Mike Turk interview

Mike Turk joins me on episode 104.

Mike is a Boston-based player who started out playing blues harmonica, inspired by the great Paul Butterfield, before becoming interested in playing jazz on the chromatic. He recorded some session work in New York and recorded through the 1970s with various artists, with many of those tracks available on anthology albums Mike has put out. He released his first solo album, Harmonica Salad, in 1991. Mike went on to record several more albums, with a letter from Toots Thielemans included in the liner notes for Turk’s Works. He also toured Europe and recorded some albums with the Italian band he was working with while in Europe. 

Links:
Mike’s website:
https://www.tinsandwichmusic.com/

Toots Thielmans testimonial on Mike’s website:
https://www.tinsandwichmusic.com/?page_id=265

Polyphonia harmonica:
https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/nmah_1306456

Great interview with Mike:
https://blues.gr/profiles/blogs/harmonica-virtuoso-mike-turk-talks-about-jazz-blues-lowel-fulsom

Videos:

Don Brooks session recordings:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDGSb5NxtJY&list=PLGbKWi5veb_nwSHBWYjEgDPtHfYbFFufY&index=4

Honeydripper film opening credits:
https://youtu.be/BO5eP6XsF9M

Douglas Tate playing at the NHL Festival in 1988 (not on a Renaissance):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=th1PbXWfoY8

Mike trio gig from March 2022:
https://www.facebook.com/themadmonkfish/videos/1593252841059782

Podcast website:
https://www.harmonicahappyhour.com

Donations:
If you want to make a voluntary donation to help support the running costs of the podcast then please use this link (or visit the podcast website link above):
https://paypal.me/harmonicahappyhour?locale.x=en_GB

or sign-up to a monthly subscription to the podcast:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/995536/support

Spotify Playlist:
Also check out the Spotify Playlist, which contains most of the songs discussed in the podcast:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5QC6RF2VTfs4iPuasJBqwT?si=M-j3IkiISeefhR7ybm9qIQ

Podcast sponsors:
This podcast is sponsored by SEYDEL harmonicas - visit the oldest harmonica factory in the world at www.seydel1847.com  or on Facebook or Instagram at SEYDEL HARMONICAS

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Mike Turk joins me on episode 104. Mike is a Boston-based player who started out playing blues harmonica, inspired by the great Paul Butterfield, before becoming interested in playing jazz on the chromatic. He recorded some session work in New York and recorded through the 1970s with various artists, with many of those tracks available on anthology albums that Mike has put out. He released his first solo album, Harmonica Salad, in 1991. Mike went on to record several more albums with a letter from Toots Thielmans included in the liner notes for Turk's works. He also toured Europe and recorded some albums with the Italian band he was working with whilst in Europe. Hello, Mike Turk, and welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_01 1:32

How are you, Neil?

SPEAKER_00 1:33

I'm great. Good to get you on, Mike. I've had several people recommend that interview you, so it's great to speak to you at last, and obviously you're well-regarded in harmonica circles, that's for sure.

SPEAKER_01 1:43

Well, that's nice to hear.

SPEAKER_00 1:45

Yeah, so you're now living in Boston, and you were originally from New York, the Bronx, I think.

Mike got involved in the great music scene in Boston, playing with many of the great players there, including Bonnie Raitt and Hound Dog Taylor

SPEAKER_01 1:52

Yeah, that's correct. I'm from New York, grew up in the Bronx. Oh, I left the Bronx at about age 19 and came to Boston, and I pretty much stayed here since, except for a few sojourns back to New York City. I stayed in New York, oh, around 1980 through 88. to a couple of years, staying down there trying to break into the commercial world at that time. And I got a little frustrated with it, so I came back to Boston and decided to stay here over the years. I've been fortunate to maybe travel around a little bit, go to Europe, and just simply come back here and stay here for a good long time, just being a working musician in the music scene here.

SPEAKER_00 2:38

I've talked to a few players from Boston and it's got a great scene, yeah, and you tapped into that music scene when you first moved there, yeah, when about age, as you say, about age 19, was it? Yeah. So, yeah, so tell us about that early time when you moved to Boston and some of the good players. I think you played with Bonnie Raitt, for one, and Hound Dog Taylor, and so you got yourself on the scene there quite soon.

Was working as a janitor at a Cambridge, Massachusetts blues music club called Joe’s Place (which had a lot of brawls) and he sat in with a lot of bands

Sat in a lot with Hound Dog Taylor and thought he would get hired to play with them but there was a big fight so Hound Dog Taylor never went back

Mike’s father was a professional jazz vocalist and bass player, although Mike wasn’t that aware of this until later

SPEAKER_01 3:01

Well, you know... I got myself on the scene, but back then, that was around 1970, 71, 72. I was just starting out, and I didn't have a band or anything. I was just playing my harp and asking people if I could sit in all the time. So I wound up being a... I don't know, maybe this is kind of funny. I was the janitor of a place called Joe's Place, which was... Reputable for the blues artists they brought in, but not so much for its environment, as there were numerous. riots and brawls in the place. And it wasn't always safe to be there. And which is a funny thing to say about Cambridge, Massachusetts, you know. But, you know, in that section of East Cambridge, yeah, there was a lot of, I guess, gangs, motorcycle gangs would come through and they'd want to cause trouble. In any case, I was the janitor. And I got to meet A lot of people who I mentioned to you in the resume thing that I sent you. And they'd let me sit in. I'd walk up and very unselfconsciously say, hey, can I sit in? I got to sit in with a few people there. And it was pretty interesting. I sat in a lot with Hound Dog Teller. And it was a funny thing. I thought maybe they were going to hire me. And then that very night was a brawl that was so violent. It was like a Popeye cartoon where people, just a rumble of people in a cloud of all this stuff being thrown around and arms coming out of it, pulling people back in. And it was a hairy thing. It scared the hell out of Hound Dog Taylor and his band, and they never came back.

SPEAKER_00 4:49

So before then, we carry on talking about your career shortly, but your father was a working jazz bassist and vocalist sort of for 30 years. So does that have an influence on your interest in music?

Lost half his little finger at age four, limiting his ability to play some instruments, and hence he choose the harmonica later

Learnt saxophone when younger, but missing part of finger inhibited his playing, so he picked up the harmonica

Discovered Paul Butterfield in the late 1960s

SPEAKER_01 5:01

Well, in a sense, yes. Much later in the realization of who my father was and what he did, but I guess there was a little bit of a non-acceptance of my father being a jazz musician and singer and things were not that happy. And he didn't really have an opportunity to to really share what he did with me. You know, I sort of took the inspiration, and when I was a child, about four years old, I had a childhood accident where I lost half of one finger. And it's always been kind of a discouragement for trying to learn so-called legitimate instruments. Guitar. I gave saxophone a really good long time, but on my left hand, this small pinky finger, which is the half finger, never had the reach, and I couldn't get the dexterity I wanted. And I just didn't have the determination like, you know, Django Reinhardt, you know, to adapt my fingers to work all the keys. It just didn't work for me. So it got me closer and closer to just saying, hey, why don't you just play harmonica? In the late 1960s, I discovered Paul Butterfield Band, and that was my inspiration.

SPEAKER_00 6:28

Yeah, like to many of your generation, he was a great inspiration, yeah.

Left New York and started playing in the coffee houses of Cambridge and Boston

Met John Kolstadt and that’s when Mike started concentrating on the harmonica

SPEAKER_01 6:42

My father actually had a music store. There was a great source of blues, harps, and marine bands that I didn't have to pay for. And so... They let me have that. My father was kind of like, well, you know, at least you're involved in something. You're interested in music. Let's see how far he goes with it. So, you know, I kept on playing until I left New York City and I came to Boston and got involved in playing in the coffee houses of Charles Street. And, you know, I needed money, got the job as the janitor at Joe's Place and sat with all those great blues musicians and occasionally, you know, other more famous people who would wander through. Then I met John Kolstad. And John Kolstad and I got along really well for a number of years. And that's where I feel like I really kind of started to concentrate on what I wanted to do because Kolstad was attending the Berklee College of Music. He'd come back with all of this newfound musical knowledge, you know. Yeah. You know, we'd start messing around and he'd bring in these chord changes and I would try to adapt the blues harp to it and maybe add a little chromatic harmonica.

SPEAKER_00 8:11

So yeah, I wanted to pick up about how you, you know, you said you were inspired by Paul Busfield. You started playing diatonic first, yeah, and you were into playing blues and then later got into jazz, yeah. So if we talk about that transition now and obviously, again, you started out as a diatonic blues player, yeah?

SPEAKER_01 8:28

Yeah, yeah. I was about 14 going on 15. I went to a community dance Saturday night thing called, you know, The Bronx House. And there was not the regular rock and roll band where they play Louie Louie and Wipeout and all those things that, you know, we all wanted to watch the, you know, the rock and roll bands do and stomp around. I walked in that one night and there was this substitute band and they were playing this... I guess it was blues music at the time. I couldn't really recognize what it was, but it sounded way more sophisticated and way more interesting. And so on the break or maybe at the end of the night, you know, the guy who was playing the Paul Butterfield part, you know, the harp player, vocalist, I asked him, what is this music? And he reached in back of his Fender amplifier and flung the Paul Butterfield blues band album at me and said, here, this is what it is. And I went the next day, ran right down to the record store and bought the record and kept on going back there day after day to see what else they had. So that was my introduction.

SPEAKER_00 9:42

So how did you start learning the harmonica then when you're playing along to Butter and, you know, doing it that way?

SPEAKER_01 9:47

Yeah, that's it. I just, I got a few different keys from my, my father who had the music store. I would try to guess what the keys were by, you know, by ear. Some of the notes sounded good. Some of them didn't, you know, because I was unknowingly probably playing in odd position, odd key positions, finding a common note, you know, on a draw note or a bend note that sounded right. And eventually I got all the keys and I was able to differentiate what keys everything was in. That really got me on the right track. So playing by ear and then I was able to more copy what Butterfield was doing.

When Mike started to play chromatic and how he made sense of it initially

SPEAKER_00 10:30

So you played blues for a few years, and then you got interested in playing chromatic, yeah? And you mentioned that your friend, the guy you played with, John Kolstad, he went to the Berklee School of Music. So you also went to the Berklee School of Music, didn't you? So at what stage did you go there, and was that after you'd started playing chromatic?

The moment of revelation for understanding the chromatic was listening to James Cotton play I’m Ready

Then heard Little Walter playing a C chromatic in the key of G, opening up the idea that you can play different keys beyond D minor on the chromatic

Playing blues on chromatic is a good entry point for diatonic players

SPEAKER_01 10:49

Well, I always had a chromatic, but I never knew what to do with it, because it didn't make any sense in terms of the blues harp, because as we all know, harmonica players, we don't have to... blame the difference between the what's called the richter scale and the solo tune scale of the chromatic the chromatic has the the two blow c's and that's really what the big confusion was because you're looking for um the relationship of the of the notes in the richter scale especially when you draw so that you get a chord you know that dominant seventh sound Or even when you blow and you get that major chord thing, you're getting one through five. But as we all know, the blues harp changes when you get higher up. You only get a complete scale in the middle. And the chromatic has a complete scale, one through four, then five through eight, and so on. So that was confusing until I began writing to try to figure it out and the moment of revelation was listening to James Cotton playing with Otis Spann on a record I'm Ready and it's in D minor third position on the chromatic I realized that you can do that on the C harmonica third position. I began to know what the positions were, the key areas of the diatonic. And once I realized that I was in D minor on the chromatic, I began to realize certain things. And I listened to Little Walter. Little Walter actually plays the chromatic in G. on, I think it's the Hate to See You Go album, which was another sort of very important album for me in the development of understanding this harmonica. And I can't remember the name of it, of the song. Maybe it's called You're So Fine or something like that. You know, and he's playing chromatic. And it was in G. And I thought, if Little Walter understood how to play chromatic in G, which is cross-harp, And if James Cotton can play D minor and make it sound great, what else can we do? I began to explore the different positions and then, therefore, the different key areas.

SPEAKER_00 13:26

But it was interesting playing blues on the chromatic that initially got you into the chromatic. It's a good routine for a lot of people, isn't it?

The influence of Toots on Mike after his father insisted he listen to one of his recordings

SPEAKER_01 13:34

I guess it is. Maybe a lot of people still don't quite understand, but I think most experienced or long-term players understand. they've come to this realization. There's a lot of teaching aides and a lot of great players who have developed teaching methods to explain just this very thing. For me, it came all by accident.

SPEAKER_00 13:58

And then you heard the great Toots Tillmans, I think age 17, and he turned you on to the real possibilities of the chromatic, and then you started getting more interested in playing jazz then, did you?

SPEAKER_01 14:09

Well, not at age 17, but my father had insisted that I listen to a Toots Tillman record. He said, no, listen to this guy, and tell me what you think, and I said, you know, look, I'm 17, and I'm a hippie, bopping around, and You know, not really being able to appreciate the fine points of great music. And I'm thinking, wow, listen to him play this. He sounds like a saxophone or a clarinet or a flute. And my father goes, yeah, that's right. That was his advice to me. So, you know, some years later, after I connected with Kolstad, he actually gave me the encouragement to do it. and play around, and I listened to more Toots Thielman as we went along, and I discovered the key of F, and, you know, where the, I began to practice scales, and discovered where you use the slide on the thing.

SPEAKER_00 15:08

And it's at this point you were deciding that, you know, you didn't just want to play blues, right? You wanted to branch out and start learning jazz, so...

First recording on a non-blues harmonica, using a Koch, was with Richard Johnson, Old Man Adams, which Richard Hunter included in his Jazz Harp book

Released an album with John Kolstadt in 1975, Beans Taste Fine

SPEAKER_01 15:15

Yeah. We did some, what I call experiments. There's one recording... I did, which is the first recording I ever played on a non-blues harp with this musician, singer, songwriter named Richard Johnson. He wrote a song called Old Man Adams. In fact, Richard Hunter cited this tune and used it as an example in his publication called Jazz Harp. I use what's called a Koch chromatic or a Koch harmonica. It's basically an erector scale diatonic with a slide that takes you up a half step. And I was able to discover the minor third, the B flat, and occasionally the F sharp. to make the G scale a true major scale on that harmonica. That was pretty important in the development of understanding how to play the standard chromatic as well.

SPEAKER_00 16:37

So, as you mentioned a couple of times, you played with John Kolstad after, I think, Richard Johnson first, and then John Kolstad, you released an album in 1975 called Beans Taste Fine. So on here, you're playing... know some diatonic for sure yeah but some chromatic as well on a song called born your dance

SPEAKER_01 17:08

so that's that's a coke chromatic

SPEAKER_00 17:11

oh yeah

SPEAKER_01 17:12

i think it's a it's a one in tune to g really didn't know what I was doing. I just came up with these licks and they seemed to work. At the time there was a real craze for folk music transitioning to swing. We were getting into Django Reinhardt a lot and we became friends with this great guitarist named Lew London. And this fantastic bluegrass band called the Bottle Hill Boys. And they really impressed me because they didn't just play bluegrass. They played Charlie Parker tunes on bluegrass instruments. It was like, wow. So... try to glean things from them and sit in with them and see if they would let me play with them. And they were very encouraging, too. They were nice. And on the Kolstad record we did, we played with Barry Mitterhoff, who was in the Bottle Hill Boys, and Lou London. You know, we tried some things, Lady Be Good, and even a key change. just starting out experimenting with the thing.

SPEAKER_00 18:17

And so you played with John Kolstad, and then it was in 1978 you went to the Berklee School of Music. You wanted to up your game on your musical knowledge and ability.

Joined a Country and Western band who had a violinist who was into jazz, and encouraged Mike in that direction

Attended the Berklee School of Music from 1978-1980, where he had to play saxophone as they wouldn’t allow chromatic harmonica

SPEAKER_01 18:30

Well, true. After that stint with John Kolstad, I joined a country-western band called, the name of the band was John Lincoln Wright and the Sour Mash Boys. Much to John Lincoln Wright's chagrin, in the band was a violinist who hated country music and wanted to play jazz. So he was a bad influence on me. While we were in the band, we would always be trying to throw jazz things into the country arrangements. Maybe it was a little bit too avant-garde or on the edge. I didn't stay very long. I stayed about, I don't know, nine months with that band. I decided that I really just wanted to move on, so I enrolled at the Berklee College of Music, and I had to play alto saxophone. They wouldn't accept me on the chromatic harmonica, because nobody knew what to do with it.

SPEAKER_00 19:26

So, was that the first time you'd played the alto saxophone?

Had to transpose the Alto saxophone parts to the chromatic, which wasn’t easy

Would join in music activities at Berklee playing the chromatic

Anthology of recordings through the 1970s and early 1980s: The Mouth That Roared, when was doing sessions in New York

SPEAKER_01 19:30

Well, no. I had owned the saxophone for about, I don't know, five or six years previous, and I would practice my scales on it, and toot along with the radio, I wasn't very good. But through the curriculum at Berklee, I had to use the saxophone in the ensembles to play because they wouldn't schedule me to play my harmonica. I had to learn how to transpose the alto saxophone to the concert key and all of that. I'm really bad with all that kind of stuff, even today. And so... It was difficult for me, because you play in the key of C concert, and on the alto saxophone, you're playing in A with three sharps. You're reading all these F sharp minor to B7, like, Jesus. And so it was kind of hard, and I just kind of said, you know... I'll do what I can on the alto saxophone, but in my spare time, I would go around from teacher to teacher, ensemble room to ensemble room, and just say, hey, would you let me sit in with you guys? I don't want credit or anything. Do you mind if I play harmonica with you? And there were some nice teachers who said, yeah, come on in, Mike. They'd throw these things at me, all these etudes and things or unison arrangements. In a guitar ensemble, I'd be the only wind instrument. Trying to play these guitar licks on it was also very difficult, but it was good experience for me. So I pushed myself that way.

SPEAKER_00 21:08

So you've got a few anthology albums out which covers your career over various periods. So you've got one which is called Mouth That Roared, which is an anthology you're playing through the 1970s and the early 1980s, which covers the different acts you played with on there. So it's really interesting. And it's really great that you've managed to capture the recordings from particularly the 1970s era as well. So what about that and the stuff that you've got on there? It's quite a variety, isn't it, of diatonic and chromatic?

Had to sight reading in the New York scene, with some intense competition, such as Robert Bonfiglio

SPEAKER_01 21:38

Yeah. I guess that sort of harkens to the period where I went back to New York City to try to break into the world of commercial music, whereby you try to play everything. You play a little bit of classical sounding thing if you can get that beautiful sound off your instrument. I was asked to play a lot of diatonic stuff. Occasionally, I got some chromatic parts. And you have to sight read when you go there. And once again, it wasn't really my strong point. I did my best. And I had a lot of really... intense competition, or maybe I was trying to compete with people who were already there, like Robert Bonfilio, who was already really very highly skilled at his sight reading and his classical music ability, and he was well-loved in the studios. So I did get calls, and it was a great experience for me, and I managed to capture some of the spots for posterity, so I thought I'd put them on the anthology page. And then by 1981, I did a couple of tracks. Towards the end there, I think, is the point. And dipping in the duck sauce, which is... chromatic in a jazz environment, utilizing what I'd learned in the previous couple of years at Berklee College of Music.

SPEAKER_00 23:42

Now you say you got some commercials, yeah, up in New York as well. So you got some, you know, playing some harmonica on some advertisements, yeah?

Donny Brooks was instrumental in creating the score for the musical Big River, which Mike later played in a Boston production

SPEAKER_01 23:52

Yeah, and the really successful studio harmonica player was Donnie Brooks. Donnie Brooks practically invented studio harmonica in New York City, at least for the blues harmonica. I went to meet Donnie Brooks once. He was very nice to me. He had a music store. He was relatively old, much older than me. Donnie Brooks was very instrumental in creating the harmonica book for Roger Miller's Big River musical, which was a really nice musical. And I did have an opportunity to play that book up here in the Boston area in an off, off, off, off, off, off Broadway production on the South Shore. But everybody was very enthusiastic about it, and they were really into it, and we gave it a good, honest effort. But getting back to Donnie Brooks, I just wanted to say that he was also another influence for me, thinking about how to be a disciplined studio musician.

SPEAKER_00 25:09

Great. And so when you mentioned your reading wasn't necessarily the strongest, so is that something that improved as you did more session work? And what did you do to work on that?

SPEAKER_01 25:18

Well, after a while, I realized I probably had to go back to Boston, maybe do some more woodshedding. So I returned and I studied with saxophone educator Jerry Bergonzi. I studied with him for a couple of years, on and off. Yeah, he gave me lots of things to practice and exercises and etudes. And I would practice some Bach things and some saxophone etudes and flute etudes and things like that, finding things that I thought would be useful for the harmonica, particularly things in the flute range, of course, with the chromatic having virtually the same range as the flute. So I would do that, practice that, and session with people, practice playing heads and standard tunes and arrangements and doing things up here for people having to show up and play their arrangements.

Harmonica Salad, released in 1991, is the first collection of Mike’s solo work, including tracks with Ronnie Earl

SPEAKER_00 26:19

And then you got some, you know, you carried on getting session work and you got another album which kind of covers this period from 1985 to 1991 called Harmonica Salad. Was this a session, you know, the studio tracks you did, or was this your own solo project stuff?

SPEAKER_01 26:34

These were all my own solo projects. As I went along and met various musicians and had interesting collaborations, I thought, well, let's go in studio and at least record a few tracks. But never enough to put together a whole album with anybody, so... I guess by the time I got to 1991 or something like that, when that came out, I thought, you know, there's enough material here to put it out. I did a session with... even with Ronnie Earl and some local blues musicians associated with him that's on that album.

SPEAKER_00 27:25

There's an interesting track on here called the Crow Magnum Man.

SPEAKER_01 27:43

That is a tune that Ronnie Earl brought into the into the session. Playing with Ronnie Earl was a little bit stressing because he had a particular way of playing the melodies and you had to play it that way, but we never rehearsed. So I had to do my best matching his accents and the rhythmic hits. And I thought, well, the actual session wasn't really so good. So I went back and rerecorded over it in order to make it work. and I used a different key chromatic harmonica. It seemed to work, the timbre of that seemed to work Well, maybe I played

SPEAKER_00 28:29

two chromatics on that thing.

Toots gave Mike some general tips on playing the chromatic, but no actual lessons

SPEAKER_01 28:54

Yeah, that's true. He'd come to Boston, and we had a pretty good run of a friendship for a long time. He'd come to Boston. Him and his manager, they'd call me, and we'd go out for lobster. In Belgium, they love lobster. When they'd come to Boston, the Boston lobster was probably the most highly regarded. So I would take him out. Sometimes they took me out. We had fun hanging out, and it was nice. And Toots was very generous to write that letter. I think it helped me to some degree, and he allowed me to put that in the album.

SPEAKER_00 29:31

Yeah, that's great. And did he give you any tips on playing the chromatic?

SPEAKER_01 29:35

He would say things in a musical way, and he would describe his approach. He had a very... personal approach to playing jazz, which involved the harmonic and melodic scales, but starting from a different degree of the scale. in order to play on dominant chords. It took me a while to really understand what he was saying. I think most jazz musicians of Tootsie's caliber and era understand immediately what he's talking about. You know, it just harkens all back to Charlie Parker and post-Charlie Parker approach to things, playing on changes. And, you know, he would say things like that, and I would play for him some hits, and he'd go, well, Mike, why are you choosing this When you can actually play it better in another key. So he offered advice like that. But in all honesty, I never really had a bona fide true lesson with Toots. We just kept it friends.

Recorded some albums in Europe after the success of the Harmonica Salad album over there and Mike toured with the band in Italy and Germany

SPEAKER_00 30:39

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SPEAKER_01 31:57

Well, at the time I put out Harmonica Salad, it made its way to Italy a couple of years later. And there was an impresario friend of mine named Warren Blumberg. And Warren... arranged for a whole bunch of tours for me with various and sundry Italian musicians. Inadvertently, I wound up meeting the musicians who were the Alcaline Trio, or Alcaline Trio, as they pronounce it, organ, vibraphone, and drums, and they were from Florence, or Firenze. We had a nice little session while I was there on one of the tours that Warren set up in Pisa. And sometime later they contacted me and wanted me to come over and do the little Taste of Cannonball record. And then we toured around Northern Italy and even as far down as Rome and we went up into Germany where the recording was actually done in Munich, in the Munich area with that band. So we toured and got the music together and we rehearsed a little bit when we got to the studio and then we just spent two or three days doing the music.

Reached a high-level in his jazz chromatic playing

SPEAKER_00 33:28

You know, definitely at this stage, certainly on the other album you did in 2008, The Nature of Things. on the italian job you could in 2007 you know your jazz playing's become very accomplished at this stage yeah so we obviously you'd worked hard and then we you know you're happy with your your chromatic jazz playing at this stage

Very satisfied with The Italian Job album, which Mike produced himself

SPEAKER_01 33:56

i have to say that on most of that yeah i am i mean Listening back on things, you know, we all have a little bit of a self-conscious misgiving of, gee, I think maybe I didn't get that right. Or, you know, there's a little nuance here that could have been better. But for the most part, yeah, I'm very happy with the way it came out. I was very satisfied with how I put together the Italian job.

UNKNOWN 34:25

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 34:37

I used two of the same musicians from the Cannibal session, the Cannibal Adelaide Little Taste music session. I use a vibraphone player and the drummer, Alessandro Fabri and Alessandro Di Puccio, along with Paolo Biro on piano. They were fantastic musicians to this day. They're incredible players. They're examples of people you don't really get to hear anywhere else but in Italy. But they make themselves available, and they've had great experiences playing with great musicians who've come through Italy and toured around with them. you know, some experiences going as far back as playing with Chet Baker, you know, and so on. I feel very fortunate that they wanted to do this, and I'm very happy. I put the arrangements together, chose the repertoire, did a couple of originals by Alessandro Fabri on that record. I like the sound of it. I produced it myself.

UNKNOWN 35:45

piano plays softly

SPEAKER_00 35:52

It's interesting, you do still play some diatonic on here. So there's a song on The Nature of Things called Pickle in the Bank, and you're playing diatonic on here. But you can tell that it's kind of influenced by your jazz learnings. You're playing the diatonic more in a sort of jazzy way.

Tin Sandwich Swing song (from Harmonica Salad album) sees Mike playing in the key of each chord, including use of overblows

SPEAKER_01 36:09

Well, you know, if you go back to the Harmonica Salad record, on it is called Tin Sandwich Swing, which is what I call it. It's a blues.

UNKNOWN 36:21

MUSIC PLAYS

SPEAKER_01 36:23

and it's a kind of an arrangement blues but pretty much it's a lot of improvisation and what i'm doing my approach is as each blues chord change comes around i try to change position for that and play in that key you know in the one and in the four and then in the five and maybe interject a 2-5, 3-6, 2-5 turnaround on the blues harp, even so much as to use some of what Howard Levy terms the overblows to get notes that don't exist on the, that weren't built into the diatonic. So going back to the pickle in the bank is, I guess, another attempt at just keeping my finger in the blues harp.

SPEAKER_00 37:31

Interesting you mentioned overblows there. So I think you were quite one of the early pioneers of overblows. You mentioned the tin sandwich swing. So that was recorded, what, in the 70s, was it? So you were using overblows quite early on.

SPEAKER_01 37:45

In the 70s, I was using overblows, and even, in fact, on the Kolstad record. And I didn't learn about the overblows from Howard Levy. I learned it from Richard Hunter, who was doing it. And I just kept on trying to get it to go somewhere. And really, I mean, I just kind of used the overblows to expand on cross harp. And in no way did I ever get to a point where I became a diatonic overblow player, you know, even close to the caliber of Howard Levy, who is the utmost musical genius of it. not to mention his own musical talent. He is an absolute genius in music, the harmonica or not.

SPEAKER_00 38:31

For sure, yeah. So you're playing Overblows, you know, on the diatonic. I see you played it later on as well. So you saw the chromatic and diatonic quite closely related in that way.

Charlie Musselwhite book which described how all the chromatic notes can be achieved on the diatonic

Played a classical piece with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, although doesn’t consider himself a classical musician

SPEAKER_01 38:56

Yeah, I did. You know, it just became a revelation to me. And Charlie Musselwhite put out a book. I can't remember the title of it, but it covered all the key areas. I'm sure he had some help. It was very interesting. because he covers the diatonic harmonica chromatically, where you can play all the keys chromatically, and what the key areas are. And Howard Levy calls the key areas not by first position, cross position, or second position, third position. He calls it by the key position. When you play C diatonic and F you're in the F position or in the B flat position or the A position and so on. And this is how I came to really realize how you can be musical and get along on the chromatic. Of course, being in Berklee College of Music and going through all of that, I was required to follow the proficiency curriculum and do all these scales, arpeggios, arpeggios in thirds, four-part, even five-part chords. and extensions and then learn some etudes and things like that. So, you know, you really have to do the whole thing, practice as if you were a saxophone or a flute.

SPEAKER_00 40:26

So you mentioned earlier on you played some classical music. So you have played with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. So how did that come about and what did you play with them?

Mike used a Polyphonia to play the glissando part for the orchestra

SPEAKER_01 40:34

Well, I put my classical playing and experience in a very sort of light and incidental way because I'm not really... and never have been a classical musician, but trying to play that kind of stuff or practicing it can never be harmful. It can only help you be a better musician. And I got a call out of the blue from the managers of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and they were recording the Carnival of the Animals, a very strange situation. Seiji Ozawa wanted to record this Saint-Saëns Carnival of the Animals, the way it was written in the music they had in their music library. Historically correct. And when they went through the orchestral parts, they found the harmonica part in the movement called the Aquarium. And Saint-Saëns had this beautifully printed, almost 100-year-old piece of sheet music, and at the top of it said, harmonica. And you almost never hear it played by harmonica. In fact, you never hear it played by harmonica, except this one recording that I played for them. And it's a very simple part. You know, you just sort of call and answer kind of thing. The solo part for the harmonica is this glissando in the middle. And there's no way any harmonica made can play that glissando unless you have a harmonica that plays all blow harmonica. in a major scale, and it has to be the C scale in order to do that. I think it was from E to E, and that's the glissando, and you have to glissando like, you know, it's really fast. I think maybe there are some people who can claim they can do that on a blow drawer instrument. What I did was I used a polyphonia, which is a chromatic instrument, all blow, And I'll draw. You get the same chromatic scale as you swipe up the thing. So I used that for the solo and I showed it to Seiji and he scratched his head and he goes, OK, we'll try it. And they were all very satisfied with it. I was impressed at the compliments I got.

SPEAKER_00 42:56

Well, you found some of the work. That's good.

SPEAKER_01 42:58

But that's the extent of my classical experience.

SPEAKER_00 43:01

You've also done some film scores, haven't you? A film called Honey Dripper and another one called Walking on a Cloud.

SPEAKER_01 43:07

Oh yeah, so the Walking on a Cloud thing was something, it was almost a student film project back in 1978. Music It was kind of maybe meant to be a dramatic, you know, alcoholism awareness kind of a film. The Honey Dripper was a session I did for the soundtrack of a movie by John Sayles. I just get to actually play on the opening credits. And I'm using the diatonic. It's funny. I'm not playing any chromatic on it.¶¶

SPEAKER_00 44:04

Right, so a question that I ask each time, Mike, is if you had 10 minutes to practice, what would you spend that 10 minutes doing?

SPEAKER_01 44:10

Okay, if I have 10 minutes to practice, so it's virtually not enough time at all to practice anything, but I go to the piano and I practice Cherokee, the changes to Ray Noble's Cherokee in various different ways, because it helps me think about how to make all the key change transitions, of which there are many, in that tune, which has always been like a sharpening stone for many jazz musicians, horn players in particular, and even pianists, you know, at breakneck speed. Of course, trying to play it at breakneck speed on a harmonica can be daunting.

SPEAKER_00 44:53

So you're playing the chords on piano when you do that, are you?

SPEAKER_01 44:56

Yes. I'm practicing the harmony on it.

UNKNOWN 44:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:00

Then if I have 10 minutes more, I'll practice it on the chromatic. And it's nice to even try to play the thing in all 12 keys, which you can do with play-alongs and teaching aids and have that soundtrack.

SPEAKER_00 45:17

Yeah, so it's kind of one of these jazz workouts, isn't it? Playing things in different keys like rhythm changes and 2-5-1s and yeah.

Pandemic has limited playing abilities somewhat, although still has a monthly residency in Cambridge, which is broadcast on Facebook

SPEAKER_01 45:25

Yeah, it's almost like something that can give you a cerebral hemorrhage.

SPEAKER_00 45:29

So are you still working hard at your jazz and practicing regularly still?

SPEAKER_01 45:34

I've really cut back or, you know, things have cut back in the last recent years through no help from the pandemic years, which caused a lot of things to disappear. I've got one resident's here in Cambridge at a place called Mad Monkfish Restaurant. And I get to play there on a monthly basis. And I get to just go in there and try different things all the time. And the musicians I play with there are just absolutely fantastic. I play with this pianist, Ben Cook, who is the present resident piano player for the Boston Pops Orchestra. And that's not what makes him great. What makes him great is his immense talent as a jazz pianist. But he can really handle playing with the pops. And the bass player is Bruce Gertz, who's played with Jerry Baganzi for a long time, as well as so many great postmodern jazz musicians from all over the world. John Abercrombie. I can't remember all the guys he's played with. But these guys are top-notch, and they can just play anything. I just bring in all these charts, and they just play them down.

SPEAKER_00 46:53

Great, so people can still check you out and see you playing in Boston once a month there, so that's good to hear.

SPEAKER_01 46:58

It goes over on Facebook. They have a Facebook video feed.

SPEAKER_00 47:03

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:04

From the restaurant. Sometimes the quality is okay. Sometimes maybe it's lacking.

Diatonic of choice

SPEAKER_00 47:10

Sure. So we'll move on to the final section now and talk about gear. So we'll talk about the harmonicas that you like to play. So first of all, we'll just do the diatonic. So you mentioned early on that you got a marine bandage at your first harmonic. Is that still the same diatonic that you're using?

Joe Filisko used to maintain Mike’s chromatics

Played the Hohner Toots model chromatics, and two of Joe Filisko’s custom Marine Bands

Recently been playing the Hohner Crossover, which he likes

SPEAKER_01 47:25

You know, I tried all kinds of different diatonics. I discovered Yamahas back in the 70s. I was fond of those for a while, but they weren't in all keys. And yeah, so there were blues harps, there were marine bands, there were special 20s. And then sometime in the 90s, I became friends with Joe Felisco, and he would repair my chromatics. My chromatics were almost always Toots hard boppers or mellow tones, Hohner Toots harmonicas. And You know, I'd play them for a while. I'd play half a dozen and send them back to Joe Felisco. And he'd send them back, and I'd send him six more. And it went on like that for a few years. He was really a nice person to me, and he encouraged me to use his harmonicas by sending me, as a gift, a couple of his marine bands, which I still have and use, and they still play very well. In the last couple of years, I had a crossover marine band. It plays very nicely. It's almost like those Joe Feliscos. Clearly, Honey got the message.

SPEAKER_00 48:35

Yeah, so you mentioned the Toots models of chromatics there, the hard bopper and melatonin. So I think you played these for quite a while. But then a really interesting thing I want to pick up on is that you discovered the Renaissance chromatic harmonica, which was developed by Doug Tate, who's a guy who's from the UK. Yeah. So tell us about the Renaissance Harmonica and how he started playing that.

SPEAKER_01 48:57

Did you know Doug?

SPEAKER_00 48:59

A little, yeah. I met him in some of the National Harmonica League festivals here, so yeah, I knew him a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 49:05

Yeah.

UNKNOWN 49:09

Yeah.

Douglas lent Mike a Renaissance to try at a SPH convention

Can use any chromatic reed plate on the Renaissance, with Mike using Toots Hard Bopper or Mellow Tone plates on his

SPEAKER_01 49:13

Also, we had a really great friendship, him and Bobby Giordano, his partner, who helped him develop it. She was 50% of the effort. So I showed up at a spa convention somewhere, maybe it was Detroit, and I was playing my hard boppers in some jam session, and Doug Tate just came up to me and goes, You know, by the way I hear you play, I think you would really like playing one of my harmonicas. So he lent it to me for six months. And after six months, he asked for it back and I didn't want to give it back. And he said, look, Mike, it's the prototype. You've got to give it back. I have to make one for you. This is how business works. And so, yeah, so I got number 20. I kept playing it and playing it. And then it got lost through a very strange story. I wound up again with number 30. So I kept playing this Renaissance harmonica, and they're remarkable instruments. They're lifetime. You can adapt almost any reed plate to it if you know how to machine drill the holes the right way so they'll fit into the comb. I'm using touch-hard bopper or melaton plates in these, and I have a lifetime supply of reeds. When the reeds go bad, I just drill them out and nut and bolt them back in, the new ones in, and tune them myself.

SPEAKER_00 50:47

Well, I didn't realize you could use any reed plate in them. That's new information for me. That's great. So, you know, you're still playing the Renaissance now, yeah, and you're still updating those reeds and reed plates in there.

Seydel manufactured the Renaissance for a few years, but this ended after their craftsman stopped making them by hand

SPEAKER_01 50:58

Right. Since I started playing it in 1999, I never went back to the Hohner Harmonicas again. But bear in mind that inside these are Hohner plates. but the design, the workmanship, and the aerodynamics of the way the air treats the reeds is completely unique to any chromatic harmonica that exists in the world today. In fact, I think that Seidel Harmonica was interested in making this instrument, and they claim to have made it, and I don't really know for sure if that actually exists, if they actually made one. I think they just wanted to sort of own the patent to it, which they wound up having.

Fifty Renaissance chromatics were made by Douglas Tate

SPEAKER_00 51:44

That's right. Now, yeah, they're not making them now, for sure. So, like you say, you got number 20 and then number 30 later. I'm not sure how many were actually made in the end, but I don't think too many people have got one.

SPEAKER_01 51:54

There were 50 made. 50 were made, and I'm not sure where they all are. At this point, you know, they've gone through second and probably third ownership, or some just disappeared.

Mike lost one of his Renaissance chromatics, which turned up on eBay, and he managed to retrieve it

SPEAKER_00 52:07

Yeah, like you say, a very renowned chromatic. So if anyone listening has got one, be sure to let me know. It'd be interesting to track down where some of them are. So you mentioned the story there that your number 20 went missing. I heard that that turned up on eBay. Is that right? Did you manage to track it down? Yeah,

SPEAKER_01 52:24

it's funny. It was a fluke. I saw it on eBay. And it was by somebody who had pretty much stolen the mail. I was sending this back to Douglas Tate when he lived in Florida. for repair or an adjustment and he never got it it was it was taken out of the mail or something and wound up circulating around the what was the town that is Tampa Tampa where they they lived and they got tired of it or they wanted money they realized it was worth more than$15 at a yard sale

SPEAKER_00 52:59

yeah

SPEAKER_01 52:59

so just that is you know some fluke I logged on to eBay and there it was And I managed to get it back without having to pay the almost$2,000 they were asking for it.

SPEAKER_00 53:12

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 53:13

Because it has my name in it.

SPEAKER_00 53:15

So did you have two Renaissance chromatics then? Yeah, I've got two. Yeah, you've got two. Yeah, great. So it worked out well. You got two in the end.

SPEAKER_01 53:24

Yeah, Bobby Giordano was very instrumental in helping me recover. the number 20.

Amp of choice is a Gallien-Krueger studio monitor amplifier with an analogue Nanoverb pedal

SPEAKER_00 53:31

Yeah, no, fantastic. That's a, it's got a happy ending that story then. So we'll just go on and talk a bit more about, um, some, some harmonica stuff. So when you're performing, um, well, both on, well, first of all, on the diatonic, do you like to use an amp or are you getting a clean sound through a PA or?

Uses a Peavey PVM45 microphone

Experimented with the DM48 MIDI chromatic for a while

SPEAKER_01 53:47

Pretty much for the last few years, I, um, I've insisted on always using, um, a GK, a Galen Kruger, um, amplifier it's the um studio monitor it's got a bit of a graphic equalizer in it and some interesting um circuitry that allows you to loop uh effects through it so i just use the gk pretty much as a conventional amplifier and i use a analog a nano verb looped into the thing because the chorus effect in the amp is no good. And I've been using for the last 20 years a PV microphone, a PV-45, which is a workhorse type of microphone, much like the, what is it, the 57, the Shure 57. And pretty much, you know, the sound of these two things is very complementary for the Renaissance, right? And I get a nice sound. I'm pleased with it. I can get a direct out into any PA system or put a microphone in front of it. For a little while, I was experimenting with the DM-48 and playing through an iPad into the Lillian Kruger. And, you know, messing around with sounds on the DM-48, which was sort of fun, but sometimes a little bit frustrating in terms of learning how to use it and the response to it. And, you know, perhaps I need to be willing to go a little further equipment wise.

SPEAKER_00 55:20

Great. And what about any effects? Do you use anything or like you say, you've got some built in on this amp. Is that the effects you're using?

SPEAKER_01 55:28

Well, the only effects I use is a nano-verb, and I use it kind of like, you know, a Miles Davis sort of reverb, just to give the thing a little, you know, a little more sweetness to the tone, to the sound when you play.

UNKNOWN 55:47

piano plays

Likes to use his own equipment, as he knows how that sounds, and works

SPEAKER_01 55:58

instead of a dry harmonica sound. Some people prefer the dry harmonica sound. I don't like to use anything that people hand me in terms of microphones and rely on sound systems. And people who run sound systems often don't get the sound I really want to get. So that's why I like this GK studio monitor. I make the sound and let them take the signal from the sound that I create.

SPEAKER_00 56:29

And the question is about your embouchure. Are you a puckerer or a tongue blocker or anything else?

SPEAKER_01 56:34

I've done puckering. Mostly it's the pucker kind of thing. You know, I mean, look, if Toots can get away with being a pucker player all his life and play the way he played, Truly another musical genius and a phenomenon, musical phenomenon from the 20th century. And all he did was pucker. It's going to be good enough for me. I did a lot of tongue blocking and I do like to do tongue blocking in order to get, you know, the octave effect, which I really appreciate. And even the double stop sound, like when you play third position and you do the draw sound, on the D minor 6 and see how the D minor 6 works against certain changes. I like to do that.

SPEAKER_00 57:26

So thanks so much for joining me today, Mike Turk. It's been great to speak to you.

SPEAKER_01 57:31

Thank you, Neil. I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 57:34

Once again, thanks to Zydle for sponsoring the podcast. Be sure to check out their great range of harmonicas and products at www.zydle1847.com or on Facebook or Instagram at Zydle Harmonicas. Thanks also to Rob Sawyer for another donation to the podcast. You're single-handedly keeping me going, Rob. I'd also appreciate it if you could leave a rating and a review of the podcast through your podcast player. This helps the podcast become more visible via the algorithms. You can also leave a review on the podcast website at www.harmonicahappyhour.com And if anyone owns a Renaissance Chromatic or knows somebody who does, then please email the show via the contact page on the podcast website. Thanks all again for listening and we'll let Mike play us out with a song from his Italian job album. This is a George Shearing song called Conception.

UNKNOWN 58:41

Conception