A little more on Gabriel Labbe ... Harmonica guru Winslow Yerxa has given me permission to copy a couple of posts he made to the harp-l forum, which convey some of the significance of Labbe to the Quebec traditional music scene and beyond. (Winslow asked me to make a couple of small corrections to his posts, which I have done):


This is a huge, huge loss. I never met Labbé, but I really liked his playing and had enormous respect for his pioneering work in preserving French Canadian traditional music through writing about, collecting, and reissuing old recordings, along with his own work. The Virtual Gramophone at Library and Archives Canada houses several thousand 78s available as mp3s, and a large part of their collection came from his donation.

As a harmonica player, Labbé was one of the last in the great old style of Québécois tremolo players in that characeristic buoyant, rhythmic, strongly defined style that was recorded as early as the mid 1920s by players such as Henri Lacroix, Adélard Saint-Louis, Pit Paré, Mary Bolduc, Joseph LaLonde, and Louis Blanchette.


For some reason, younger players seemed to have forgotten this rich style and tended to sound like a cross between Bob Dylan and Lee Oskar, much as blues harmonica players lost touch with the rich southern pre-war tradition.


Labbé was the last master of the grand old style. I had hoped to get him to SPAH as a performer either this year or next. I had heard his health wasn't great, but I hadn't expected this.


By way of a tribute, I've uploaded to the harp-l google group a recording of a tune that I learned from a Labbé record, a waltz named La valse du Péril:


http://groups.google.com/group/harp-l/files


Winslow


And:


Labbé mostly played Hohner double-sided Echo tremolo harps, and sometimes the tremolo version of the Golden Melody.
Most of his CDs can be obtained through Thirty below (Trente sous zéro) in Québec:

http://www.trentesouszero.com/034-36.html


I especially like the cassette album Harmonica diatonique (completely different album from the CD of the same name) and the Hommage à Montmarquette CD.


Labbé also made a fine LP for Folkways (now Smithsonian Folkways) accompanied on piano by the great Québécois folk accordionist (!) Philippe Bruneau:


http://www.folkways.si.edu/search/AlbumDetails.aspx?ID=122


Strangely, Labbé's harmonica playing on this album is used by accordionists as a model of clarity and simplicity.


Winslow