Blues in D

My Grandson, Jake called last night. He needs a Blues song in D that has a harmonica on it. Have you any ideas? He needs to play it for his A level exam, so has to have a printed score.

Last year he was in a Blues Brothers stage production, playing his namesake of course. He had to learn to play blues harp in a hurry, but soon mastered 'Everybody Needs Somebody" and a few more. Apart from a kick-start from me, he learned all the tricks from You-Tube tutorials and is now quite a master of the old gob-iron.

Technical fact alert! Those of you who play mouth organs seriously (hands up!) know that you have to have a different instrument for each key, and they don't come cheap. When I was Jake's age we paid 12/6d (about 60 p) for them; it's more like £30 now.

It's an unusual instrument. To play proper blues, with bended notes, slurs and tremolos, you need to suck more than you blow. This results in you asphyxiating as you take in more air than you blow out. That's why you hear grunts and shouts coming from your blues man, he needs to exhale!

So, you buy a Hohner Vamper or similar harp in D and off you go. WRONG. You need one in G. When you blow it plays an arpeggio in G, but when you suck, (and boy, do you suck) it plays in D minor. That's it in a nutshell except you cheat by bending notes to introduce semitones.

Have you thought of a song for him yet? Jake had already checked through his blues CD collection without luck. I must admit, it took us ten minutes to trawl through my back catalogue of 12 bar blues heroes to get an idea, until we landed on John Mayall's Blues Breakers.

My Dad (like Larry Adler or Stevie Wonder) played a proper chromatic harmonica with a button that gave you the semitones. He liked a bit of blues too, but he hated pop and he thought the Rolling Stones were like something you might find under a stone, not on it. In truth, the 'Stones was an art college white-boy-blues tribute band. Keef and Mick's record collection consisted of a couple of EP samplers of black American blues-men. You can trace everything back to those vinyls. And Brian Jones could play the harp like a blues angel. That's where I got my first licks. I soon got the blues in my soul and the school dog used to wail along in tune (A TRUE FACT).

What of Bob Dylan then? He had harmonica on most of his early tracks, but he just couldn't play it. 'Too much Blowin' in the Wind and not enough sucking. He didn't sing so well either, but I bought his records because they were really long; so good value for money.

The Cream came down the same chute as the Stones, but took their blues really seriously, thanks to one E. Clapton who played a mean Fender. But it was Jack Bruce who I liked. He was an ace bass player, but was even better on blues harp. I copied everything he did, but the set list was really short; just a few songs, but really long with short verses and endless solos.

In the late 60s the British Blues guru was John Mayall who's band the Bluesbreakers changed line-up almost weekly. The album to have at the time was known as the Beano Album because, on the cover, young Eric was reading a comic. This album, in rough condition now fetches £50 on eBay. The recording session is legendary because the studio engineer was astounded when Eric walked in carrying a small combo which he plugged in, wound the knobs all the way up, then stuffed a microphone in front of the speaker. Not the way to get a nice, crisp studio sound but it put all the control at Eric's disposal, not the engineers.

A few years later I saw the band during a tour with a different line-up and it soon became obvious why everyone played with the blues breakers, and then left. John was an old-fashioned band leader and control freak. He held his players in check by doing the mix live on stage himself and actually lost his temper with his new show-off bass player. He hired the best and then got upset when he was upstaged. To be fair, it was all about the music with him, not about entertainment. he played keyboards, guitar and terrific blues harp and he unwittingly fathered electric rock despite himself. Think of Manfred Mann with Paul Jones (also a great harp player), Cream and even Jimmy Hendrix.

Anyway Clapton left and the next album featured Peter Green, John McVie and Aynesly Dunbar. Yes, Fleetwood Mac in embryo. This album was called "A Hard Road" and features a lot of harmonica, and the title track is in D. So, JOB DONE!

Well no. We need a score. There was a John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers' Songbook which had a lot of the tracks from the early albums in it, but getting a copy may be really hard. Does anyone have it?