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.
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.
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
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.
