How To Play 'Hardcore' Harmonica

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Both the country homesteader and the urban blue collar worker put in long days of tough labor. And on summer evenings-when the work's finally done-both, traditionally, have recharged their weary bodies (and souls) . . . out on the front porch . . . . in an easy rockin' chair . . . . . blowin' sweet music on a mouth harp. There just ain't no better way to watch the sun go down and help dusk creep in across the fields and up the streets.

The folks who keep track of such things say there are probably as many harmonicas "out there" doing their thing in the U.S. of A. and Canada . . . as all other musical instruments combined. But that's understandable. Because the mouth organ is certainly affordable, exceptionally easy to play, highly portable, and-once you get the hang of it-mighty rewarding, expressive, and entertaining too. I reckon it comes about as close as an instrument can to being "every man's (and woman's) musicmaker".

YOU'RE IN GOOD COMPANY

If, as so many others have done, you decide to take a fling at learning to play the harmonica . . . start by simply picking up one of the little charmers and cradling it between your palms. Hey! You're in good company already. Millions of fine folksfrom little people you've never heard of to Calvin Coolidge and Bob Dylan-have all taken exactly this same step before you.

A few of those beginners, of course, have gone on from there to fame and fortune for their mastery of the instrument . . . and many others haven't. I like to think, though, that even some of the duffer harp players have risen to the heights of entirely different fields at least in part because of the solace they've been able to draw from their mouth organs.

Why, even Honest Abe Lincoln wasn't above playing a tune or two on the harmonica when the occasion demanded, as Carl Sandburg related in Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years . . . part of his massive study of the 16th President.

According to the story, Lincoln had just finished a particularly hard day of vote chasing during his 1858 campaign against Stephen Douglas for an Illinois state senate seat. And there he was-off by his lonesome, scrunched down in somebody's battered old farm wagonplaying a quiet tune to revive his spirits . . . when someone happened by.

"Say! Mr. Lincoln!" the surprised citizen called out. "What are you doing here playing that mouth organ, when Stephen Douglas is out there in Peoria right this minute campaigning with a brass band?"

"Let Mr. Douglas have his brass band," said the Illinois rail-splitter. "This harmonica will do me just fine."

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