Episode 3 - Harmonica: The Pocket Orchestra

A few bucks, fits in your pocket, no strings or keys — and in the right hands, cupped around a mic, it moans like a sax and cuts through a whole band like a siren. The biggest small instrument in the blues.

• What a harmonica actually is: free reeds, the ten-hole diatonic, cheap Hohner Marine Band, the "Mississippi saxophone"
• The two magic tricks: bending (shaping the note inside your throat) and cross harp / second position
• Early voices: DeFord Bailey's train pieces, Sonny Terry, Sonny Boy Williamson I making it a lead instrument
• The big bang: Little Walter cups a bullet mic + amp, cuts "Juke" (#1 R&B, 1952) — a new instrument
• Sonny Boy Williamson II (King Biscuit Time, "Help Me"); Big Walter Horton, James Cotton, Junior Wells & Buddy Guy; Howlin' Wolf
• The swampy side: Jimmy Reed & Slim Harpo → the Rolling Stones
• Into blues rock: the Stones, Yardbirds, Paul Butterfield, Charlie Musselwhite, Magic Dick, John Popper; the harp rack & folk-rock
• Tone Recipe: a harp in every key, cross harp, tongue-blocking, bending, hand-wah & throat vibrato, bullet mic + tube amp
• Progression Spotlight: call-and-response over 12-bar, the IV-chord draw chord "freight-train" chug, melody + rhythm at once