Last month's article (see AMERICAN HARMONICA NEWSLETTER, March '97) on bass harp virtuoso Danny Wilson got me to thinking about his current group, the "New World Harmonica Trio." Harmonica groups aren't that easily found, especially one covering new ground, and I think this aptly describes the "New World Harmonica Trio." With Danny Wilson on bass harmonica, Ron Kalina on chromatic and Michael Burton on chord harmonica, the Trio performs material quite different from traditional harmonica bands. Kalina admitted: "The commentary about our group is mainly that it doesn't sound like a 'harmonica group.' It sounds like more than that." I certainly agree. The group has put out two self-produced recordings ("New World Harmonica Trio" -- cassette only, and the most recent "Time Was" -- cassette and CD) which feature Ron Kalina's fresh arrangements of a wide variety of music. His work, in addition to all three musicians' great experience and skill as players and interpreters, bring magic to their music, beautifully featured on their new release.
It's curious -- the way musicians come together. Often it's through mutual friends, or due to the fact that someone plays a similar, rare, instrument. Equally interesting are reasons people take up the instrument. Ron Kalina started playing before age five, when he got a free diatonic harmonica with a pair of shoes. Wilson began playing bass harp when a fellow worker badgered him into it. And Michael Burton just wasn't interested when his dad gave him a diatonic. Instead his curiosity was piqued by his sister's accordion. "Then one day," he said, "I picked up a diatonic harmonica, and to my amazement, it was exactly the same as the accordion, so everything I could play on the accordion I could immediately play on the diatonic!"
All three men had families with musical backgrounds who encouraged their children in music, though each one quickly discovered a passion for learning. Wilson's mother was a pianist and church organist and his father encouraged his studies. But his main instrument into his late teens was classical violin, followed by drums, voice and then, in his middle thirties, bass harmonica. Ron Kalina's mother and grandfather were pianists and his own studies of piano and harmonica were very much stimulated by curiosity. "I took about six month's worth of lessons, but not all at one time. I'd learn how to read rhythms for maybe a month and then I'd soak it up, work it up and then go back for more." And all the while Kalina was also tap dancing (an activity he's recently returned to as an excellent way to stay in shape)!
Michael Burton's father was a professional harmonica player who later added accordion to his act and firmly forbade anyone to mess with his chromatics (stored in a closet). This was all Michael needed; he was soon messin' with them like mad and before long his poor mother (who worked nights and vainly tried to rest when Michael was practicing), realized there was little more he could learn without his father's help. So one day over dinner, to Michael's dismay, she ratted him out, and instead of a licking, Michael got harmonica lessons. This soon led to a duo act with his father on chord and chromatic harmonicas.
Though Danny Wilson became an expert classical violinist during his formative years and didn't really discover harmonica until his mid-thirties, Kalina and Burton came up with harmonica from the first. Born in Reading, PA, "a long time ago," Kalina's eager curiosity about music drove him to discover more and more complicated musical ideas. A student of both piano and chromatic harmonica, Kalina became interested in arranging. Observing stage bands like Duke Ellington, and hanging out in a musical crowd around people like Jerry Mulligan, Kalina felt inspired to try arranging on his own. So in high school, with a saxophone player and drummer, Kalina wrote his first arrangement. "We got an eraser and I did all the writing; the drummer did all the copying; and the alto player did all the transposing. I guess I still have that score somewhere." At age 26 Kalina hit the road with a traveling group playing piano and doing some features on his chromatic. "I'd work out some arrangements with the saxophone and harmonica so I could play whatever chord things we could do. But for a long time I just played in 'C' and 'C-sharp,' not realizing that the harmonica's limitations were not just limited to that. You can do other keys! (Laugh)." Enter the influence of Toots Thielemans. "Then I heard Toots and for several years I did nothing but practice scale and modes and all the keys, you know. That's how I developed my fluidity."
Kalina came back off the road; his family broke up; and he moved to the Harrisburg/Philly area in '64. There he formed "The Ron Kalina Trio," and worked as a house band at the "Tally Ho," a club right next to the Valley Forge Music Fair. Singers, like "The King Family," "Martha and the Vandellas," and a few of the "Temptations," who performed at the Fair, came to sit in. Then a few years down the line, Kalina started playing with a house jazz group in Philadelphia for the club "Just Jazz." "Every week or two a different name artist came in to perform, and that's how I met Gloria Lynne...Gloria's a singer of the vintage of Sarah Vaughn...when Gloria came through, we linked up and I was her music director from that point for about 13 years."
Kalina went on to develop his arranging talents and his jazz performing, building a solid reputation and doing session work for television shows ("Moonlighting," "Trapper John") and other artists (Linda Ronstadt on her album "Canciones de me Padre" or "Songs for My Father"). In 1991 he won the International Jazz Harmonica Competition at SPAH (Society for the Preservation and Appreciation of the Harmonica), and was regarded as one of the premiere jazz players on the scene. Michael Burton remarked "I met Ron at one of the SPAH conventions. He started dropping names and kind of intimidated me a little bit. I didn't know who he was talking about but I'd say 'Yeah...yeah' and go along with it (laughs). But I wanted to run because Ron knows everybody! He's really a musician. He's probably the best musician I've ever run across!"
Meanwhile, Michael Burton was quickly becoming a much better chord player than his teacher thus far -- his dad. So he went looking for someone to teach him more. At age 17 he formed a performing relationship with Don Powell, who played organ at the time. Burton had a tough time getting musicians interested in working with him because he was only 17. "Don was the only one that would work with me. He really taught me a lot. In fact I probably learned more about reading chord lines and stuff from him. He used to come to my house every night when I was still in school and show me how to play. At the same time he was learning how to read lead lines, so it was a duo thing that was beneficial to both of us."
Burton decided to hit the road in 1965 when at the age of 20, with a new wife and small child waiting behind in Hollywood, he joined "Johnny Puleo's Harmonica Gang" playing Harmonetta. "Johnny was a little guy...small, like four foot, and they did a lot of slapstick, pushing him around and stuff. He'd been with the original Minevitch group -- the 'Harmonica Rascals'." Burton worked with Puleo's gang until a gig in the Latin Quarter in New York with Johnny Ray. One night Puleo failed to show and everyone was sent home. Burton went to work with Paul Baron's "Harmonica Rascals" after his friend, Michael Scott, pressured him to join. Burton wasn't that interested, and with Scott's enthusiastic urging, they formed "The Original Harmonica Band," which began to take on a life of its own. Formed in '76, the band lasted until 1990, surprising everyone with its longevity. "It just seemed to happen you know?" says Burton. "We had seven people. We were doing a lot of comedy stuff that I'd done originally with Johnny's (Puleo's) band. We got a little guy and a lady playing bass.... Our first job was a freebie...our second was a freebie...the third show we got about $45 apiece...and the fourth show was "The Mike Douglas Show" on TV! (laughs) I thought -- 'HEY! This thing is going to work!"
The group went on to make two self-produced albums ("The Original Harmonica Band" - 1987, and "O.H.B.-'88" -- 1988). And all the while, Burton was trying to hold down a job and raise a family. When he lost his job in '93, Burton made up his mind to try his hand at making a living playing music full-time. He struggled as a single playing keyboard for awhile. "And after my money ran out and everything...THEN Danny (Wilson) called and said 'Hey, Ron (Kalina) wants to start up...' (laughs)."
At first meeting, prior doubts about a trio began to fade. Kalina had never worked with a harmonica trio, but the musical arrangement opportunities intrigued him. Burton wasn't sure a three-piece group would be enough; he'd just come out of a seven-piece group. "I had my doubts, but then Ron started arranging immediately and they were so good that he got me going down a path I never thought...I'm playing stuff I NEVER thought I'd play." Burton remains totally impressed with Kalina's arranging talents: "It makes me sick ...(laughter)...and jealous! But I'm getting to be a pretty good chord reader -- I'll tell you that! We have about 55 written arrangements now that we're working off of."
Kalina spoke of the challenge of writing for harmonicas: "I put my jazz and piano skills to use so the quality of the harmony is a little more modern and a little broader. If I'm playing a major chord with the Trio, I give the bass the root of the major chord, but I don't give the chord player that same chord. I give him the extension so there's a better sound, and so forth." The results of Kalina's ideas are abundantly evident in performance, and all three have a feeling things are looking up. The group just recently completed four very successful shows with Frankie Laine. Even there Kalina went an extra mile: "I wrote three backup charts for the stage band to back us. We sounded great -- kind of the Count Basie sound."
In performance, the "New World Harmonica Trio" uses equipment they have come to favor over long years of experimentation. Kalina favors a Hohner "Super X 64" chromatic harmonica and endorses Strnad pickups (made by American Designs). Burton plays a Hohner chord harmonica and commonly uses a throat microphone with a Fender Twin Reverb amplifier or a Sunn Betalead with a couple of 12-inch speakers ("depending on my mood"). Danny Wilson prefers a Shure Ribbon 330 microphone, but often uses the throat mic on stage for convenience. He also has a Garnett bass reflex amp (folded horn cabinet with two 12-inch speakers).
Harmonica players are always curious about tone. I asked Michael Burton what he could tell me about tone on a chord harmonica -- an instrument which seems overwhelming to a newcomer like myself. "Well, a chord harmonica is sectioned off, and you have to be able to go from one end to the other -- or wherever the chord lays -- whatever comes up. And that just takes -- it's 23 inches long you know -- and you have to get used to it. You can't look at it when you're playing -- the stuff we're playing anyway -- it's too fast.... The seventh chords on a chord harmonica are all draw and the diminished and augmented chords are all draw. The major and minor chords are all blow. Every chord on the top is major so if you play the middle chord, which is a 'C,' you blow the chord underneath that and it's a minor -- 'C' minor. ...I've been doing it so long that I don't even think about it being tough. It's fun, you know, but after 40 years I still practice two-to-three hours a day."
Kalina had specific advice on tone: "You try to play as softly and pretty as possible and then let the microphone take care of the amplification -- without overblowing the harmonica. For many years I couldn't figure out why the harmonica sounded good and then I'd play it through a cheap microphone and it sounded TERRIBLE! I realized you could play it through a cheap mic if you played the harmonica and were able to control what went through the mic. The answer to that is to play softly and develop as nice a tone as you possibly can -- without your hands...without fluttering your hands. If you can get a good vibrato from your throat or diaphragm and a quiet, pretty sound, then you have a starting point and can get it louder, and control it."
The "New World Harmonica Trio" just celebrated their second year as a group and each player expresses satisfaction with their developing sound. It's clear the audiences are coming to know and appreciate it as well. All three players would love to see the group take off and are enthusiastically dedicating themselves to the music as a full-time endeavor. Burton commented: "If I can make a living and make what I'd make if I was working an eight-hour job, I'd be tickled to death. That's success as far as I'm concerned."
And what advice would Kalina and Burton give new harmonica players? Kalina mused: "Well, to me it's a labor of love. Harmonica can be played for pleasure, for fun, and then if you decde that you want to pursue it any further and want to be able to play everything that you hear in your head in all keys, it's like stepping off a cliff. Because you can pick up a diatonic and play a little 'Swanee River' and that kind of stuff with minimum effort. But the minute you want to play creative lines or classical music you realize that, oh...I can no longer huff and puff and make the notes come out. I have to get serious about it. It involves learning what music is all about."
"Take up guitar," laughed Burton, then hastily he added: "I love it though. I love music; don't know how people live without it myself."
The "New World Harmonica Trio" is slated to perform this year at the SPAH convention in Detroit, MI, and with the kind of enthusiasm, hard work and skill they've already demonstrated, I firmly hope they garner the recognition and success they truly deserve. It's a happy testament to three talented musicians, whose lives have been filled with a reverent appreciation of music and especially, a love for the sweet sounds of harmonica.
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Update: November 15, 1997
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