when I was a child
slash teenager slash young adult. There are four common types
(07:24):
of harmonica, the diatonic, the chromatic, the tremolo, and the octave.
So diatonic harmonicas contained ten holes. The four middle holes
make up an octave, and then the holes on either
side of that center group extend the scale. These are
the harmonicas that you normally hear in country your blues music.
Joseph Richter instrument was a diatonic harmonica. Chromatics, which are
(07:49):
favored often for classical and jazz music, have more options
for the number of holes that can be in the comb.
They can come in ten, twelve or sixteen whole varieties
and can play all twelve notes on the chromatic scale.
Both tremolo and octave harmonicas have double holes. In tremolo models,
which are commonly used in Latin, Asian, international folk and
(08:11):
gospel music, each double hole has two reads tuned to
the same note, but one is slightly higher to create
a vibrating effect. Octave harmonicas, which are often favored for
Irish or Cajun music, have two reads in each double
hole like the tremolo, but the reads are tuned in
octave apart. The harmonica is deceptively simple. Almost anyone who
(08:34):
blows into one can make a noise out of it,
but there are true masters of the instrument who spend
years perfecting their ambisher and technique. Yeah, I mean the
way that people form their mouth muscles to make noises
is uh. It varies and you can get different tones
from different ways that you shape your mouth, and different
players have kind of signature sounds that they create because
(08:57):
their ambishure is is so specific to the way they play.
It's really quite fascinating. But now that we kind of
understand how it all works, we're going to get back
into the history of it. And we left off in
the chronology with Joseph Richter having developed the two read
system for harmonicas, and despite this huge jump in harmonica
technology and harmonicas to this day retain Richter's design. H
(09:23):
There was actually some difficulty, though, getting any serious attention
for this mouth organ um. Established musicians at the time
were a little snooty. They kind of viewed it as
a plaything, and the fact that it was available to
anyone because of its simplicity and relatively low price point
compared to other musical instruments really did not help in
this regard. I feel like that probably pertains to like
(09:45):
the forty seven other extremely easy to carry musical instruments.
But I've thought of since we recorded the intro, I
feel like folks are gonna email us lots of other
easy to carry instruments. That's great. Sure. Eventually businessmen saw
the appeal of offering musicality to the masses, and harmonicas
(10:05):
were manufactured for retail sale. One of the businessmen who
did this was Christian Messner of Troughingen, and when Messner
founded his harmonica company in eighteen seven, he was a
very secretive and extremely protective of how these small instruments
were made. So much so that only members of his
family were even allowed information about his factory and how
(10:27):
it worked. Unfortunately, his family members were not quite as
careful with the secret as he was. Messner's business did
really well for years, but in the eighteen fifties his nephew,
Christian Weiss joined the company. After working with his uncle
for a year, Wiss started his own factory. A former
school friend of Weiss's, Matthias Hohner, stopped by the new
(10:49):
factory in eighteen fifty six to visit, but it was
not just a social call. By the time Weiss realized
that owner was carefully observing and taking in the family's
trade seek it, it was too late to do anything
about it. Yep, Mattia's owner opened up his own harmonica
factory the next year, eighteen fifty seven, using to some
(11:10):
degree the knowledge that he gleaned on his visit to
Weiss and wife's factory to make his product. And owner,
like both Messner and Weiss, had been a clockmaker prior
to this venture, and he apparently was not particularly musically inclined.
But what he really did have on his side was
that he was a better businessman than Messner and Weiss.
He figured out not only how to make harmonicas, but
(11:33):
how to mass produce harmonicas. And this was a huge
departure from the normal musical instrument manufacture process, as you know,
is still in many ways the case. It's a trade
that was always focused on handcrafted work. Because he had
this large output of harmonicas, that also meant that he
could sell them in bulk. But volume sales weren't the
(11:53):
only way he was outpacing the other entrepreneurs. He recognized
the United States had a large commune of German immigrants
who might want to carry a little piece of home
with them in their new country. Harmonicas would fit right
into their pockets. So in eighteen sixty two, this former
clockmaker sent a shipment of his harmonica products to members
(12:14):
of his family who had already emigrated to the US.
And his belief was that if these cousins of his
could just promote the harmonica to other immigrants, demand would
naturally grow. And Hohner was right, and his US market
quickly became his biggest market. Once harmonicas had traveled to
the United States, they soon spread all through the country.
(12:36):
As harmonicas made their way into the American South and Southwest.
The sound really became an integral part of folk music.
New playing techniques also developed along the way. Blues musicians
started cutting their hands around their harmonicas just to experiment
with sort of slurring the notes. Yeah, there was a
lot of musical development in this time and and technique
(12:58):
development around the harmonic. Uh uh that we're not going
super deep into, but it's really interesting and it's it's
kind of one of those things where this instrument was
designed to be played one way, but when it got
to the US, particularly in the South and in you know,
as you said, a lot of blues culture, they really
just sort of found their own ways to play it.
(13:18):
It was like they did not have this European music tradition,
so they just kind of approached it as a completely
new thing. Uh. And in the meantime, Owner really continued
to do extremely well for himself. Twenty years into his
business venture as a harmonica manufacturer, he had basically reached
mogul status. So at that point he was turning out
a million harmonicas each year. In Owner introduced the marine
(13:41):
band harmonica, and this model has been popular ever since
with musicians and collectors. The diatonic marine band model had
brass reads and a pair wood comb and had has
been played by everyone from Bob Dylan to blues legend
Big Mama Thornton. Yeah it. It remains one of the
most popular models of all time. The Owner company innovated
(14:04):
again by introducing the chromatic harmonica, which we talked about
a little bit when we were discussing different types. After
forty years in business as a harmonica maker, Owner bought
out Messner's company. Uh. Much as Messner ran his business
as a family affair, Owner built his empire along with
his sons and eventually handed the company off to them.
(14:26):
Trossing in Germany became known as a harmonica city. Uh.
And next up, we're going to talk a little bit
about a couple of the musicians who made names to
themselves playing harmonica. There have been many, but we're only
gonna cover a couple. But first we're gonna pause once
again for a word from a sponsor. The sponsor is Squarespace.
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(16:13):
we promised we would discuss harmonica players here for a moment.
And as the harmonica became integrated into the developing blues
and country scene that was starting to really grow in
the United States, skilled players began to emerge as famous musicians.
One of the first of these famous harmonica masters was
DeFord Bailey. Bailey had been playing harmonica since the age
(16:34):
of three. His parents were musical and he allegedly was
given instruments instead of toys when he was a child.
A Nashville radio show called barn Dance started featuring him
and his incredible talent. In nine Bailey became a regular
performer when this show called barn Dance changed its name
to something you're probably going to recognize, which is the
(16:56):
Grand ol Opry in n and he appeared on that
for fifteen years and was actually one of its best
paid stars. He was the first African American country star,
and in many ways he served as a bridge between
the rural folk tradition which he had grown up in
and popular music, which he sort of became a huge
icon in. Bailey's music career continued until nineteen forty one,
(17:20):
when the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers or ASCAP,
and the radio industry started a dispute over licensing fees
for performing on the air. Because there was no licensing
contract in place. While the dispute was underway, the Ford
Bailey couldn't play many of the songs that had come
to be favorites of the opery audience. Yeah, this really
(17:41):
was a very volatile time. Uh, you know. It was
basically like he wanted to play music, He wanted to
play for his his audience and his fans, and they
were like, you can't do that, Like the risks are
too great, you cannot possibly do this. And it was
really frustrating. And as this coral kind of lumbered on,
the radio station ended up in some pretty dire fiscal
states and they had to let people go and Bailey
(18:04):
was one of those people. So at that point in
he left his music career behind more or less entirely,
and he opened a shoeshine parlor, although he would occasionally
return to the radio show. After all of the legal
battles had died down for guest appearances. De Ford Bailey
died in July two and he was inducted into the
Country Music Hall of Fame in two thousand five. And
(18:27):
the next person that we're going to talk about is
really colorful and interesting, uh and has a very hazy
biography because we'll talk about why. At the same time
that DeFord Bailey was enjoying his popularity with the Opery,
there was another blues harmonica player who was also gaining recognition,
and this was sunny Boy Williamson. The second who was
(18:47):
born we believe, Alec Miller, and he made his name
on a radio show called King Biscuit Time. And Sunny
Boy is really interesting, uh, though historically frustrating because it
appears that he really delighted in planting false information about
himself in the press. He went by numerous names. In
addition to Sunny Boy, he was also sometimes called Rice, Reverend,
(19:10):
Reverend Blue, Willie Miller, and Willie Williamson. To make matters
even more confusing, there was another sunny Boy Williamson who
played blues harmonica at the same time and who was
around at the same age, based mainly out of Chicago,
but to eventually came to be known as sunny Boy
Williamson one and sunny Boy Williamson two. For the purpose
(19:30):
of today's episode, when we referenced sunny Boy, we're talking
about number two. Yeah, there. I mean their stories run
so parallel in terms of timeline. I think sunny Boy
Williamson one, or the first however you want to say,
it was born in nineteen thirteen, and we think that
sunny Boy Williamson two was born in nineteen twelve, though
there are no question marks there as well. We don't
(19:51):
know that that's an accurate date. So it's very um
tricky to kind of sort out the details sometimes, and
even while doing research, I would stumble across sites that
seemed to be really squared away, and then I would realize, oh,
they've accidentally possibly conflated these two men together, or their
details have crossed the wires and they're not quite accurate.
But so sunny Boy that we're talking about today too,
(20:15):
claims to have appeared on the Grand ol Opry radio
show in the nineteen thirties, but that has never been verified.
But once he started playing harmonica on King Biscuit Time
as sunny Boy Williamson, he kind of became too famous
to make another name change, although I suppose he could
have played UH anonymously somewhere under another name, but sunny
(20:35):
Boy was really his, his recognized name UH. And the
show's sponsor was so delighted with him and his popularity
that they even marketed a corn meal named after him.
So it was his sunny Boy corn meal, and it
had a photo of him on the bag. His career
spanned quite a while, and he was very successful. He
(20:55):
started a recording career in the nineteen fifties and did
really well for himself. Funny Boy died in nineteen sixty
five and was inducted into the Arkansas Entertainer's Hall of Fame.
In two thousand eight, he was given a marker on
the Mississippi Blues Trail. And while those are only two
harmonicists that have gamed fame, there are certainly scores of
(21:16):
others in all genres, from classical to hip hop. It's
an instrument that you know. As we said, it's deceptively simple.
People go oh, harmonica, but the people that play it well,
it's amazing. In December five, astronaut Willie Shara became the
first human being to play a song in space, and
he did so on a harmonica. He played jingle bells
(21:36):
as part of a Christmas joke that he and a
fellow astronaut, Tom Stafford played with Mission Control. The two
of them reported seeing a UFO piloted by a man
in a red suit. Yah, you're having a little bit
of fun. Uh. The Honer tradition in Truss Engine continues
into present day. This company has produced more than a
(21:56):
billion harmonicas since it's beginning in eighteen fifty seven. It
is still going strong. During the nineteen sixties, owner Harmonica
was really smart and signed endorsement deals with some of
the biggest names in music, including the Beatles, Johnny Cash
and Sammy Davis Jr. Trossingen is also home to the
Harmonica Museum, which is funded in a joint partnership by
(22:17):
the German government and the Honer Company. It's homes almost
twenty five thousand different harmonicas from around the world. Yeah,
so you can visit it if you are ever there. Uh.
The harmonica, of course, retains its popularity in part because
it can be so expressive and can sound so different
depending on the person playing it. As we talked about, Uh,
(22:38):
and I read this great interview UH that took place
in and Smithsonian writer Paul Bisiglio interviewed Barry Lee Pearson
about an album called Classic Harmonica Blues that Pearson was
co producing for Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, and in this interview,
Bisseglio asked Pearson what he hoped listeners would take away
(22:59):
from the record being and his response was, I hope
people might want to think more about the harmonica and
maybe try it out. I also would like them to
understand that you can play it in a variety of ways.
You can bend an instrument to your cultural preference. If
you put your mind to it, you can make an
instrument talk for you in the language that you prefer,
in your own cultural idiom. I just love that way
(23:21):
of putting it. So that's our brief history of harmonicas
it's one of those things that there are so many
branches that we could talk about, but I kind of
wanted to give a nice brief overview since it's a
an instrument that maybe doesn't always get the respect it deserves.
But people that love harmonica love harmonica, and it's because
it's kind of awesome. I like to watch when the
(23:43):
somebody plays the harmonica and the guitar at the same time.
Oh yeah, that always kind of blows my mind, like
I can't I feel like my brain can't parse that file,
Like I'm like, how how does it do? But people
are talented and can do many things, it was I'm
just not one of them. Um. I also have a
little bit of listener mail that has nothing to do
(24:03):
with harmonicas. I've been wanting to showcase more of our
awesome um postcards that we get, because we get a
lot of them and sometimes I don't always stop and
read them for the show. So I've been trying to
do more of those lately, more of our actual hard
copy mails, since we often read a lot of emails.
So the first one is from our listener Will, and
he writes, Hi, Holly and Tracy, my name is Will
(24:25):
and I love your podcast. I picked up on it
this past summer and took it with me to Evianne, France,
where I completed a five month study abroad with a
f s USA. Listening to your program has led me
to do my own digging and learn more about where
I was living as well was my hometown. I'm off
to college this June at the US Merchant Marine Academy
in King's Point, New York. And I hope I can
make it to your live show this fall again. I
(24:47):
love the show and for teaching me so much about
history both here and around the world. Will thanks so much.
We hope you make it here to our show in
October as well. That would be awesome. And he sent
us this beautiful postcard of Evianne Laba, which is a
beautiful part of France. And it's a gorgeous postcard. And
our second one is from our listener, Teresa, and this
(25:08):
one is near and dear to my heart because the
postcard is from Disney World, she says. Hi, Ali and
draz First, I love the podcast and the knowledge you
so pleasantly bestow upon its listeners. I listened on my
way to work and pretty much whenever possible. I'm sad
to say I'm nearing the end of the archive. I
picked this card up at the Polynesian Resort at Disney
World on my last vacation well staycation really uh, and
(25:31):
your episode on the Haunted Mansion made my trip even
more interesting. I love the parks as it is and
go whenever possible. I hope you ladies, enjoy the card
and keep up the great work. Thanks for keeping the
podcast interesting and enlightening and it's um. What's interesting about
this postcard for me is that, uh, it is a
picture of the newly redone Great Ceremonial House at the Polynesian.
So for any of our listeners that no Disney World,
(25:54):
and for listeners that don't, the Polynesian was one of
the three original resort hotels at Disney World, and it recently,
in the last year and a half, underwent this huge remodel.
Some people love it, some people do not. But this
is one of the first postcards I've seen of the
actual new version of it, So it's kind of cool.
They took away the big fountain that was in the middle,
(26:14):
which I do kind of miss and now it's kind
of a little bit more of an open area, kind
of more modern space. But we think, to Theresa, I
love it. I love all of our postcards. If you
would like to send us an email, you can do so.
That's at History Podcast at how Stuff Works dot com.
You can also connect with us at Facebook dot com,
slash missed in History on Twitter, at missed in History
(26:34):
on pinterest dot com. Slash missed in History and at
missed in History dot tumbler dot com. If you would
like some stuff you missed in history class good ease,
you can purchase those at misston history dot spreadshirt dot com.
And if you would like to learn a little bit
more about what we talked about today, if you go
to the house Stu Works website and you type in
the word Harmonica, one of the articles you will get
is on notable grand ol Opry performers, and one of
(26:57):
those mentioned in the article is DeFord Bailey. You can
also visit us at missed in History dot com. That
is our home on the web where we have an
archive of all of our episodes, show notes from all
the episodes, Tracy and I have worked on the occasional
other odds and the goodies, some fun images to look
at uh and we encourage you to visit how stuff
works dot com, our parents site, and missed Industry dot
(27:19):
com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Is that how stuff Works dot com. M
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Tracy Wilson
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