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The Popular Harp
DeFord's youth coincided with what many historians call the height
of harmonica popularity in the United States. Americans truly took
the instrument to heart and peddlers and general stores throughout
rural America could not keep the little instrument in stock. It
was popular in all classes of society. It was small and portable,
an understandable concern in a society when many settlers were
still following the frontier. The instrument was also available
in different keys, so it could be played with many instruments
and singing styles.
The harmonica, basically a ten-hole "free reed" instrument,
can produce most of the notes on the scale by a combination of
exhaling and inhaling. A performer can range over three octaves
on the scale, but cannot reach all the notes or all the sharps
or flats. A skillful player can "bend" certain notes
through over-blowing and lip manipulation to pick up accidentals
and gapped notes.
In the South, the harp was often used as a substitute for the
fiddle in the string band. Many rural preachers considered the
fiddle the "devil's box" and banned it from being played
in church. Middle Tennessee has historically had a particularly
strong aversion to the fiddle.
Source for the material
in this section, including excerpts:
David C. Morton with Charles K. Wolfe, DeFord
Bailey: A Black Star in Early Country Music (Knoxville:
The University of Tennessee Press, 1991)
INFLUENCES | PLAYING
STYLE | SONGS | HARMONICA
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