Happy Hour Harmonica Podcast
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Happy Hour Harmonica Podcast
Corky Siegel interview
Corky Siegel joins me on episode 129.
Corky played was central in the emergence of the popularity of the blues to a white audience. His Siegel-Schwall band gained a residency at Chicago’s Pepper Lounge, sharing the stage with blues giants such as Howling Wolf, Muddy Waters and Little Walter. The band were also part of San Francisco’s 1967 Summer of Love, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Joni Mitchell and Janis Joplin.
Corky has a unique place in harmonica history with his blues / classical collaborations. After performing with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1966, he has gone on to enjoy a platinum selling classical record, composed numerous blues / classical orchestral pieces, recorded with a Chamber music ensemble and performed with orchestras around the world.
Links:
Website: https://www.corkymusic.com/
Siegel-Schwall band: https://www.corkymusic.com/siegel-schwall
Chamber Blues: https://www.corkymusic.com/chamber-blues
Symphonic Blues: https://www.corkymusic.com/symphony
Echo Audiobook: https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Echo-Audiobook/B00VS6N4ZI
Corky’s lesson on dynamics: https://www.corkymusic.com/harmonica-lesson
Videos:
Chamber Blues: https://www.corkymusic.com/video-chamber-blues
Lullaby, composition by Dr L Subramaniam: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ty1ri62uBuU
Corky playing with Howard Levy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjnYE-jIprc
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
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
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Blue Moon Harmonicas: https://bluemoonharmonicas.com
Corky Siegel joins me on episode 129. Corky was central in the emergence of the popularity of the blues to a white audience. His Siegel-Schwall band gained a residency at Chicago's Pepper Lounge, sharing the stage with blues giants such as Howling Wolf, Money Waters and Little Walter. The band were also part of San Francisco's 1967 Summer of Love, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Joni Mitchell and Janis Joplin. Corky has a unique place in harmonica history with his blues classical collaborations. After performing with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1966, he has gone on to enjoy a platinum-selling classical record, composes numerous blues classical orchestral pieces, recorded with a chamber music ensemble and performed with orchestras around the world. This podcast is sponsored by Seidel Harmonicas. Visit the oldest harmonica factory in the world at www.seidel1847.com or on Facebook or Instagram at Seidel Harmonicas. Hello, Corky Siegel, and welcome to the podcast.
SPEAKER_05:Nice to hear from you, Neil.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, great to have you on, Corky. And it'd be brilliant to talk through your long and illustrious career. So let's dive into that. So you were born in Chicago, and that's been an important part of your history and your story of the harmonica, yeah?
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, well, I was fortunate enough to be born here. So when I fell in love with blues, I was right here in the middle of it.
SPEAKER_03:Absolutely, yeah. So you also play piano. Piano as well, yeah. So which came first for you, the piano or the harmonica?
SPEAKER_05:Piano definitely came first. Harmonica was a late. It actually was piano, clarinet, saxophone, guitar, and then harmonica.
SPEAKER_03:Wow. So were those things, the other instruments, something you learned as a child? And did you focus in on the harmonica after those?
SPEAKER_05:I took some clarinet lessons when I was eight and probably some piano lessons around that time, but was a very bad student and so never really stuck with it. Then it was saxophone. But when the harmonica came around, I think it was probably 20, it fit so easily in my pocket.
SPEAKER_03:But you certainly perform on the piano, you know, through your career. Have you performed on those other instruments or did the harmonica take their place, saxophone, clarinet, etc.?
SPEAKER_05:Well, I was interested in music and I was playing saxophone and I would go sit and I actually sat in on saxophone with Mike Bloomfield and Billy Boy Arnold. Yeah, I actually played saxophone. I sat in with him probably in the 50s or at least in the very early 60s.
SPEAKER_03:So you picked up harmonica age 20, you say, and so what inspired you to take up the harmonica, besides it being easy to carry?
SPEAKER_05:Well, it was first the fellow from the Christie Minstrels, and he said, you know, Corky, harmonica's a really cool instrument, you should play it. So I just started playing it a little like Bob Dylan. when a neighbor walked by and brought me three blues albums, Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, and Jimmy Reed. And he said, that's how you play the harmonica. And that turned my world around.
SPEAKER_03:And so you play, obviously, piano very well, and you play blues piano. So we'll get onto this topic shortly, but did you have sort of, you know, classical lessons on piano? And is that something that we might talk about later on? Is that something we're pushing in that direction? I
SPEAKER_05:did study classical music. I studied on piano. But again, I was a very, very poor student. In order to get into college, I had to practice scales to get through the entrance exam, and I was able to do that. But beyond that, I couldn't play more than a few measures of any simple classical piece.
SPEAKER_03:It was very much blues piano for you then, was it? Oh yeah,
SPEAKER_05:totally.
SPEAKER_03:So you've had a fantastic career and a fascinating career. So if you don't mind me saying now, I think you're 81 years young now, is that correct? 81, yeah. certainly those in the area and around. So tell us about how that got started.
SPEAKER_05:Well, I met Jim at Roosevelt University. He was playing guitar in the jazz band and I was playing saxophone in this big school jazz band. And we met in the elevator and I was really interested in blues and I asked him if he played blues and he went, well, not really a little bit. And so I went over to his place and he was mainly bluegrass and country music. but he played a little blues. And so, you know, we put some blues tunes together, some that we wrote, but mostly, you know, from Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters. Went out to play and one of the, just finding somewhere to play. And we walked into this empty, coffee house there were two people in it and we asked if we could pull out the guitar and harmonica and we did and i was just learning to play harmonic and these two guys came over and as it turns out to make a long story short they were rado and ragni who wrote hair and we started working on hair with them on the musical hair And that was literally the first thing in our story, which I call an innocent victim of incredible good fortune, where we just sort of, we weren't even playing yet. We weren't a band. The second thing we did was walked into this club and we had more material by then. And I always said, we'd like to play here. And it was on the other side of the tracks. We were the only two white kids for miles around. And it was in the afternoon. And he said, we'll just set up here on the floor. women are coming in you could play for them so we played for them and he hired us immediately to play every thursday night from nine at night till four in the morning so here here we were as i say in in my liner notes listening to holland wolf and muddy waters flying out of the grooves of our lp records and now here we are on stage at peppers first time playing any gig we still weren't the seagull schwa band it was just jim and i yeah and who shows up and hops on stage is holland wolf then muddy waters
SPEAKER_03:what like the first time you played were they there
SPEAKER_05:yeah then will then willie dixon hound dog taylor otis span otis rush all these great players night after night after night coming to take us under their wing and sit in with us and take care of us every thursday night from nine to nine to four in the It's not like we went to sit in with them. It's like they came to take care of us. And you'll love this story. One guy shows up, says, I'd like to sit in, but it looked like he had been drinking a bit. He said, why don't you come back another time? And the audience yells, hey, let him sit in. That's Little Walter. And it gets a lot worse, Neil. So the audience yells, excellent. I'm thinking, who's Little Walter? I have no idea who the guy is. And here he is, the father of modern blues. So I say, come on and sit in. And he sits in. And when I hear him, of course, I recognize it. And I go, oh, my God, that's Little Walter. So that's how I met little Walter and got to play with him like right there and I was just learning to play
SPEAKER_03:yeah that's incredible so how do you think you know the club owner obviously invited you to play every Thursday do you know why he did that clearly like you say you weren't highly accomplished right so was it something about you being young white kids he wanted that in there or I
SPEAKER_05:think this is my best explanation because the question is why did Radu and Ragni want us to write a play with them why did Joni Mitchell want us to produce her first demo tape with Circle Game on it. Why did Seiji Ozawa, you know, later on, why did he want to have me be the guy to bring blues to classical music? And on and on and on. Why? Why did the whole city of San Francisco and the San Francisco Symphony want me to have an artist in residency there when I was just learning to play? What was it? And the best thing I could tell you is I was really having fun. I wasn't taking anything seriously. I was putting every bit of energy and love into what I was doing. And I was all about not the notes, not the techniques, but trying to experience expression. So for me, my focus was I want to feel what this is like. I don't want to try and play like someone else or play the notes or learn the techniques or play fast or play slow. None of that mattered. I just wanted to feel what it was like to play music. And I think that's what translated. And also, I've been very fortunate to not worry about what other people thought. you know, it was sort of fearless, just naturally fearless and I think, you know, a rebel I guess you might say. And I think that was attractive to everybody and I was happy.
SPEAKER_03:So you were, as I said, you were a big part of that young white kids getting involved in the blues in Chicago. So were you one of the first, you know, sort of, Charlie Musselwhite and, you know, and Jerry Pornhub. But I mean, you know, were they around at the same time as you? Well,
SPEAKER_05:they were ahead of me. Charlie was, Charlie Musselwhite and Paul Butterfield, Nick Revanitis, Steve Miller. I knew all of them. They were all friends. But I came in a little later. I came in a year later, maybe two years, in some cases, two years later. Like the Newport Folk Festival when Butterfield played that. He played it in, I think, 65 and I played in 67 I believe so but but you know Charlie who's by the way and one of the most amazing people you could ever meet he's just a beautiful guy loved Charlie so much. And I knew Paul Butterfield. Paul used to call me. Matter of fact, one of my great moments was I was staying at the Albert Hotel in New York and Paul Butterfield comes down with his record player and wants to play me his new record. It was so nice.
SPEAKER_03:oh yeah amazing stuff so obviously like you say you were getting money waters and howling wolf and little waltz were coming on stage with you and what was that like you know did they what did they teach you about the blues
SPEAKER_05:um well what i saw is that these guys put every bit of energy into everything they were doing and that was my my my lesson was a deep focus you know and that was it you know all these guys were playing with us but when we finally put together the seagull schwall band on the on the north side Howlin' Wolf came to the north side with his whole family to hear Siegel-Schwall. He wanted to introduce them to Siegel-Schwall. And he came up and he sat in with us and he came up to me and he said, I just want to let you know that I love your band. Siegelschwa is my favorite band, besides my own. He says, I love my guys, but your band. I mean, he didn't say this, but what I understood, and they told this to me, Muddy and Wolf had explained to me later, he said, we weren't like the other blues bands. We were doing something a little different, but it was still blues, you know, in an interesting way. So they really liked that, and they loved the idea of when the symphony thing started to happening they really love that idea too where all my a lot of my white contemporaries they didn't but the real guys did and they also were big fans of seagull schwall yeah which is amazing
SPEAKER_03:so you formed the the seagull schwall band i think you had your first album out in 1966
SPEAKER_05:i'll be the man i'll be the man i'll
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, and when we went to San
SPEAKER_05:Francisco We went in 1967, Summer of Love, and eventually we agreed to have Chet Helms manage us because we ended up being the hot band in San Francisco. Janis Joplin was a big fan. We were good friends with her. We were in the eye of the storm of the San Francisco Summer of Love, Siegel Schwall, because we were managed by the guy who started the whole thing, Chet Helms, and the owner of the Avalon Ballroom. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:You weren't really playing the kind of... What sort of hippie music were you in San Francisco? What sort of stuff were you playing over there?
SPEAKER_05:Well, it was mostly blues.
SPEAKER_03:Blues was big, popular with the hippies as well, wasn't it?
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, blues-oriented, I would say, music. When Segal Shaw was formed and we got our audition at Big John's and won the audition, Big John's was ground zero of the blues rock explosion. What happened was when I put the band together, I wanted, because we weren't experienced players, I wanted to keep things very, very simple so we could focus on expression, you know, rather than worrying about complex forms. So I made it ultra simple. In fact, the shuffle, and I'll sing this to you, instead of the normal way of doing a shuffle, bum-da-dum, Right? The way we did it was... We kept the notes really short and it made the group sound really tight. And we would make sure we designed the beginnings and endings of the tunes and maybe something in the middle. Other than that, it was just really simple stuff. But we also used a lot of dynamics. And that was the key to Janis Joplin coming over and saying, you guys, you play so quiet. How come you get such an audience reaction? And I said, because we're not really playing quiet. We're just using a whole dynamic range.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, well, maybe that's what attracted the classical composer to you, because obviously dynamics is big in classical music, not so much in, like you say, blues and pop music. So let's touch on that. I think it was in 1968 that you first attracted the attention of the composer.
UNKNOWN:MUSIC
SPEAKER_05:There was a composer, William Russo, and the conductor, Seiji Ozawa. Yeah, the dynamics were important because dynamics is the key to expression. That's what I found out. You know, that if you go, Amazing grace, how sweet the sound. Or you go to, Amazing grace, how sweet the sound. You know, all of a sudden, things start to change. open up so yeah we did use a certain amount not a lot and now I'm totally focused on dynamics but back then we were just discovering it and I'm sure Seiji Ozawa that that was part of the attraction again it was expression was coming up
SPEAKER_03:so this is in 68 so you
SPEAKER_05:don't actually 66 66
SPEAKER_03:Ozawa was it
SPEAKER_05:yeah
SPEAKER_03:wow so that's when you'd only really just after you'd formed the Seagull Schwell band
SPEAKER_05:just immediately after and at Big John's the ground zero where Butterfield and all these blues players came and there's Seiji Ozawa the conductor of the Chicago Symphony sitting there asking me to jam with his band and then we started talking about how are we going to do it and it all happened at Big John's
SPEAKER_03:so then you premiered this three pieces for blues band and symphony orchestra which is the first thing you did with Ozawa yeah Is that something you were involved with composing yourself?
SPEAKER_05:Well, I was involved with the composition because Russo, the brilliant composer who composed for Leonard Bernstein, he was a trombonist with Stan Kenton and also the arranger for Stan Kenton. So he wouldn't have known exactly what to do without having deep conversations. In fact, he does credit me, not as a composer, but he credits me in his notes. He says that I actually helped him write the work and that's where i started learning about composition
SPEAKER_03:so you performed with the with us with a symphony orchestra was that the uh the chicago symphony orchestra yeah it was the
SPEAKER_05:chicago symphony in 1968
SPEAKER_03:how did that go down with the classical crowd were you playing to classical crowds i assume or
SPEAKER_05:yeah it was a classical audience they loved it it was amazing we were surprised because when when uh russo and sagey asked me how are we going to do this i the first thing i said to them is we should make sure we we do something for everyone to not like in other words and they laughed and they love the idea in other words we should just write something that we want to write and not worry about it and that's exactly what what happened
SPEAKER_03:so as far as you know was this the first time that uh we you know we had chicago blues and uh and the symphony orchestra playing together
SPEAKER_05:well whether it it was or not which i think it was but whether it was or not The thing that's different about these works is that it's not a symphony backing up a blues band. It's a symphony and a blues band in a partnership where classical and blues are being presented. They're the stars. So you don't just have the symphony take a back seat. It's a constant involvement in how do we have these two seemingly really diverse genres actually work together. together so we could hear both of them as i say chasing each other around the room what is interesting about that is even gershwin isn't an example of that because gershwin was basically writing jazz music for symphony You know, it was a blend. Symphonic blues and chamber blues, they were never intended to be a blend or a fusion, but two separate things happening simultaneously. So in that sense, I guarantee you it's never happened. And I actually only recently heard something that was similar. but only recently. So for all these years, nobody has really picked up that ball and run with it. So yeah, it was the first time.
SPEAKER_03:So were the symphony when you were playing with your band, were they playing from written scores as an orchestra normally would? Yes. I mean, what were you playing from? Your own, you know, your songs you were already performing or?
SPEAKER_05:We had the mapping of the piece. Some places there were melodies we were playing, but mostly we were just completely improvised.
SPEAKER_03:And so you released an album in 1973. I think it was the first album you made with this.
SPEAKER_05:Okay, I think 73 was... three pieces for blues band and symphony and orchestra. And that was on Deutsche Grammophon. And then after that recording, I recommended to Bill Russo and Seiji, hey, how about if we do another piece? Because by then, Siegelschwa disbanded the day of the 1968 concert with Chicago Symphony. That's when we took a break. So I started putting solo material together in 1974 and suggested to Seiji and Russo that we could write another piece, and that was street music.
UNKNOWN:Thank you.
SPEAKER_05:And that was also recorded on Deutsche Grammophon.
SPEAKER_03:So Deutsche Grammophon are a prestigious classical label from Germany, right?
SPEAKER_05:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, so, I mean, that was a big deal, right, getting with us. That was like a big record label for you to get on, yeah?
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, it was big. The three pieces was one of their biggest sellers. Went platinum.
SPEAKER_03:Went platinum, wow. So all the amazing classical musicians they had on their label, you were one of the biggest sellers. That must have been an amazing pride for you to get that.
SPEAKER_05:I just sort of I never thought about it.
SPEAKER_03:You've toured a lot with orchestras as a result of this, right? Was that in this time in the 70s that O'Reilly took off and you were playing with a lot of orchestras?
SPEAKER_05:I would say I was playing with a lot of orchestras for a blues guy. And I think it's about 50 orchestras up to this point.
SPEAKER_03:And so you're playing just diatonic harmonica, aren't you, in these? You're not playing written music on chromatic, are you? It's all blues? No.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, no overblows either.
SPEAKER_03:You said there were some melodies written out for you. I mean, were you doing any sort of reading for these parts, or is it mainly improvised that you're playing?
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, a little bit of reading, but I'd memorize it, because I can't sight-read, but I could know what the notes are.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. So, I mean, clearly this has been done a lot with chromatic harmonicas playing classical music with orchestras, so to do it on a blues setting, like you say, is really unique and a great place that you've got in the history of that
SPEAKER_05:yeah the point is that the diatonic harmonica is the blues instrument and that was the point of the piece to use a different technique to fit in more with classical wasn't wasn't at all the point the point is to play the blues licks that i knew and find a way of having them work with a classical format
SPEAKER_03:just talking about your seagull scroll like you say you took a sort of break in in 68 but you kind of reformed a few times didn't you you had some albums through the 70s and then you did a re union concert in 1968 which was on the alligator label so uh you know that's another great label for you to be on so is that the only one you did with alligator
SPEAKER_05:I did four albums with Alligator. Two were Chamber Blues and two were Segal Schwall.
SPEAKER_03:And then I think you did your last album with Segal Schwall in 2005, Flash Forward. Yes.
SPEAKER_05:And what I could tell you is I never went on the road, you know, as such. It wasn't a good business partnership with Alligator because they really needed groups that were constantly on the road selling albums. So we weren't doing that. So we weren't there, a very big seller for them. And it was sort of disappointing because Bruce and I are really good friends.
SPEAKER_03:So, and then also after you had one of your breaks from Siegel's show, you had a solo career as well. So you had, you know, various solo
SPEAKER_01:albums. Listen to the midnight radio Listen to the
SPEAKER_03:midnight radio These were not so much blues, a little bit more mainstream.
SPEAKER_05:I don't know, what would you say? Full pop, I'm not sure. Today I just call them sagacious because they sort of just come out of nowhere and they don't follow so much of any trends or preconceived And a lot of these songs, you're playing piano on them?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, a lot
SPEAKER_05:is piano.
SPEAKER_03:yeah and so you're you're um you're singing and playing piano on a lot of these and then there's there's harmonica on them as well obviously but are you are you writing the songs you know on on piano and is that how you're basing a lot of your compositions of your own songs
SPEAKER_05:yeah yeah it's it's mostly piano but when i feel like oh i need to have a tune for harmonica then i just work on the harmonica and write the song in the harmonica
SPEAKER_03:and so on the album were you overdubbing harmonica solos over the top or would you do them separately or
SPEAKER_05:when i when i do a live show i do a things where I'm playing piano and harmonica at the same time. But when I record, I overdo it.
SPEAKER_03:But when you're playing live, you don't use a rack and harmonica. You use one-handed piano, is it?
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, I use one
SPEAKER_03:hand. It seems to be the way with piano players. They seem to prefer that one-handed piano and holding the harmonica rather than playing on a rack. Why is that?
SPEAKER_05:We're not very smart. You're talking about Howard Levy. Howard Levy does that. I've toured a lot with Howard Levy, just to the two of us and we would do a thing where we're both playing the piano the same piano and the harmonica but he'll switch hands you know stuff like that
SPEAKER_03:well I guess as a piano player you're treating the harmonica as your sort of right hand is that maybe that explains why you do it that way exactly yeah yeah so as you say though you're good friends with Howard Levy who also is obviously an amazing piano player as well as the amazing harmonica and also Joe Felisco you're good friends with yeah
SPEAKER_05:oh yeah in fact on the symphony work that i just wrote one of the pieces well it was based on a chamber blues piece but it's called felisco's dream
SPEAKER_03:Joe's influence stretches far and wide. He's definitely the most referenced person on all my podcasts. People mention Joe. He's got his finger in all sorts of harmonica pies. Joe, everyone knows him and he's touched on so many harmonica plays. He does an incredible job.
SPEAKER_05:yeah and Howard too of course
SPEAKER_03:Howard too of course yeah no so so yeah fantastic so you had this this solo period where you in the 70s and you did a couple more solo albums in in 2022 I think
SPEAKER_05:yeah in 2022 I released a chamber blues album and two solo albums all in the same month all in September of 2022 yeah
SPEAKER_03:and you did your songs for truth and harmony album so this was this is relevant because my last podcast episode was about Bob Dylan and so this This is, as I'm reading, I think, from your website, Lionel, invoking the energies of Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie and the Dalai Lama. So quite relevant to that. And again, that sort of folk and quite political. And that was the album in 22, yeah.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, very political. At least one song is very political. All the other songs, they're only political because why can't we just get along? Where human kindness leaves no trail or no clues Where the big time losers sing the big time losers blues.
SPEAKER_03:And then you've done a lot of classical stuff again recently, haven't you? So you've mentioned the chamber blues a couple of times. So let's talk about that one. So the chamber blues is a combination you've got of Chicago chamber music musicians. So again, the chamber music, if people don't know, is a sort of small ensemble classical music, right? So you generally get like four classical musicians playing together.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, actually a string quartet with two violins, viola and cello and a tabla player. from India. I started writing that in 1983, and first recorded it in 1994. And that album just went out of print. Someone ordered it today, and I already ran out. I'll have to work with Alligator on that. But that was an Alligator record.
SPEAKER_03:So this is Corky Siegel's Chamber Blues, a 1994 album.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, and same thing. It isn't a string quartet backing up a blues guy. It's a string quartet and a blues guy playing their own music genre and finding ways of working together and so my compositions it's sort of weird the way I write but one of the things I always have in mind is making sure the string quartet is very active and very classical and that I'm just sticking to my blues and finding how to write so that these things could complement each other. That's what chamber blues is about.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, so what made you start the chamber blues specifically? Is it that smaller ensemble you wanted to The
SPEAKER_05:symphony was very difficult to get into a bus. I was writing a piece for the Grand Park Symphony at the time. I've written about seven or eight symphonic commissions. And again, you could ask the question, why did they come to me and ask me to write symphonic music? You know, it makes no sense. The first commission was in 1976 from the San Francisco Symphony, the City of San Francisco Symphony, and Arthur Fiedler. They wanted me to write something for Arthur Fiedler, and I had never written anything in my life. much less a symphony piece, other than sitting around with the blues band writing stuff, right? So I said, you guys are crazy. There's no way I could do this. Oh, come on, you can do it. So I did it.
SPEAKER_03:Did you write the parts for all the instruments?
SPEAKER_05:Yeah. Wow. I got a book on orchestration, you know, and I didn't read it, but I used it as a reference when I had a question. And it came out in a way that all of a sudden I got other commissions from that. Grand Park Symphony, the National Symphony. They all wanted me to write stuff, and it went on from there.
SPEAKER_03:So you did your first symphony in 1966. Have you continually been working with symphonies and chamber music since then, or did you come back to it in the 90s with the chamber blues?
SPEAKER_05:Well, it was always symphonies. I was always turning down offers to write because it took too much time. But eventually it would catch up with me and I'd end up writing. And that went on until 83 when I thought, you know what, it'd be much easier to write this kind of music bringing blues to classical, which I felt was important because I'd be exposing the element of blues to classical audience that would have otherwise never heard the blues or be interested in it. And after my shows, I would have people running up to me and I'd get to tell them about Holland Wolfe and all these other people So I was, what's the slogan? Keep the blues alive. I felt like I'd been contributing to that for my whole career, practically, in a very big way.
SPEAKER_03:Well, watching some of the videos of you with the chamber blues, you can really see the joy on the chamber musicians' faces. They seem to really be loving playing the blues.
UNKNOWN:piano plays
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, I mean, they love this combination. Of course, if you listen to what they're doing, it's mostly classical. Once in a while, they sneak in a little. Even their shuffles are written in a way that they're classical shuffles.
SPEAKER_03:So they're very straight, are they? They're straight against the...
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, and it really swings because the contrast between straight and not straight creates a lot of energy and actually creates a big swing feel, just naturally.
SPEAKER_03:So are they improvising at all? Because obviously, kind of famously, classical musicians are not sports people to improvise, even though they're amazing musicians. So do they have a Do they have some scope to improvise with you?
SPEAKER_05:Yes, a few of them have improvisation skills, and therefore, once in a while, though it isn't the purpose of Chamber Blues, I do have them do some improvisation now and again.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, so that's fantastic. So you've done, I think, four Chamber Blues albums, is it, you've done in total? Five. And so as you touched on earlier on, in 2024, just November, I think, so just a couple of months ago, you released Symphonic Blues, which is your latest, you know, symphonic, which has got the Felisco's Dream on, which is one you mentioned earlier on. Yeah, and this has been a, it got great critical success. And, you know, again, you've just done it again, right? So this is your latest one with a symphony, yeah?
SPEAKER_05:Yes. Well, first of all, it took me a year to write. It was originally commissioned by the Lancaster Symphony Orchestra with Steven Gunzenhauser, and it was 2007 that I wrote this piece and premiered it in 2008. And by the way, I wrote another one a few years later, but this one was my favorite, and that's why I chose this to record. So I performed it all over around the world and loved it so much, and everyone loved it so much, I thought, boy, I better record it.
SPEAKER_03:yeah no definitely yeah so this has been around for a while so you talk about touring the world I know you played in the US and Canada and Mexico and Europe so have you played in some you know the famous concert halls in those places
SPEAKER_05:well I played at Kennedy Center and I played at Lincoln Center okay so we got those out of the way I played the Aspen Music Festival at the Big Ten with Chamber Blues in India I played at the National Center for the Arts I think is what it's called and Mumbai Thank you. with Dr. L. Subramaniam because I toured with him too. I never played Carnegie Hall.
SPEAKER_03:Not yet. We'll have to get you to the proms in the UK. I
SPEAKER_05:did a prom in the UK. A very suburban symphony here in Chicago. I performed with and they loved it so much. The guy had some connections in England. So the whole symphony took me to England with them and I did two concerts, one in tronberry or something like that but one was in in in london and we did the prom in london
SPEAKER_03:in the royal albert hall oh fantastic yeah so when you're touring around like this are you playing with the orchestras in the countries you're going to or are you you know touring with a one orchestra generally
SPEAKER_05:no and you know just to clarify i'm not really touring i wouldn't call it touring because you know i may play four four concerts a year with orchestras yeah yeah i mean i went to germany and i played six concerts with them. I went to Germany another time and played nine concerts with the same symphony but in different places. But the only time I ever toured with a symphony was that one I just told you about when we went to England.
SPEAKER_04:Hey, everybody. You're listening to Neil Warren's Harmonica Happy Hour Podcast, sponsored by Tom Halcheck and Blue Moon Harmonicas out of Clearwater, Florida, the best in custom harmonicas, custom harmonica parts, and more. Check them out, www.bluemoonharmonicas.com.
SPEAKER_03:So you mentioned there Subramanian, who's an Indian classical violinist, yeah?
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, Subramanian, yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Subramanian, so he's a famous violinist in India. So you did some work with him as well, yeah, and you spent some time in India and did some recordings there.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:And he's actually famous around the world because he plays with a lot of the jazz players, which will come running to him when they have an opportunity. He's real famous in the jazz world, and he played with George Harrison. You know, he was one of those guys, you know. And he's so renowned that I was in Canada watching this Indian group, and I just went up to him just to say I like their work. And the guy said, well, have you ever been to India? And I says, yeah. And he says, what brought you to Indy I said oh I was touring with Dr. Earl Subramaniam and he fell on the ground on the dirt and touched my feet just because I knew Subramaniam so that's how this guy is so yeah I did a lot of touring with Subramaniam
SPEAKER_03:well the harmonica is certainly taking you places isn't it Corky
SPEAKER_05:totally it's been good to me
SPEAKER_03:it certainly has yeah so has your focus been in more recent years on the more classical side or do you still play some you know in a blues band
SPEAKER_05:well Bringing blues to classical music, as I say, is dirty work. But somebody's got to do it. And as long as I'm the only one doing it, I can't neglect it. So it's a definitely major thing. But a lot of my time has been doing solo shows, duet shows like a lot with Howard.
SPEAKER_04:Hey, do you not like the motorcycle style? We're going
SPEAKER_02:to make
SPEAKER_04:our time worth it.
SPEAKER_05:And Howard and I just have a blast. And I met Ernie Watts in India, and so I do a lot of duet shows with Ernie Watts and with this guy in Chicago named Randy Sabine. I mean, in the States. Mostly those guys, but I do a lot of solo shows too. I love playing solo shows. And those are more of my singer-songwriter shows.
SPEAKER_03:Great. So you've also written a book called Let Your Music Soar, The Emotional Connection. So this is about musical expression. You talked about this earlier. you're on with the dynamics and things and the reason that maybe people you know use you is because you had this kind of connection to the emotional side so that's clearly an important thing and you wrote about it in this book yeah in 2007
SPEAKER_05:yeah well what happened is I started doing these workshops in 1973 so it's been a good 50 years I think so when I started doing the workshops I decided just to do them on dynamics and nothing else you know experimenting with it and what happened was so amazing. I thought I was going to bring this dynamic thing to different places and everyone was going to already know about it. Musicians should know about dynamics. And what I found out is very few people actually know about it. They never thought about it beyond the surface. And I found just the simplest technique. Literally anyone can do it. I instruct six-year-olds and they get it in five minutes. Adult takes longer you know kids they don't have any preconceptions they just do it and it's amazing I hear the saxophone player in one of the workshops he played his piece and I said okay now do it this way and then he played it again and everyone freaked out oh my god all of a sudden it sounded like he could record make a recording of that as a professional and it's just dynamics it's so simple it's like holding the secret that people don't want to hear about so I really felt like I had a right Yeah, no, fantastic. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:And again, I'm aware of that. I've been doing some, you know, classical stuff and, you know, and it's such an important part of classical, but it's just so, it's so neglected everywhere else outside classical. You're absolutely right. And it's like, why? Because it's so critical to all that beautiful classical music.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:So another thing you've done is you've recorded harmonica on an audio book called Echo, who was written by a Mexican-American author called Pam Munoz Rian. Yeah. So this is, this is great. And it's something I'd love to do. So, yeah. So you've got, I listened to a little bit of it. I haven't heard it all yet, but I have got it in my audible. I should probably listen to it. So you've got harmonica as a sort of soundtrack onto this audio book.
SPEAKER_00:Part one, October 1933. Trossingen, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. Brahms' Lullaby. Music by Johannes Braun.
SPEAKER_05:That was something really Howard Levy could have done, or maybe you, or other people who... I'll tell you a secret. I play one position, maybe a little bit of something. No, I mean one position. I've been working on that one position forever, and when I play in a minor key... I'm playing exactly the same patterns that I play in major because I use a tuned harmonica that's tuned to minor. And so I am a one-trick pony. I just play one position, and I've been working on that one position for 60 years.
SPEAKER_03:this is second position
SPEAKER_05:yes that's it so when it comes to playing you know melodies and things like that all of a sudden it's a different world for me
SPEAKER_03:well it's an interesting point because i often think i spread myself too thin and maybe you're better off really concentrating and being really good at one thing i mean obviously that's work for you so you think that's good advice or
SPEAKER_05:the best advice is to do what makes you happy you know because we just wring our hands about all this stuff and the whole point of music is to make us feel good and make us happy. So just do what feels good. You know, if you like practicing, practice. If you hate practice, don't practice, play. Play is practice, you
SPEAKER_02:know.
SPEAKER_05:I just read recently someone wrote on a harmonica form, how long, you know, if I'm going to play an hour, what part of that hour should I put into tongue blocking and what part of the hour should I put into single note, you know, that kind of a thing. Whatever, you know, play it. and if you get tired of doing that, do something else.
SPEAKER_03:I'll ask my 10-minute question now, which you ask each time. It sounds like you might have already answered it. So if you had 10 minutes of practice, what would you spend those 10 minutes doing?
SPEAKER_05:Dynamics. And I do have a formula for that, and that's play a song as forcefully as you can. So it's not even good for the harmonica. It almost blocks the notes. Now do the same song, so delicate that all the notes aren't coming out. Now that you've done that, you've trained your body, you You've given your body a dynamic range, now just play, but use that dynamic range constantly. Constant flow of dynamic variation between the extreme ranges. I don't care what kind of music it is, every kind of music will benefit extraordinarily and the player will benefit extraordinarily and the audience will also benefit if the player is able to maintain remembering to play a full dynamic range with a constant flow you know just take one blues like you know it's a or you know it just brings it to life and so you just focus on this constant flow not there's no right way or wrong way of doing it other than making sure you're touching upon the extremes and giving delicate extremely delicate it's its place because from delicate you have all the power that's where all the power comes from is when you're playing very, very delicately. And never leave it one place for more than a couple seconds. And that will give it to you. And that's what you should do in the 10 minutes.
SPEAKER_03:Absolutely. Dan, I'll make the secret to your success, yeah.
SPEAKER_05:I do have a harmonica course that deals with that. It's in India, but it's$25 because I did it as a sort of a contribution to Dr. Subramaniam's school. Is that available on your website? You could find it somewhere. It says harmonica I
SPEAKER_03:like thinking of it as the Chicago Blues Hall of Fame
SPEAKER_05:but I'm not in the Blues Hall of Fame
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, and then you've won various other awards as well, including awards for classical composition, such as you won an award for chamber music composition.
SPEAKER_05:Yep. That was an amazing thing because I called the office and they said, no, no, don't bother entering this competition because we have all these major composers, famous composers, being sponsored by major symphony orchestras. And I was being sponsored by the Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago. And they said, don't bother competing. And so I did anyway and I won. So that was sort of a big one.
SPEAKER_03:And all these other classical composers and the audience, they all like this readily, do they? You've had not any snotty comments, as we might say. Not any
SPEAKER_05:more, no. In fact, I was rehearsing a piece in Mexico, the one I just recorded, and there was another composer there who had his work on the show, and he was from Juilliard. He was like a composition professor from Juilliard, a famous composer. And he turns to me and says, did you write this? And I said, yeah. And he started going on and on and on. never heard anything like it how did you do this and all the counterpoint and i just don't so that's the kind of comments i get i mean when people finally hear it they're like i never heard anything like this in my life and you know why because i have no idea what the heck i'm doing i don't even know you know original
SPEAKER_03:so do you think all these compositions are they influence your harmonica playing you know do you think it's changed the way you play or well
SPEAKER_05:it's sort of My playing, you know, unless I'm just going way off and playing a solo, but my playing is about, you know, playing the good notes at the good time, you know, making things fit and being able to listen to the whole piece and whatever else is going on and finding ways of enhancing the whole experience rather than just saying, oh, this is a good harmonica line and I'm going to play that, but finding out what actually can enrich the whole experience. And I'll always have my time for playing fast notes, but that's not what it's really about.
SPEAKER_03:So we'll get on to the last section now and talk about gear. So first of all, what diatonic harmonica do you like to play?
SPEAKER_05:I'm doing the Special 20, and when necessary, they're tuned and shaped up by Joe Felisco.
SPEAKER_03:So you're playing Joe's custom harmonicas, are you?
SPEAKER_05:Well, sometimes they're customized by Joe, but sometimes I just play them out of the box if they're okay.
SPEAKER_03:So I like you're saying no overblows at all.
SPEAKER_05:Well, I do some overblows now and again, I know how to do them. I don't use them all the time, but I know how. And when I play with Howard, I always have to do a few overblows, you know. Oh, techniques. So mainly I'm a single note player, and that's because I picked up the harmonic after playing saxophone, and I was trying to sort of play what I knew on the saxophone. But I do tongue blocking. Joe Felisco taught, I took a lot of lessons from Joe, and Billy Branch was the first one that showed me the tongue blocking, and I I said, well, okay, and then I asked Joe to teach me. So I learned some tongue-blocking, and I love listening. I mean, I love playing it too. So I'm a fan of tongue-blocking. There's no question about it.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, but when you were younger in the Siegel-Schwalbahn, you were puckering then. Oh, puckering. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
UNKNOWN:Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
SPEAKER_03:So you mentioned you sometimes play some minor tuning, so you play some different tuned harps. I mean, is that something you use extensively with the orchestras to make it fit, or are you generally just using a standard tuned diatonic?
SPEAKER_05:If there's a minor part going on, I switch to a minor harmonica. Again, because it's sort of like I'm literally digging one hole. But, you know, I'm writing songs. I'm writing chamber music. I'm writing symphony. I'm doing my website. I'm writing newsletters. You know, I'm doing all kinds of stuff already. So for harmonica, it works to just do one thing.
SPEAKER_03:So you just play diatonics. Do you know other types of harmonica at all? No,
SPEAKER_05:just diatonic. And so for amplifiers, I had a Fender Twin. I'm sorry I didn't have the other Fender. What does everyone use? use? Bassman. Yeah, I like that better, but I still have a Fender Twin, but I don't use it anymore. I don't use any amplifiers. I got rid of the amplifier and I was using this thing called EP Booster, which almost sounded like a twin. And it was this big. It was like the size of a pencil, you know, practically. So I just carried that around instead of the amplifier. And then I got rid of that. I played direct into the board. I have a Unidyne a Shure Unidyne 545, but at the time I was using it, it had nothing to do with Butterfield. It was just the mic that was available. It was a vocal mic, and so I still use that, and that goes into the board. It sounds beautiful. It doesn't sound like the traditional, you know, Mark Hummel and Billy Branch and all those guys. It doesn't at all sound like that. It's just a real clean sound, and I figure, well, there's these amazing blues players playing, 50 of them that are unbelievable, so I'll just do something different. I've always been about that, you know.
SPEAKER_03:Any effects pedals or any effects that you use?
SPEAKER_05:No. The only effect that I ever did, I remember being in Boston. Jay Giles' band was, before they were the Jay Giles' band, used to come to the Unicorn Watches. And I remember having a pedal that turned the harmonica loud and then quiet. You know, if I was backing up a vocal, I'd have it on quiet. You know, whatever. But I threw that away. I used that a couple days and that was it. I never used a pedal.
SPEAKER_03:Wow. And so when you're playing with the orchestra and with chamber music is that on a just a vocal mic on a stand or are you holding it or
SPEAKER_05:i do both mostly hold mostly it's the the 545 is a handheld and for a couple tunes i i use the the mic on a stand without cupping it just keep an inch from it something like that
SPEAKER_03:right yeah so you're not using many hand effects then playing with the orchestra the classical side
SPEAKER_05:a little bit i do a little bit of that
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, it's interesting you're holding the mic to get a harder driven sound with the orchestra to get more of the bluesy sound. Yeah, great stuff. And so I touched on the fact that you've got, you know, talking about your future plans, you've got gigs in 2025 and already I've seen your calendar one in 2026. So yeah, so what's coming up for you over the next year or so?
SPEAKER_05:Well, I have a concert with a symphony in Illinois, and I have to rebook some things in LA with Ernie Watts, the jazz saxophone player. I'm looking to do a lot of solo dates. I have some solo dates coming up, and that's about it. Just see what happens. Mainly, I'm trying to get things, you know, because I don't know how many more years I'm going to have here, you know. My doctor said he can't give me more than 20. So I'm thinking I better just get things ready. That's my main focus is seeing what I need to leave, what what I should leave behind and you know and just play music until I can't
SPEAKER_03:yeah well you've done a fantastic town quirk it's amazing I'm always astonished about what people have done who I talk about on here and all the incredible things they've done with the harmonica and you're definitely right up there you know the amazing things you've done and like you say obviously probably your biggest legacy you think is you know the blues classical mashup is that the thing that you think is the thing you want to leave behind the most
SPEAKER_05:well yeah because no one else is doing that yeah I mean, if I left behind a blues album, I'd be there with thousands of other blues albums. This way, there's no one else doing it. You know, that's it. And I want to leave the songs behind because people are, you know, it's sort of a... everything is connected to the symphonic blues stuff.
SPEAKER_03:And I've been really enjoying listening to your albums and, you know, the harmonica, the blues harmonica works in there, doesn't it? It's got, you know, it's obviously got that beautiful, soulful sound that we all love so much. It really works well with the orchestra, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, it is quite amazing how well it fits.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, yeah, so tremendous, tremendous. Do you think you might write any more symphonies?
SPEAKER_05:Oh, no, I really
SPEAKER_03:don't want to. I don't know for those. That's a lot of work, I'm sure, yeah.
SPEAKER_05:It's tons of work and, you know, it doing this record, wow, it was a studio album, and I had all the musicians play their parts without knowing what the piece was. All they knew was their own part, and they just played their part. And so every part was a solo part. And so it was all them, and they put all their expression into it. Rather than in a symphony, you tend to sort of rely on the other players, and you're not quite as expressive. So all these people were very expressive, and then I put it together, and boom.
SPEAKER_03:How many people in that orchestra for that album? 45. 45? 45
SPEAKER_05:instruments, let's put it that way.
SPEAKER_03:So yeah, amazing achievement, Corkin. carry on playing for many more years to come hopefully so it's been great to great to speak to you Corky Siegel.
SPEAKER_05:Thanks Neil at least we'll keep it going for many more months.
SPEAKER_03: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. Many thanks to Corky. What a life he's had with the harmonica. To be part of the burgeoning white blues scene in Chicago, his time in San Francisco, and then his unique mash-up of blues and classical. Quite astonishing. And Corky's still going strong and loving playing his music. Long make continue Corky. Check out Corky's website, which is a veritable treasure trove of information. Thanks again for listening, and I'll sign out now with Corky playing a composition from his 2024 album, The Symphonic Blues No. 6. This is from The Third Movement.
UNKNOWN:...