George "Harmonica" Smith

Trackimage Playbut Trackname Playbut Trackname
Blowing the Blues 04:15 Tools
Last Chance 00:00 Tools
Goin' Down Slow 00:00 Tools
Bad Start 00:00 Tools
Key To The Highway 00:00 Tools
Tight Dress 00:00 Tools
Good Things 00:00 Tools
Chicago City 00:00 Tools
Times Won't Be Hard Always 00:00 Tools
Blues In The Dark 00:00 Tools
Yes, Baby 00:00 Tools
Telephone Blues 00:00 Tools
Last Night 00:00 Tools
Juke 00:00 Tools
Yes Baby 00:00 Tools
Summertime 00:00 Tools
Sunbird 00:00 Tools
My Babe 00:00 Tools
Boogie'n With George 00:00 Tools
Blues Stay Away 00:00 Tools
Astatic Stomp 00:00 Tools
Mellow Down Easy 00:00 Tools
I Left My Heart In San Francisco 00:00 Tools
Crazy 'Bout You Baby 00:00 Tools
California Blues 00:00 Tools
I Found My Baby 00:00 Tools
Peg O My Heart 00:00 Tools
Teardrops Falling 00:00 Tools
Rocking 00:00 Tools
Oopin' Doopin' Doopin' 00:00 Tools
West Helena Blues 00:00 Tools
Have Myself a Ball 00:00 Tools
I Don't Know 00:00 Tools
You Don't Love Me 00:00 Tools
Cross Eyed Suzie Lee 00:00 Tools
Trap Meat 00:00 Tools
You Better Watch Yourself 00:00 Tools
Love Life 00:00 Tools
All Last Night 00:00 Tools
Teenage Girl 00:00 Tools
Blues For Reverend King 00:00 Tools
I Must Be Crazy 00:00 Tools
Too Late 00:00 Tools
Miss O'Malley's Rally 00:00 Tools
West Helena Woman 00:00 Tools
everything's gonna be alright 00:00 Tools
As Long As I Live 00:00 Tools
The Avalon Boogaloo 00:00 Tools
Loose Screws 00:00 Tools
Brown Mule 00:00 Tools
Rope That Twist 00:00 Tools
Hot Rolls 00:00 Tools
Early One Monday Morning 00:00 Tools
I Want A Woman 00:00 Tools
Come On Home 00:00 Tools
Nobody Knows 00:00 Tools
You Can't Undo What's Been Done 00:00 Tools
Mississippi River Blues 00:00 Tools
Got My Mojo Working 00:00 Tools
Can't Hold Out Much Longer 00:00 Tools
Teardrops are Falling 00:00 Tools
Blue Switch 00:00 Tools
Just A Feelin' 00:00 Tools
Tell Me Mama 00:00 Tools
Until You Come Home 00:00 Tools
Down In New Orleans 00:00 Tools
Soul Feet 00:00 Tools
No Time for Jive 00:00 Tools
Sometimes You Win When You Lose 00:00 Tools
Before You Do Your Thing (You'd Better Think) 00:00 Tools
Early One Monday Mornin' 00:00 Tools
Situation blues 00:00 Tools
Someday You're Gonna Learn (To Treat Me Right) 00:00 Tools
Down In New Orleans aka Hey Mr. Porter 00:00 Tools
Can't Hold on Much Longer 00:00 Tools
I Don't Want to Go, Baby 00:00 Tools
Rockin' (Take 2) 00:00 Tools
I'm a Man 00:00 Tools
Love That Woman 00:00 Tools
Rockin' 00:00 Tools
Blues with a Feeling 00:00 Tools
Roaming 00:00 Tools
Mississippi River Blues ( Washington Show ) 00:00 Tools
Hamp's Boogie Woogie 00:00 Tools
Loose Skrews 00:00 Tools
My Babe, Pt. 2 00:00 Tools
Going Down Slow 00:00 Tools
Forty Four 00:00 Tools
I'm Ready 00:00 Tools
Woke Up This Mornin' 00:00 Tools
Intro by Spider 00:00 Tools
Sometimes You Win, Sometimes You Lose 00:00 Tools
Harp Stomp 00:00 Tools
Big Boss Man 00:00 Tools
Blue Fog 00:00 Tools
Juicy Harmonica 00:00 Tools
If You Were A Rabbit 00:00 Tools
Hey Mr Porter (Aka Down In New Orleans) 00:00 Tools
Introduction For George Harmonica Smith 01:20 Tools
Stockholm Swing 00:00 Tools
McComb Mississippi - Part 1 00:00 Tools
McComb Mississippi - Part 2 00:00 Tools
Juke ( Washington Show ) 00:00 Tools
Fire Exit 00:00 Tools
44 00:00 Tools
Ode To Blillie Joe 00:00 Tools
52 Cards in a Deck 00:00 Tools
Misty 00:00 Tools
On My Mind 00:00 Tools
Monkey On A Limb 00:00 Tools
Think I'll go out drinkin' 00:00 Tools
Mannish Boy 00:00 Tools
Blowin' The Blues 00:00 Tools
Bad Luck at My Door 00:00 Tools
Tell Me, Mama 00:00 Tools
Don't Be Nobody's Fool 00:00 Tools
Mississipi River Blues 00:00 Tools
Trouble, Trouble 00:00 Tools
I Left My Heart 00:00 Tools
Baby Please 00:00 Tools
Manish Boy 00:00 Tools
She's Coming Home To Stay 00:00 Tools
Trying To Hide The Things I Do 00:00 Tools
Help Me 00:00 Tools
Milk That Cow 00:00 Tools
Good Thing 00:00 Tools
Hawaiian Eye 00:00 Tools
Don't Want to Go, Baby 00:00 Tools
Viola B 00:00 Tools
A Letter to the President 00:00 Tools
Don´t Want To Go, Baby 00:00 Tools
Before You Do Your Thing (You´d Better Think) 00:00 Tools
Last Chance [#] 00:00 Tools
Someday You're Gonna Learn 00:00 Tools
Boogie'n With Gorge 00:00 Tools
Someday You ´re Gonna Learn 00:00 Tools
Further On Up The Road 00:00 Tools
Sharp Harp 00:00 Tools
Highway 59 00:00 Tools
Go Ahead On 00:00 Tools
Early one monday morning - take2 00:00 Tools
Cross eyed suzie lee-alt. 00:00 Tools
Juke - Washington Show 00:00 Tools
Mississippi River Blues - Washington Show 00:00 Tools
You Don't Have To Go 00:00 Tools
09 - Bad Start - 1998 - Now You Can Talk About Me ('60-'82) 00:00 Tools
Blues stay away alt. 00:00 Tools
Last Chance - G "Harmonica" Smith 00:00 Tools
05. All Last Night 00:00 Tools
The Blues Is My Roots 00:00 Tools
Cross Eyed Suzie Lee(Alt. Take) 00:00 Tools
McComb Mississippi Part1 00:00 Tools
Before You Do Your Thing 00:00 Tools
01 - Blowing the Blues - 1998 - Now You Can Talk About Me ('60-'82) 00:00 Tools
Rockin'-alt. 00:00 Tools
california blues-alt. 00:00 Tools
04. Miss O'Malley's Rally 00:00 Tools
03. I Don't Know 00:00 Tools
Introduction for George Harmonica Smith 00:00 Tools
Oopin' doopin' doopin'-alt. 00:00 Tools
08. Hot Rolls 00:00 Tools
Viola 00:00 Tools
I'm Ready [#] 00:00 Tools
I Left My Heart In San Francis 00:00 Tools
Down In New Orleans aka Hey Mr. Porter(Alt. Take) 00:00 Tools
Trying To Hide the Things 00:00 Tools
Blues Stay Away(Alt. Take) 00:00 Tools
Early One Monday Morning(Take 2) 00:00 Tools
12. Rope That Twist 00:00 Tools
I Found My Baby(Alt. Take) 00:00 Tools
California Blues(Alt. Take) 00:00 Tools
06. I Want A Woman 00:00 Tools
09. I Must Be Crazy 00:00 Tools
15. You Can't Undo What's Been Done 00:00 Tools
10. Yes Baby 00:00 Tools
14. Good Things 00:00 Tools
07. Until You Come Home 00:00 Tools
Ode To Billie Joe 00:00 Tools
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Allen GEORGE “Harmonica” SMITH (1924.04.22/West Helena, AK – 1983.10.02/Los Angeles, CA)’s family moved to Cairo, IL soon afterward where he was raised. He was taught the harmonica by his mother when he four. As a teenager, he began traveling in the South, and eventually wound up playing fish fries and picnics in the Mississippi Delta with Earley Woods’ country band. George played at local parties, juke joints and in the streets. In 1941 he moved to Rock Island, Illinois with his mother for a few years, mostly working outside of music, and then went back to Mississippi, where he made his living playing music and working as a projectionist in a movie theater in Ita Bena. It was there that he began to experiment with playing the harmonica amplified through the sound system of the film projector. In 1949 Smith moved to Chicago to pursue his music, and began working with Otis Rush and the Myers Bothers. He began playing professionally in 1951. He had become close with Little Walter. George was recruited to join Muddy Waters’ band in 1954, making his presence between the short-lived Henry Strong and James Cotton, after Henry Strong – Walter’s replacement in the Muddy Waters band – was stabbed to death by a jealous girlfriend. Smith got the harmonica chair in the world’s greatest blues band. It didn’t last, though. Perhaps there were stylistic differences, or maybe Smith was not content to be a sideman-no really knows. But by 1954 Smith was steadily employed in the Orchid Room in Kansas City, where the swingy music was more to his taste than Muddy’s electrified Delta blues. The following year he was noticed there by Joe Bihari of Modern Records and signed to the label. Smith then recorded some sides which are now classics, including “Blues in the Dark” and “Telephone Blues.” He used octaves extensively to get the sound of a horn section, and was a master of amplified tone shadings. Along with this he also had a preference for playing just behind the beat, which gave his music the swinging sound which later earned him the title of the Father of West Coast Swing. Third position on chromatic and diatonic harmonica has been done before, but nothing like this. Little Walter, the unofficial king of blues harmonica, had played third position on chromatic and diatonic harmonica, but his techniques were different. George made full use of the harmonica’s tuning by his incorporation of the use of playing “octaves”, especially on the chromatic. George took his blues influences and met them with his other harmonica influences (he often cited Larry Adler as his favorite) and ran with it until he developed his own approach to tone and phrasing. Besides his classic RPM sides “Blues In The Dark”, “Oopin’ Doopin’ Doopin’” and “Down in New Orleans”, other chromatic features of his include “Hawaiian Eye”, “Blue Fog” and “Soul Feet”. His mastery of the chromatic harmonica influenced every blues player that has picked up the instrument since, either directly or indirectly, arguably even more so than Little Walter’s chromatic technique. In 1955 he toured with pianist Champion Jack Dupree and Little Willie John, and after some recording for Bihari, eventually settled in Los Angeles. He was to stay there for the rest of his life. Established in the city, he recorded again for the Modern label, this time with a horn section. By then rock and roll was starting to erode sales of blues records, and Smith, now a man with a growing family, was dropped by Modern. He hustled as best he could, recording for any label that would take him and playing the local clubs. Smith also adopted Rice Miller’s old trick of identity theft by billing himself under a variety stage names to get bigger crowds at gigs, including Little Walter and Big Walter. It proved a shortsighted choice; establishing a reputation under his real name would now be difficult. When James Cotton left Muddy Water’s band in 1966, Smith got his old gig back and moved to Chicago to play with Waters. As before, it didn’t last, and Smith went back to Los Angeles. But he stayed friends with Muddy, and when Little Walter died two years later, Muddy’s band backed Smith on his highly regarded Tribute to Little Walter album. He eventually made the decision to leave Chicago, and spent much of his adult life on the West Coast of America. At about this time blues, Smith met the young Rod Piazza, and they launched the Southside Blues Band, which toured with Big Mama Thorton and also recorded the album “..Of the Blues.” He also appeared on her album Jail (1975). In 1970 British producer Mike Vernon met the band, signed them to a European tour, and changed their name to Bacon Fat. They recorded a couple of albums for Vernon, but Smith still could not import his overseas success to Los Angeles and the group continued to struggle at home. The decade also saw a decline in his health as a heart condition worsened. On the brighter side, he began to teach future harp great William Clarke the chromatic harmonica, and two began gigging together. For the remainder of his life, George continued to perform with his band, as a sideman, or with one of his protégés, and made some great recordings even in the 70’s and 80’s. Boogie’n With George, Smith’s final recordings, were made with Piazza in 1982, and he died in October of 1983. Partly by luck, and partly by his own doing, he was underappreciated for many years, but recent reissues of his work will hopefully gain him his rightful place in the blues harp Pantheon.His influence can still be heard in the playing of the top harp players on the contemporary scene, such as Rod Piazza, Kim Wilson, Rick Estrin, Paul deLay and Mark Hummel. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.