Terry McMillan's Three Biggest Influences are very surprising

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I fell into another Terry McMillan rabbit hole again. This time it was ignited by a song that was featured on an episode of Spongebob Squarepants (pls, let me explain). I was looking for who the session harmonica player was on the song “Blazing Trails”, which was featured on Spongebob. And that ended with me searching on the Internet Archive for audio of Terry playing. I stumbled across this message from Larry Carlton on his and Terry’s collaborative album “Renegade Gentlemen”, talking about how they met and even mentioned Terry’s three main influences on the harmonica.

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I was told all my life that I needed to listen to Charlie McCoy in order to sound like Terry, but those people were wrong in hindsight with the knowledge that I know now. I always knew that Terry was heavily influenced by the blues, but I know he’s more of a blues player than most country harmonica players after hearing his influences play.
The influence I was most surprised by was John Mayall, who recently was posthumously inducted into the Rock Hall in Cleveland this year, but then I see many people on Facebook who were influenced by his playing too. I was listening to a little bit of John Mayall today, and I’d say that Terry’s chugging style and a lot of his licks were heavily influenced by him. With Paul Butterfield, a lot of people tell me that they hear his influence on Terry and I wholeheartedly agree with them. Especially with the throaty sounding vibrato they both had. And with Little Walter, I feel like some of his technique was rubbed off on Terry, but obviously the latter is a lip purser and the former is a tongue blocker. But I haven’t listened to Little Walter in a hot minute ever since I stopped listening to traditional blues music (mainly because people on Facebook were constantly forcing me to sound like Little Walter and a lot of them would copy the original recording for “Juke” 100k times over with no variation). However, I digress.
Hearing his influences, then listening to Terry’s playing really shows how those subconcious influences I have in my own style. As for myself, I’m mainly influenced by Terry (of course), Jason Ricci, Todd Parrott, and Paul Butterfield. Some people have also heard Sonny Terry in my playing and I can see why they think that. It comes to show how other players have you were influenced by are all connected like that.

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Ahh you’d be surprised what your brain absorbs without you realizing, and our overly complex autistic brains are strange like that. I don’t know if your like me but I will listen to something and I’m very black and white I either like it or I don’t, if I don’t no one can persuade me any different. Hence the reason I will never preach to you what you should and shouldn’t listen to.
Another thing we have is whatever we are interested in we have an almost laser focus with the ability to concentrate endlessly on what we are doing. And perhaps out biggest advantage is to have a different way of thinking to those with more neuro- typical thought patterns. I don’t like the term thinking outside the box as that term actually simplify’s what our brains actually do, because we actually go inside the box turn it inside out look all around it and the turn it back again then find out ideal solution. And we are monsters when it comes to researching our interests imagine how much your brain absorbs during these processes. We may be somewhat deficient in many things but in many ways we have a ton of advantages

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I definitely understand what you’re talking about. I remember trying to do a lick Terry played in “Boot Scootin’ Boogie” which goes down the blues scale from 6 blow to 1 blow, then back up to 2 draw. I’ve heard him also do the reverse, where his starting point at 1 draw going down to 1 blow and he goes up the scale to 6 blow. I had so much trouble with that lick because I messed it up every time as I went down the scale. And during my lesson the following 2 weeks, Todd Parrott said that I was “so anxious about that lick, the beginning part of the solo sounded closer to the record”. I was inclined to say “thanks, dude. It’s called a hyperfixation”, but I didn’t. Since I was an intermediate player at the time, I didn’t realize how hard it would be. I knew trying to sound like Terry was going to be difficult, despite the trolls telling me how “easy” it is that they could sound like him without and that I should “learn the instrument properly”, but I never knew it would be that difficult. I learned “Ain’t Goin’ Down” and “Amazing Grace” by ear, but the way he used simple licks to build his signature sound and combining it with his soulful phrasing and outstanding breath control, he was making even the easiest of licks sound complex.
A lot of people told me that Terry using simple licks is a bad thing, especially he wasn’t playing super complex melodies nor playing like a traditional blues or country harmonica player. Some people just straight up tell me that the music I listen to is terrible like when I posted “Wrapped Up In You”, another Garth Brooks song, into a Facebook group. I don’t listen to Terry for traditional sounds or complicated licks, I listen to him play because he put his heart and soul into every lick he did. And if you especially know anything about his troubled personal life, you’d understand why he played the way that he did. Terry lived a life of a blues song and wanted to get those emotions out by playing the harmonica, the closest musical instrument equivalent to the human voice, and that became his most used instrument because so many people liked the way he played. So in order to imitate his style, you have to think like him when he’s playing. Actually knowing his licks will help, but it’s all about making that poor harmonica cry its heart out.

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KeroroRinChou

I understand that Terry is your favourite. From this and other posts, you really have issues with Walter or Facebook idiot posts, people’s reverence for Walter’s playing, and the Marine band flack you’ve gotten. That’s unfortunate because it leaves such a sour taste.

As to people playing Juke the same way, it’s the blues version of classical music. You honour it by playing it the original way. Don’t play it note for note and it’s not Juke. It’s not that it was a completely original song – Muddy said it was a signature song for his band – something they played at the beginning or end of a set – guys stretching out, jamming. The surprise came when the Chess brothers released it as a Little Walter single. The band on the recording, the Jukes, were Muddy, Jimmy Rodgers, and Elgin Evans. Muddy’s band. They’re in Louisiana and the Chess brothers call and tell Walter to get back to Chicago (leave Muddy) to go on the road with “his own band” to support the single they’ ve released. Walter took the Aces, Louis & Dave Myers and Freddy Below (Junior Wells band) and Junior joined Muddy (briefly anyway).

If you listen to Juke, think about how unique it was for 1952 – a 12-bar blues with some odd meter changes and Walter playing sax lines. Always trying new things. At the time, Chess was confining Muddy’s releases to country blues. Here’s a song that drew influence from Louis Armstrong, the Dorsey Brothers, Snooky Pryor, and Sunnyland Slim (among others). Walter was 22 when he recorded Juke – a harmonica song that went to #1 on the nationwide R&B charts. Imagine a harmonica song doing that today.

Another reason to listen to Walter’s music is for the guitar accompaniment. Mr. Robert Lockwood Jr was playing jazz riffs (as did his protege, teenager, Luther Tucker). This was a revolutionary music change.

And Walter was Butterfield’s primary influence when Butter’s first album came out. Butterfield was certainly playing louder (amplifiers were beefing up and the 4-string electric bass had come into its own) but Butterfield was playing loud, fast blues in 65. Walter was gone by 67 – dead at 37. Butter quickly moved away from blues. But I can tell you that playing harp in the 60s, you learned “Juke” note for note just as you learned Butterfield’s “Born in Chicago” and later his version of the Nat Adderley/Oscar Brown instrumental, “The Work Song”. You had to try to play it like Butterfield to get any respect from the audience. I’m sure there are some Terry Macmillan songs or solos that are treated the same way.

So, enjoy Terry and the contemporary players. They each have something to say. And realise that they all owe a debt to Walter. It’s no different than the claim that Jimi Hendrix is “the greatest guitar player” (I don’t claim that). If the lineage of Charlie Christian, Django Reinhardt, and T-Bone Walker hadn’t set the table for B.B. King and Chuck Berry, little Johnny Allen Hendrix (or Jimmy James when he was in Little Richard’s backup band) might never have gained the world stage.

Thanks for getting me thinking about all this.

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Excellent analysis! Thank you, @BnT

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The classical music comparison makes me feel like if I play it, I’ll be restricted when it comes to expression. I was doing choir competitions in high school where we have to sing everything EXACTLY as the writer intended. I often felt limited in what I could do as a singer, so I went to the harmonica as a way to express myself without the rules of classical music being on me. Later to find out that blues had the same rules with classical music, except for obvious being a different genre of music.
Also Little Walter didn’t play the song exactly note by note every time he did play it. He would usually only do the first 12-bars exactly on the record meanwhile having the rest of the song being original when playing live. There’s also an alternate take of the recorded version I found on Youtube that I like way better since it’s not the exact same licks everybody else plays as the released version.

There isn’t because BLUES HARMONICA PLAYERS HATE COUNTRY!! They only like Charlie McCoy and that’s about it. Every time I hear Terry play live, it’s always different with the licks as he improvised them all the time.

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[quote=“KeroroRinChou, post:6, topic:21337”]
BLUES HARMONICA PLAYERS HATE COUNTRY!! They only like Charlie McCoy and that’s about it.

Maybe these statements are your reality. I think blues players are probably more cognizant of other music forms (jazz, pop, country) than players in those fields about blues.

Charlie McCoy? Great player and probably a factor on more iconic recordings than any other harp player ever. That’s why he is known to blues harmonica players. But I’ll throw out another name, known to blues guys, a player who I first heard and saw 50 years ago, Mickey Rafael. Like your boy, he has a list a mile long of people he has played and recorded with but he has probably been seen and heard by more people than any other currently traveling country harmonica player. And he kills it whether country, soul, R&B, jazz, pop, blues, or gospel.

You don’t have to like blues, but please don’t put down blues harmonica players for a lack of knowledge or appreciation of country or any other music genre. That may be your perspective, but it’s not true.
Mickey Rafael doing 3 tunes

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