Members New Trail Posted January 31, 2011 Members Share Posted January 31, 2011 ...Mick Jagger was playing harmonica on the song since he DOES play harmonica but in a recent issue of one of the blues magazines there was an article about the guy who DID play that signature riff and solo. Sorry I don't have the mag with me. I'll get the name tonight and post tomorrow. It was an old blues guy! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Vito Corleone Posted January 31, 2011 Members Share Posted January 31, 2011 I always kind of figured the riff was a little too intricate to be Mick playing it. Also, when we did that song, our harmonica guy needed two different harps to play it. The end piece is played on a harp in a different key than the rest of the song. Or at least that's how my guy needed to do it to get it to sound right. I suppose it could have been done on one chromatic harp. I don't really know that much about harp playing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members rangefinder Posted January 31, 2011 Members Share Posted January 31, 2011 Well, you're ahead of me. For my whole life I thought the first line was "I've been haulin' ass so long"... until I put it on my set list and looked up the lyrics... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members modulusman Posted January 31, 2011 Members Share Posted January 31, 2011 Looked on my "Some Girls" album and it said the Harp was played by Sugar Blue. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members cooterbrown Posted January 31, 2011 Members Share Posted January 31, 2011 Yep, and Sugar Blue was John Popper's key influence. He was doing the fast trills way back in the day. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Funkwire Posted February 1, 2011 Members Share Posted February 1, 2011 You didn't know that? Well, you're probably not as old as me...it was pretty well documented back in 1978 in several articles and interviews that Sugar Blue was the harp player on 'Miss You'. And he wasn't an 'old blues guy' when he recorded it...he was pretty young then. Thirty-two years later, he probably qualifies! I saw him with Willie Dixon back in 1983...the very night Muddy Waters died, actually. He had a Boss Digital Delay hooked up to his harp mic and had it on top of a main speaker so he could change the settings while he was playing. He was getting some wild sounds that night. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Electric Catfish Posted February 1, 2011 Members Share Posted February 1, 2011 Yep, Sugar Blue, and he was credited in the liner notes on Some Girls. Sonny Rollins played the sax on "Waiting On a Friend," btw. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members HarpNinjaMike Posted February 2, 2011 Members Share Posted February 2, 2011 Sugar played harp on a few of the Stones albums...which album is "Down in the Hole" on? That's him. Sugar Blue has been touring the US the last couple of years. There are some live shows out there where he is a guest performer...Bob Dylan, Phish, a jazz guy I can't recall... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members pinkfloydcramer61 Posted February 3, 2011 Members Share Posted February 3, 2011 Some Girls. Sonny Rollins played the sax on "Waiting On a Friend," btw. Awesome! :love: My favorite sax solo of all time! Going to listen to some S R now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members fishmanrod Posted February 3, 2011 Members Share Posted February 3, 2011 When my band did Miss You many moons ago the harp player, who was most excellent, used a chromatic harp for that song.He prefered the small harps in a particular key, but was always working on the chromatic, trying to get better.He said it was a piano for your mouth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members HarpNinjaMike Posted February 3, 2011 Members Share Posted February 3, 2011 The diatonic harp is a strange beast for sure. On Miss You, there are a couple of approaches, one is to use a D harp like Sugar did in 2nd positon, and the other is to try it on a G harp in third position (well, there are more options than that, but those are the most common). I am sure he used a chrom to play in third position as well - essentially using the button to complete a Dorian scale. I usually play in on a D harp like Sugar did, but had there not been a harp solo, I would have used a G harp. The note layout fits nicely. On a chrom, if you hold down the button, you can't play a wrong note on a tune like that. Sugar Blue uses a lot of what you could call modal runs on the harp...the same patterns fit over various positions so you can use the same lick in different keys by changing the mode you're in. That probably isn't a technically correct way to write that, but it is like how different pentatonics have relative scales. You can play your major sounding patterns from a D harp on a G harp and it will sound better. You can't really just change keys like you can with a pattern on guitar...when you try that, you almost always end up going from a major to minor sound or vise versa. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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