G'day Murray,

Now we are really of topic - again!

It was the matter of "Australian", or at least traditional style mouthorgan that was the subject of the conversation that ultimately led to Ray's book A Band in a Waistcoat Pocket. Ray and I both played in "Rouseabouts Bush Band" in the early 70s (rather earlier than Ray's recollection in that opening sentence!).

After a practice at Greycliffe House, Ray (who played flute) asked me about my full vamping style and I said that I had learned a lot from three 78 rpm records that the collector John Meredith had played to me (and I had taped) in 1967. The artist was named as "P.C. Spouce - Mouthorgan Champion of Australia" - a later record adding the years "1927 - 1935".

Ray's reply was something of an Australian classic: "My wife's grandmother's second husband was named Percy Spouse ... and he used to play the mouthorgan and he won some contests. I wonder if it was the same bloke?" Well, it turned out that it was ... his widow Gerty was still alive and living at Budgewoi, so I interviewed her about Percy. I wrote an article for Mulga Wire and left it at that, but she had a stroke not long after.

Ray and I had brought back memories of Percy's playing and she lamented, in the hospital, that she no longer had any of his records to play, having lent them to some relative who did not bother to return them. Ray chased those I had heard, now with a person in Canberra and got them lodged with the Film & Sound Archive ... them chased the remaining seven records all round Australia, New Zealand and Norfolk Island!

These were filtered by the Sound Archive, remastered and released by Ray as an LP P.C. Spouce - Mouthorgan Champion of Australia. The National Library then asked Ray to write a book on mouthorgan players in Australia, since his researches had covered the whole area so thoroughly ... and they promised to help get it published.

Of course, by the time Ray finished the book, governments had come and gone, funding had gone and gone and we came close to privately publishing, but at last he got a mainstream publisher, Kangaroo Press.

The book is possibly still in print - certainly Ray has copies and there is an accomanying 2 CD set, of the same name, from Larrikin Records as well as a 4 cassette set from Ray's label Bush Lark. The last cassette contains material not on the CDs - Ray's field recordings of old competition players doing their competition sets ... wondrous stuff!

Now, all this includes the original ten 78s of Percy Spouse, who was the finest player of true vamping style I have ever heard. He plays the melody accompanied with rhythmic chords made by controlled lifts of the tongue, below the melody hole, but also uses gapped chords (3rds, 5ths and octaves) by cunning control of the angle and placement of the lift. He clearly arranged and controlled the harmony line to improve on the simple Richter scheme's "automatic" harmony and does all this at full speed and with impeccable rhythm.

If you only have the book, you should at least get the CD - and preferably the set of 4 cassettes. The styles you will hear are what was popular and traditional in the late 1800s and early 1900s - before the jazz era and the chromatic harmonica of Larry Adler (who, incidentally, launched the book!). It is a rich, powerful, harmonic music - fully capable of feature solos and veritably A Band in a Waistcoat Pocket.

It is not the only way to play mouthorgan, but it is what the old players aspired to. When Dave de Hugard did a collecting trip in south western Queensland (~1974) - mainly concerned with style of traditional dances and music - he ran into a number of old mouthorgan players and recorded them.

I have a copy of the best of that material and can recognise most of it as being attempts to copy Percy Spouse's competion (and recorded) sets. Percy did for solo mouthorgan contests what Walter Lindrum did for billiards contests ... completely destroyed them! If Percy turned up for a contest, everyone else gave up. They knew they just couldn't beat him (especially playing sets they had copied from his records!)and the contest scene quickly became band oriented, with no more solo contests for years after.

If you want additional material on Australian traditional mouthorgan players, there is a very nice cassette from Wongawilli / Carrawobbity / Pioneer Performers Press of the playing of Bert Jamieson (who died just a year or two back), playing at 91 years of age - blind, severely asthmatic and confined to a home, but still playing 6 hours a day .. he probably kept those lungs going for a half dozen years longer than a non-player - and he played beautifully.

There is an accompanying monograph with a range of his tunes for a paltry A$4 (at least that was the price last time I looked). Check their site at: .

I hope this helps with you harp playing - perhaps this should be placed in a separate thread, but I have answered it where the query came up.

Sorry about all the bored banjoists out there (Yes ... really ... don't I look sorry?).

Regards,

Bob Bolton

PS - Sorry if this is a double-posting. My machine just collapsed haemorrhaging from the task of transferring all those words. I had to re-start the transfer.

RB