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(Feeling blue, class looks to build talent
By Ted Streuli
GALVESTON COUNTY DAILY NEWS
Copyright © 2003 Galveston County Daily News)

Terry packed up his harmonica and headed south to the Gulf Coast 22 years ago. He wanted to be part of the Texas blues scene, where Stevie Ray Vaughn was just beginning to make a name for himself. Since then, Terry’s played and recorded with some of the most famous blues performers in the country and after forming a band of his own in the mid-1990s, finally got a record deal. “Live at Miss Ann’s Playhouse,” recorded at the blues club of that name in Houston’s Third Ward, was released this year on Austin’s Doc Blues label as was a re-released studio album.

The first notes his students hear are from the opening bars of “Oh Suzanna.” Terry explains that the folk songs are easier; they’re melodic, played in the straight harp style. But the blues, there you have to bend the reeds and play cross harp, or second position. The music and improvisations are based on the draw notes, rather than the blows.

“It’s very easy to learn,” Terry said. “And very difficult to master.”
Those who have mastered the instrument the Hohner brothers introduced to America during the Civil War have set the standard so high Terry believes some of the post-war blues sounds will never be duplicated. Yet the 12 students gathered Tuesday night at a College of the Mainland campus in League City are willing to try.

“I grew up with Neil Young music and Neil Young plays a good harp,” said Armando Villarreal. He is a 45-year-old metal fabricator from Galveston, dressed in a black T-shirt and jeans with a black do-rag covering his head. If only he could play the blues harp, he said, he could have really dazzled the crowd at last weekend’s motorcycle rally.

Tim Killins, 47, came from Clear Lake packing a brand-new $30 Hohner he bought at a local music shop just for Terry’s class. He hadn’t blown a note before Tuesday.

“I’m just a fan of the blues,” Killins said. “I’m a fan of the harp. I thought it would be fun to check it out.”

After four two-hour sessions, Killins, Villarreal and their colleagues will be able to play a few folk tunes and they’ll have enough knowledge to keep them chasing a better sound for years.

“You have to open your mind,” Terry said about playing the blues. “I like the ability to express myself in a deep way. It’s the closest music to our humanity — it’s like a folk music that rises up out of a culture.”

If Terry can teach them a bit of syncopated 4/4 rhythm and a decent vibrato, a dozen newcomers may discover the pleasure of soulful expression through 20 reeds.

“If you’ve got a good vibrato, you can get away with a lot,” Terry said.