June 4, 2025 • 19 mins
Jerry Portnoy grew up in Chicago hearing the blues being played outside his father's rug store on famed Maxwell Street during the late 1940s and early '50s.
After dropping out of college, he became immersed in the colorful world of pool hustlers like Cornbread Red, and Minnesota Fats as he managed the largest pool hall in Chicago. During a stint as a paratrooper early in the Vietnam war, he applied for discharge as a conscientious objector, and lived in San Francisco during 1967's "summer of love." While bumming around Europe the following year, Portnoy heard the blues again on a record by Sonny Boy Williamson and instantly became obsessed with mastering blues harmonica.He returned to Chicago and in 1974 he was playing in small Black clubs at night when Muddy Waters plucked him from his day job at Cook County Jail to fill the historic harmonica chair in his fabled band. Eric Clapton followed suit in 1991. In a career that took him from ghetto taverns to the White House and the Royal Albert Hall, he went from the raggedy vans and cheap roadside motels of the blues world to the private jets and five-star hotels of the rock world. Between those two very different gigs was a struggle to survive the vagaries of the music business and the pressures of life on the road. In a remarkable life, he also assisted in surgery, lodged in a Moroccan house of ill repute, and dined at Giorgio Armani's.
Dancing with Muddy details the surprising, lively, and sometimes bumpy ride of a blues harmonica legend. Dancing with Muddy: Muddy Waters, Eric Clapton, and My Lucky Life In and Out of the Blues is the memoir of Blues harmonica legend Jerry Portnoy, who details the surprising, lively, and sometimes bumpy ride of his life and career. Jerry was discovered and recruited by Muddy for the prestigious role of harmonica player in his band after hearing him play the instrument in clubs on Chicago's South Side. Jerry got to play in the White House, the Royal Albert Hall, and many of the world's stages. He also found himself in shocking and exciting situations, like assisting in surgery, dining at Giorgio Armani's and working at the Cook County jail.
With Blues music seeing a renewed interest thanks to the immense success of the movie Sinners, Jerry can be a valuable insider voice to the genre's history and evolution. He lives on Cape Cod in Massachusetts.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/arroe-collins-like-it-s-live--4113802/support.
After dropping out of college, he became immersed in the colorful world of pool hustlers like Cornbread Red, and Minnesota Fats as he managed the largest pool hall in Chicago. During a stint as a paratrooper early in the Vietnam war, he applied for discharge as a conscientious objector, and lived in San Francisco during 1967's "summer of love." While bumming around Europe the following year, Portnoy heard the blues again on a record by Sonny Boy Williamson and instantly became obsessed with mastering blues harmonica.He returned to Chicago and in 1974 he was playing in small Black clubs at night when Muddy Waters plucked him from his day job at Cook County Jail to fill the historic harmonica chair in his fabled band. Eric Clapton followed suit in 1991. In a career that took him from ghetto taverns to the White House and the Royal Albert Hall, he went from the raggedy vans and cheap roadside motels of the blues world to the private jets and five-star hotels of the rock world. Between those two very different gigs was a struggle to survive the vagaries of the music business and the pressures of life on the road. In a remarkable life, he also assisted in surgery, lodged in a Moroccan house of ill repute, and dined at Giorgio Armani's.
Dancing with Muddy details the surprising, lively, and sometimes bumpy ride of a blues harmonica legend. Dancing with Muddy: Muddy Waters, Eric Clapton, and My Lucky Life In and Out of the Blues is the memoir of Blues harmonica legend Jerry Portnoy, who details the surprising, lively, and sometimes bumpy ride of his life and career. Jerry was discovered and recruited by Muddy for the prestigious role of harmonica player in his band after hearing him play the instrument in clubs on Chicago's South Side. Jerry got to play in the White House, the Royal Albert Hall, and many of the world's stages. He also found himself in shocking and exciting situations, like assisting in surgery, dining at Giorgio Armani's and working at the Cook County jail.
With Blues music seeing a renewed interest thanks to the immense success of the movie Sinners, Jerry can be a valuable insider voice to the genre's history and evolution. He lives on Cape Cod in Massachusetts.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/arroe-collins-like-it-s-live--4113802/support.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's a beautiful day here. Where are you where?
Speaker 2 (00:02):
Oh I mean Charlotte, North Carolina.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Oh Charlotte. Oh yeah, yeah, he's playing Double Door down there.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Yes. Oh my god. That was the place to go
to back in the seventies and eighties.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Oh yeah, I played there many times.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Wow. And what I loved about it is it had
that real atmosphere of being that night spot. I mean
it smelled like it, it looked like it, and then
when the lights came on at two o'clock in the morning,
ooh yeah, it really was.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
It was a real roadhouse.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Yeah. Hey, congratulations on this book. And it comes at
such an amazing time because we are in that place
where every generation is calling any type of music their music,
and I really wanted something that is going to give
to the younger generation. This is the history, this is
the journey, the path, this is what it's really like.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Well, yeah, I mean I grew up around. It was
my music from the time I was a child. Because
I grew up I grew up around in the blues
in Chicago, in the Maxwell Street market area. In the
late forties, the musicians that came up from the South,
(01:11):
from the Mississippi Delta that came up to Chicago. They
would go to the Maxwell Street area and play on
the street. And so I heard blues being played on
the street right outside my father's store. Yeah, back in
the late forties, and that's where I first heard the blues.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
Wow. What's really interesting is that you just said something
that shocked me, and that is, you know, when you
said that the people from the Delta came up there
to Chicago, when in fact, I've always thought it was
the Chicago blues and wow. So when regions inspire other regions,
that in itself is an inspiration.
Speaker 4 (01:46):
Well, yeah, you know, really most of the people that
played Delta blues, which is the foundation of Chicago blues,
they came from a very small area just south of Memphis,
Sippy Delta.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
And really Chicago blues, which is the foundation of rock
and roll, was really Mississippi Delta blues.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
That was amplified.
Speaker 3 (02:14):
Because they introduced amplifiers right after the war, So now
you had electric guitar and amplified harmonica, and they added
drums and so it became a band music. And that
was so Chicago blues was basically amplified Delta blues, and
then it eventually morphed into rock and.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Roll all the way through my entire life, including today.
The one thing that I see I see a lot
of young kids playing or attempting to play the harmonica.
When did you decide that it wasn't going to be
that toy that a lot of kids think it is today.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
Well, that's an interesting story, you know. I loved music,
and I tried to play other instruments. I tried to play, oh,
I started with the cordy, and I tried to play
piano and guitar, but everything required a certain amount of
digital dexterity and coordination, and the harmonica was a strictly
oral instrument.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
There was no coordination required. You know.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
I said, well, long notes to the left, high notes
to the right, breathe in, breathe out.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
I can do this.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
And in nineteen sixty eight I was going over to Europe,
just kind of hitchhiking and bumming around, and I picked
up a harmonica at a friend's house and he said, well,
take it with you when you go.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
So I fooled around with it.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
While I was hitching a hitchhiking around Europe, and then
in Sweden I happened to wander into a record store
and I found this record with a picture of Sunny
Boy Williams is a great blues harmonica player. He was
pictured on the cover looking like he was about to
swallow a harmonica and.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
I I bought the album and.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
I brought it back to the crash pad I was
staying at and I put it on their record player
and it changed my life. I just became instantly obsessed
with mastering blues harmonica because the way he was playing
it was different than the way I'd been fooling around
(04:21):
with it.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
And also, I.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
Think it just triggered some kind of memory trace because
I'd heard the blues as a child so pervasively that
when I heard that record by Sonny Boy Williamson, it
just triggered something that was really deep and I didn't
even understand it, but I became instantly obsessed and from
(04:44):
that moment on that was my sole focus.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Well, speaking of the soul, would you say that it
did sink into your soul and that's the reason why
you put your entire soul into that harmonica, because that's
where it comes from. It's your body that's creating the music.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
Well, you know, that's an interesting point.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
The harmogon is a unique instrument because it's the only
wind instrument on which you literally and truly breathe music.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
On any other wind.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
Instrument, whether it's a trumpet, a saxophone, and obola, clarinet, anything,
you basically suck up as much air as possible and
then shove it through the instruments. So you're only making
music when you're blowing out. But on the harmonica, it
really comes from your center. You're breathing the music. You
(05:31):
make music when you're breathing out and you're breathing in,
and so it's really central to your breath. It's really
your energy, and it's a unique instrument from that aspect.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
And also talk about soul.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
Almost every instrumentalist, soolo jazz guys, you know, they always
say they want to sing through their instrument, or speak
through their instrument, or use their instrument as a voice.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
And the harmonica has unique tonal.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
Characteristics or properties or abilities that come closest to mimicking
the human voice, because you can you can not only
just play your notes straight, but you can slur them,
and you can bend them, and you can kind of
twist them, and so you can get a lot of
vocal sounds. You can make the harmonica sing and talk
(06:29):
and cry and moan and bark and.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
Get all these sounds.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
So it's it's it's a very expressive instrument in the
right hands.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Going into a harmonica solo. Is it ever the same
or is it always unique in its own way?
Speaker 3 (06:46):
Well, it's it's generally, it's it's different every time. Sometimes
you have you may have a general plot, but it's
always best to play in the moment. That's otherwise it
can sound just wrote and stilted. It's really about being
(07:07):
in the moment with music.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
The new movie Centers really puts a lot of focus
on blues music, and in that film, the sun is
told to not do the music and because basically the
devil's going to come and get you. Did you ever
face walls like that where people said stop, stop, stop,
Jerry stop, No?
Speaker 1 (07:26):
I mean yeah, in the black community, there was always.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
A kind of a split between sacred music or church
music and what they call the devil's music or blues.
And in certain households, you know, you were forbidden to
play the devil's music or blues. But you know, I
didn't really come from that culture, so there was no
(07:54):
cultural proscription against me playing blues. Of course, my family
would have referred me to be a doctor or a lawyer,
but it didn't work out that way.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
When'd you say that playing the harmonica like you have
throughout the entire planet is just another great way to
share stories, even though we may not hear lyrics, but
we feel the emotion.
Speaker 3 (08:16):
Well, yes, that's the Really the object of music is communication,
and so you sometimes you try and tell a story
through your music, but the essential element is conveying emotion
from the musician to the listener, and so you can
(08:37):
get on the same wavelength.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
I mean, you know, there are nights.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
When when you're really on and you're feeling the music
and you can feel your power over the listener, you
can feel them hanging on every note and you're taking
them somewhere.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
And it's.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
It's a feeling that really, it's the best feeling in
the world. It's an amazing feeling when you get to
that point.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
You talked about growing up in Chicago in the nineteen forties. Well,
a decade later, some guy by the name of Bob
Dylan appeared on the scene and he came with a harmonica.
Did that inspire you in any.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
Way, not exactly. Dylan certainly deserves all the accolades he gets.
He's obviously a genius songwriter and he's had an enormous
cultural impact. Unfortunately his harmonica playing. I suppose he's probably
(09:44):
the most well known person who plays a harmonica, and
so his way of playing the instrument is probably what
most people think of when they think of a harmonica,
and unfortunately, the instrument is capable of doing much more
and being much more expressive.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
So, yeah, he was not an influence on my playing.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
The name of the book Dancing with Muddy from Jerry Portnoy,
There's more coming up next. Hey, thanks for coming back
to my conversation with musician Jerry Portnoy. I think one
of the things that changed so many people about the
harmonica was when The Blues Brothers came out, because all
of a sudden, We're seeing people up there do that harmonica.
Like it was like, what's hitting me right now? Because
(10:29):
I'm liking this.
Speaker 3 (10:33):
Yeah, I was in Chicago when they were filming that movie.
I showed Dan Akrot a few things, and I think
the exposure to blues was good for everybody. It was
good for all the blues musicians and all that. But
(10:54):
you know, the Blues Brothers was a little bit of
a caricature. Yeah, the cartoonish, but the real Blues has
an incredible impact when you hear the originators, the real
deep guys play like Muddy and Alan Woolf, Fellmore James
(11:16):
and Sunny Boy Williamson, Little Walter, all the greats.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
See what's really interesting about the Blues. I wish that
in that time period, when they were at their absolute
highest peak, that there would have been something like an
iHeartRadio or a streaming that more people around the nation
could get their music immediately, whereas today we're very spoiled
with it. I just I just go to Alexa and
ask her for the music, and boom, there it is.
Do you think that today we're cheating on music or
(11:42):
or is it more open for us to explore even deeper?
Speaker 3 (11:48):
Well, I think yeah, you can really explore any avenue
of music you want now with all the avenues available
and all the technical tools, It's in certain respects it's
easier to learn. I mean, for instance, just learning an
instrument if you have if you're trying to decipher some
(12:10):
kind of complicated riff, Back in my day, I would
put an album.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
Wax on.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
A record player and lay on the floor with the
speakers around my ears, and you know, I would put
the tone arm back a couple of grooves to go
over the record.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
And listen to it over and over.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
And then also those were thirty three and a third LPs,
and if you slowed it down, generally they had four
speed machines.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
So if you slowed it down from.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
Thirty three and a third to sixteen, which is approximately half,
the pitch would drop an octave, but it would basically
stay in tune, but would be half as fast, and
so you could try and figure out what, you know,
what notes were in the solo you were trying to
(13:09):
trying to copy. Now today they have machines you can
mark a passage in a song and loop a particular passage.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
And then with the technology you can slow.
Speaker 3 (13:23):
It down to any speed you want and it's still
will stay in tune. It won't even drop and pitch.
It makes it makes, you know, figuring out these things
so much easier now than it was years ago. You
can really investigate music in a deep way.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
Now.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
I used to put a quarter on the needle to
slow it down because I needed to hear the fingertips
on those guitars. That's why I like I like it
when I can hear the squeakiness of fingers on the
strings because it teaches me listen closer, It's all right there.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
Oh, yes, well listening. Listening is the key listening. I
used to say, make your ear a microscope.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
You have to listen.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
You have to get past just the pitch of the
note and the time to listen to all the subtleties.
Training your ear is the I think the biggest part
of becoming a musician.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
Yeah, living in San Francisco during the Summer of Love,
George Harrison did not like that area. What did you
personally experience.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
Oh, I loved it. I came from Chicago. I was
born in Chicago, raised in.
Speaker 3 (14:39):
Chicago, and when I went out to San Francisco, it
was quite a difference. First of all, geographically or topographically,
it was very different because Chicago is flat. It's in
the Midwest. It's just a flat landscape. And of course
(15:01):
San Francisco, Yeah, every time you come over the it's
built on hills, and every time you would come over
the crest of one hill, you would see this beautiful
scenario laid out in front of you. It was these vistas.
It was beautiful. And also at that time, in nineteen
sixty seven, which was the Summer of Love, that there
(15:24):
was something special happening in San Francisco then, and people
would smile.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
At you on the street.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
There was a whole different vibe and for a short
period of time it was really a wonderful and amazing place.
But before too long a lot of the bad actors
moved in and kind of it kind of got CD
and they kind of ruined the beautiful vibe it had
been at the start. But there was a lot of
(15:51):
music there.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
You know.
Speaker 3 (15:53):
It was sex, drugs, and rock and roll, and there
was an abundance of each and they were not hard
to find. You know, they had introduced the pill a
few years earlier, so sex was, you know, kind of
freely available. And the rock and roll there was free
(16:16):
concerts in Golden Gate Park and the Grateful Dead and
Jefferson Airplane would play, and so it was quite an
amazing place.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
Something else was taking place in San Francisco that year,
and it was a thing called FM Radio Plane Album Rock.
Did you experience any of that and was it new
to you when you when you heard it?
Speaker 3 (16:37):
Well, yeah, because AM was more geared to kind of
quick hits, and FM radio lent itself to kind of
longer formats. It would play more extensive segments and you
could get into certain musical as that's a little deeper
(17:01):
than you could, you.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
Know, on AM radio. So FM radio was a big thing.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
Wow, this is what I mean by this book being
a conversation starter, because we can talk about Muddy Waters
and Eric Clapton, but when you get to the soul
of your story, it's like, oh my god, we never
get to hear this stuff and they never put it
on the inside sleeve of an album.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
Well yeah, I mean that's true because.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
For the general public, when they go to the show
and they see a musician on stage and.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
They experience.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
The music on the show for an hour and a
half or whatever it is, and they have their own
conceptions and sometimes preconceptions of what that life is all
about or what the journey was to get there, But
they don't see what goes on behind the scenes or
what happened on the way to getting there. You know,
(18:03):
people think that the life of a road musician or
a traveling musician is just a big ball, you know,
full of parties, and you're making a lot of money and.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
Living a.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
You know, kind of an easy, an easy, luxurious life,
and at the higher end of it, that's a little
closer to the truth.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
You know.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
Playing with Eric Clapton was a great deal different than
playing with Muddy Waters because with there Clapton, you're at
the highest levels of rock and roll. You're staying in
five star hotels and riding around in limousines and flying
around in private jets. In the blues world, you're riding
(18:56):
around and broken down vans and staying a cheap outside
motels and playing.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
Dive bars and stuff like that. So it's very different.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
Well, you've got to come back to this show anytime
in the future. The door is always going to be
open for you.
Speaker 3 (19:12):
Jerry Well, I appreciate it was a great pleasure to
talk to you, and I hope people will pick up
the book because I.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
Wrote this.
Speaker 3 (19:23):
Truly to make it a good read for the general
reader besides just blues and music fans, and I think
the narrative carries you along and keeps you interested from
start to finish. So I hope people will pick up
on this book. It's a great read.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
Will you be brilliant today?
Speaker 1 (19:41):
Okay, sir, I will try. Thank you, Thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (19:45):
Erro
It's a beautiful day here. Where are you where?
Speaker 2 (00:02):
Oh I mean Charlotte, North Carolina.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Oh Charlotte. Oh yeah, yeah, he's playing Double Door down there.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Yes. Oh my god. That was the place to go
to back in the seventies and eighties.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Oh yeah, I played there many times.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Wow. And what I loved about it is it had
that real atmosphere of being that night spot. I mean
it smelled like it, it looked like it, and then
when the lights came on at two o'clock in the morning,
ooh yeah, it really was.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
It was a real roadhouse.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Yeah. Hey, congratulations on this book. And it comes at
such an amazing time because we are in that place
where every generation is calling any type of music their music,
and I really wanted something that is going to give
to the younger generation. This is the history, this is
the journey, the path, this is what it's really like.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Well, yeah, I mean I grew up around. It was
my music from the time I was a child. Because
I grew up I grew up around in the blues
in Chicago, in the Maxwell Street market area. In the
late forties, the musicians that came up from the South,
(01:11):
from the Mississippi Delta that came up to Chicago. They
would go to the Maxwell Street area and play on
the street. And so I heard blues being played on
the street right outside my father's store. Yeah, back in
the late forties, and that's where I first heard the blues.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
Wow. What's really interesting is that you just said something
that shocked me, and that is, you know, when you
said that the people from the Delta came up there
to Chicago, when in fact, I've always thought it was
the Chicago blues and wow. So when regions inspire other regions,
that in itself is an inspiration.
Speaker 4 (01:46):
Well, yeah, you know, really most of the people that
played Delta blues, which is the foundation of Chicago blues,
they came from a very small area just south of Memphis,
Sippy Delta.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
And really Chicago blues, which is the foundation of rock
and roll, was really Mississippi Delta blues.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
That was amplified.
Speaker 3 (02:14):
Because they introduced amplifiers right after the war, So now
you had electric guitar and amplified harmonica, and they added
drums and so it became a band music. And that
was so Chicago blues was basically amplified Delta blues, and
then it eventually morphed into rock and.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Roll all the way through my entire life, including today.
The one thing that I see I see a lot
of young kids playing or attempting to play the harmonica.
When did you decide that it wasn't going to be
that toy that a lot of kids think it is today.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
Well, that's an interesting story, you know. I loved music,
and I tried to play other instruments. I tried to play, oh,
I started with the cordy, and I tried to play
piano and guitar, but everything required a certain amount of
digital dexterity and coordination, and the harmonica was a strictly
oral instrument.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
There was no coordination required. You know.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
I said, well, long notes to the left, high notes
to the right, breathe in, breathe out.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
I can do this.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
And in nineteen sixty eight I was going over to Europe,
just kind of hitchhiking and bumming around, and I picked
up a harmonica at a friend's house and he said, well,
take it with you when you go.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
So I fooled around with it.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
While I was hitching a hitchhiking around Europe, and then
in Sweden I happened to wander into a record store
and I found this record with a picture of Sunny
Boy Williams is a great blues harmonica player. He was
pictured on the cover looking like he was about to
swallow a harmonica and.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
I I bought the album and.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
I brought it back to the crash pad I was
staying at and I put it on their record player
and it changed my life. I just became instantly obsessed
with mastering blues harmonica because the way he was playing
it was different than the way I'd been fooling around
(04:21):
with it.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
And also, I.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
Think it just triggered some kind of memory trace because
I'd heard the blues as a child so pervasively that
when I heard that record by Sonny Boy Williamson, it
just triggered something that was really deep and I didn't
even understand it, but I became instantly obsessed and from
(04:44):
that moment on that was my sole focus.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Well, speaking of the soul, would you say that it
did sink into your soul and that's the reason why
you put your entire soul into that harmonica, because that's
where it comes from. It's your body that's creating the music.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
Well, you know, that's an interesting point.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
The harmogon is a unique instrument because it's the only
wind instrument on which you literally and truly breathe music.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
On any other wind.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
Instrument, whether it's a trumpet, a saxophone, and obola, clarinet, anything,
you basically suck up as much air as possible and
then shove it through the instruments. So you're only making
music when you're blowing out. But on the harmonica, it
really comes from your center. You're breathing the music. You
(05:31):
make music when you're breathing out and you're breathing in,
and so it's really central to your breath. It's really
your energy, and it's a unique instrument from that aspect.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
And also talk about soul.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
Almost every instrumentalist, soolo jazz guys, you know, they always
say they want to sing through their instrument, or speak
through their instrument, or use their instrument as a voice.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
And the harmonica has unique tonal.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
Characteristics or properties or abilities that come closest to mimicking
the human voice, because you can you can not only
just play your notes straight, but you can slur them,
and you can bend them, and you can kind of
twist them, and so you can get a lot of
vocal sounds. You can make the harmonica sing and talk
(06:29):
and cry and moan and bark and.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
Get all these sounds.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
So it's it's it's a very expressive instrument in the
right hands.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Going into a harmonica solo. Is it ever the same
or is it always unique in its own way?
Speaker 3 (06:46):
Well, it's it's generally, it's it's different every time. Sometimes
you have you may have a general plot, but it's
always best to play in the moment. That's otherwise it
can sound just wrote and stilted. It's really about being
(07:07):
in the moment with music.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
The new movie Centers really puts a lot of focus
on blues music, and in that film, the sun is
told to not do the music and because basically the
devil's going to come and get you. Did you ever
face walls like that where people said stop, stop, stop,
Jerry stop, No?
Speaker 1 (07:26):
I mean yeah, in the black community, there was always.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
A kind of a split between sacred music or church
music and what they call the devil's music or blues.
And in certain households, you know, you were forbidden to
play the devil's music or blues. But you know, I
didn't really come from that culture, so there was no
(07:54):
cultural proscription against me playing blues. Of course, my family
would have referred me to be a doctor or a lawyer,
but it didn't work out that way.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
When'd you say that playing the harmonica like you have
throughout the entire planet is just another great way to
share stories, even though we may not hear lyrics, but
we feel the emotion.
Speaker 3 (08:16):
Well, yes, that's the Really the object of music is communication,
and so you sometimes you try and tell a story
through your music, but the essential element is conveying emotion
from the musician to the listener, and so you can
(08:37):
get on the same wavelength.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
I mean, you know, there are nights.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
When when you're really on and you're feeling the music
and you can feel your power over the listener, you
can feel them hanging on every note and you're taking
them somewhere.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
And it's.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
It's a feeling that really, it's the best feeling in
the world. It's an amazing feeling when you get to
that point.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
You talked about growing up in Chicago in the nineteen forties. Well,
a decade later, some guy by the name of Bob
Dylan appeared on the scene and he came with a harmonica.
Did that inspire you in any.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
Way, not exactly. Dylan certainly deserves all the accolades he gets.
He's obviously a genius songwriter and he's had an enormous
cultural impact. Unfortunately his harmonica playing. I suppose he's probably
(09:44):
the most well known person who plays a harmonica, and
so his way of playing the instrument is probably what
most people think of when they think of a harmonica,
and unfortunately, the instrument is capable of doing much more
and being much more expressive.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
So, yeah, he was not an influence on my playing.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
The name of the book Dancing with Muddy from Jerry Portnoy,
There's more coming up next. Hey, thanks for coming back
to my conversation with musician Jerry Portnoy. I think one
of the things that changed so many people about the
harmonica was when The Blues Brothers came out, because all
of a sudden, We're seeing people up there do that harmonica.
Like it was like, what's hitting me right now? Because
(10:29):
I'm liking this.
Speaker 3 (10:33):
Yeah, I was in Chicago when they were filming that movie.
I showed Dan Akrot a few things, and I think
the exposure to blues was good for everybody. It was
good for all the blues musicians and all that. But
(10:54):
you know, the Blues Brothers was a little bit of
a caricature. Yeah, the cartoonish, but the real Blues has
an incredible impact when you hear the originators, the real
deep guys play like Muddy and Alan Woolf, Fellmore James
(11:16):
and Sunny Boy Williamson, Little Walter, all the greats.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
See what's really interesting about the Blues. I wish that
in that time period, when they were at their absolute
highest peak, that there would have been something like an
iHeartRadio or a streaming that more people around the nation
could get their music immediately, whereas today we're very spoiled
with it. I just I just go to Alexa and
ask her for the music, and boom, there it is.
Do you think that today we're cheating on music or
(11:42):
or is it more open for us to explore even deeper?
Speaker 3 (11:48):
Well, I think yeah, you can really explore any avenue
of music you want now with all the avenues available
and all the technical tools, It's in certain respects it's
easier to learn. I mean, for instance, just learning an
instrument if you have if you're trying to decipher some
(12:10):
kind of complicated riff, Back in my day, I would
put an album.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
Wax on.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
A record player and lay on the floor with the
speakers around my ears, and you know, I would put
the tone arm back a couple of grooves to go
over the record.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
And listen to it over and over.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
And then also those were thirty three and a third LPs,
and if you slowed it down, generally they had four
speed machines.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
So if you slowed it down from.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
Thirty three and a third to sixteen, which is approximately half,
the pitch would drop an octave, but it would basically
stay in tune, but would be half as fast, and
so you could try and figure out what, you know,
what notes were in the solo you were trying to
(13:09):
trying to copy. Now today they have machines you can
mark a passage in a song and loop a particular passage.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
And then with the technology you can slow.
Speaker 3 (13:23):
It down to any speed you want and it's still
will stay in tune. It won't even drop and pitch.
It makes it makes, you know, figuring out these things
so much easier now than it was years ago. You
can really investigate music in a deep way.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
Now.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
I used to put a quarter on the needle to
slow it down because I needed to hear the fingertips
on those guitars. That's why I like I like it
when I can hear the squeakiness of fingers on the
strings because it teaches me listen closer, It's all right there.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
Oh, yes, well listening. Listening is the key listening. I
used to say, make your ear a microscope.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
You have to listen.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
You have to get past just the pitch of the
note and the time to listen to all the subtleties.
Training your ear is the I think the biggest part
of becoming a musician.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
Yeah, living in San Francisco during the Summer of Love,
George Harrison did not like that area. What did you
personally experience.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
Oh, I loved it. I came from Chicago. I was
born in Chicago, raised in.
Speaker 3 (14:39):
Chicago, and when I went out to San Francisco, it
was quite a difference. First of all, geographically or topographically,
it was very different because Chicago is flat. It's in
the Midwest. It's just a flat landscape. And of course
(15:01):
San Francisco, Yeah, every time you come over the it's
built on hills, and every time you would come over
the crest of one hill, you would see this beautiful
scenario laid out in front of you. It was these vistas.
It was beautiful. And also at that time, in nineteen
sixty seven, which was the Summer of Love, that there
(15:24):
was something special happening in San Francisco then, and people
would smile.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
At you on the street.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
There was a whole different vibe and for a short
period of time it was really a wonderful and amazing place.
But before too long a lot of the bad actors
moved in and kind of it kind of got CD
and they kind of ruined the beautiful vibe it had
been at the start. But there was a lot of
(15:51):
music there.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
You know.
Speaker 3 (15:53):
It was sex, drugs, and rock and roll, and there
was an abundance of each and they were not hard
to find. You know, they had introduced the pill a
few years earlier, so sex was, you know, kind of
freely available. And the rock and roll there was free
(16:16):
concerts in Golden Gate Park and the Grateful Dead and
Jefferson Airplane would play, and so it was quite an
amazing place.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
Something else was taking place in San Francisco that year,
and it was a thing called FM Radio Plane Album Rock.
Did you experience any of that and was it new
to you when you when you heard it?
Speaker 3 (16:37):
Well, yeah, because AM was more geared to kind of
quick hits, and FM radio lent itself to kind of
longer formats. It would play more extensive segments and you
could get into certain musical as that's a little deeper
(17:01):
than you could, you.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
Know, on AM radio. So FM radio was a big thing.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
Wow, this is what I mean by this book being
a conversation starter, because we can talk about Muddy Waters
and Eric Clapton, but when you get to the soul
of your story, it's like, oh my god, we never
get to hear this stuff and they never put it
on the inside sleeve of an album.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
Well yeah, I mean that's true because.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
For the general public, when they go to the show
and they see a musician on stage and.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
They experience.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
The music on the show for an hour and a
half or whatever it is, and they have their own
conceptions and sometimes preconceptions of what that life is all
about or what the journey was to get there, But
they don't see what goes on behind the scenes or
what happened on the way to getting there. You know,
(18:03):
people think that the life of a road musician or
a traveling musician is just a big ball, you know,
full of parties, and you're making a lot of money and.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
Living a.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
You know, kind of an easy, an easy, luxurious life,
and at the higher end of it, that's a little
closer to the truth.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
You know.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
Playing with Eric Clapton was a great deal different than
playing with Muddy Waters because with there Clapton, you're at
the highest levels of rock and roll. You're staying in
five star hotels and riding around in limousines and flying
around in private jets. In the blues world, you're riding
(18:56):
around and broken down vans and staying a cheap outside
motels and playing.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
Dive bars and stuff like that. So it's very different.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
Well, you've got to come back to this show anytime
in the future. The door is always going to be
open for you.
Speaker 3 (19:12):
Jerry Well, I appreciate it was a great pleasure to
talk to you, and I hope people will pick up
the book because I.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
Wrote this.
Speaker 3 (19:23):
Truly to make it a good read for the general
reader besides just blues and music fans, and I think
the narrative carries you along and keeps you interested from
start to finish. So I hope people will pick up
on this book. It's a great read.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
Will you be brilliant today?
Speaker 1 (19:41):
Okay, sir, I will try. Thank you, Thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (19:45):
Erro
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