The One Thing Bob Corritore Says You Must Do | Grammy-Award Nominee Bob Corritore Interview

It's no exaggeration to call Bob Corritore a Blues harmonica legend.

He is a highly decorated harmonica player with a grammy-award nomination under his belt. Very impressive.

Not only that but his album 'Bob Corritore & Friends / Harmonica Blues' won a 2011 Blues Music Award; in 2012 Bob received a Living Blues Award; and in 2019 Corritore won a Blues Blast Music Award for Best Traditional Blues Album for 'Don’t Let The Devil Ride'.

Lucky for us he sat down with me for a whole interview! You can read my Bob Corritore interview either by scrolling down or clicking here.

Before we get there though I wanted to share with you my highlights from the interview.

Here is a snippet of Bob Corritore giving his advice to beginner harmonica players who want to improve their blues harp playing:

Here is Bob telling us the secrets of fifth position:

Bob Corritore Interview

Liam Ward [LW]:

Tell me about your first introduction to harmonica and the blues...

Bob Corritore [BC]:

So I fell in love with the harmonica early on. I always loved the sound of it, but before I fell in love with the harmonica, I fell I love with the blues because I heard a Muddy Waters song Rollin’ Stone which did not have harmonica. But I was like, Oh, this is everything I love about the popular music was playing at that point in the late 60s and early 70s here. And so when I bought, I think it was probably 1969 or ‘70, and I went and bought my first Muddy Waters record, that was Sail On and it had all of the cool Little Walter stuff on it.

LW:

So when did you first pick up the harmonica?

BC:

Well, about a year later, my brother handed me my very first harmonica; he actually bought it for himself and showed me a couple of things. He said “Oh, you’re pretty good, you can have this”. So I went nuts on it, played every day and kind of broke that one got another one or two and kept going. Lost a lot of friends my first year trying to learn harmonica. I’d play in the back of the school bus, and people would roll up pieces of paper to throw at me. But that's okay, I was not dissuaded. I just loved the sound so much. I'd stay in sometimes and listen to the radio show on Saturday night from Northwestern University in the Chicago area, and there was a blue show, and I hear all this stuff, and I was just just enamoured by the whole thing of it, you know. And I worked hard to try and emulate some of those sounds, and did my best from the perspective.

LW:

Did you have a teacher?

BC:

I had the Tony Glover book which told you NOT to do tongue blocking, which I had to unlearn when I started going to see some of the artists, and understand that it's tongue blocking the game that sound and I thought “okay, that all makes more sense”. So when you start with not tongue blocking, you have to relearn everything, which was not bad, because, you know, I knew my way from the harmonica at that point, but I had to learn how to coax all the notes and then some. But there's so much more that you can get out of using tongue blocking. And I was like, “oh, that's the secret to how to get to the Little Walter thing, the Big Walter thing, Sonny Boy things. I get it now.” There's certain things you’re wondering, how do they get that little percussive slap that goes along with it? How do they make that particular type of sound, and how they get the deepness there and tongue blocking was a really big deal.

LW:

Can you paint a picture of the musical world you were grew up in?

BC:

I was born in Chicago, raised in that area. I got to see some amazing stuff while still in high school, at my high school auditorium. My very first blue show, official blues show that I saw was the Sam Lay Blues Revival with Eddie Taylor, Wild Child Butler, Lucille Spann, it was really killer. Little did I know I’d get to be friends with a lot of ‘em, work in Sam Lay’s Band many years later, it was pretty cool. Otis Rush was playing local colleges, Hound Dog Taylor over at Northwestern University. Muddy Waters played my high school gymnasium. It was all pretty amazing. And I'm staying around at home at night. I was just trying to play harmonica and learn how to kind of emulate some of that stuff. And I just love the sound of it. I love the sound of the pure Chicago blues, too. And as I was getting into it I go, “you know, there's something different about the way I would play naturally and the way the older guys do it. How do I get into that?” So I was hanging around once I could get into the clubs, especially go see Big Walter Horton, got to sit in with all these great artists. Little Walter’s harmonica player Louis Meyers was also a really good harmonica player. Got to see him play. Big Leon Brooks, Little Willie Anderson, Lester Davenport, Carey Bell, Junior Wells, James Cotton, Jerry Portnoy with the Muddy Waters Band. All these people were just blowing me away with how cool it was.

LW:

And was a young Bob Corritore able to talk harp with any of these artists?

BC:

I'd hang out, I’d glean whatever tips I could get. And some people like Big Leon would take time and really show me stuff. Another guy, Dave Waltman, who was a little known guy that was a student of Paul Oscher that moved from New York to Chicago, came and he really showed me some good stuff on tongue blocking. So I really have to give him big credit. And I learned my way around that. I learned how to get that down home Chicago sound that was a different animal than you hear most people playing. It hit the rough edges of the instrument in a really sweet way. And I just love that particular sound. And once I learned how to play in that style, when the older guys would call you to play, they hear you play, they go “Okay, this guy’s handing round some blues, okay, he gets it”.

LW:

That must’ve been a boost for your confidence.

BC:

That was a compliment, a little coming of age. I got to sit in with people like Mighty Joe Young, Tail Dragger Jones and different people. But my first real blues employer was probably the late 1970s was Willie Buck, who I still play with today. And Willie was the guy that really emulated Muddy Waters and did some of his own originals in the Muddy Waters style, and he had his own auto shop, and he could afford to hire some of the great musicians. Somehow, he hired me along with them. So my first day showing up for work, it was Dave and Louis Myers from Little Walter’s band. Odie Payne, who played with Elmore James and countless others, and Big Louis Walker and Byther Smith on second guitar. I was really impressed with Louis. I used to go and hang out with him. I would hang on everything, just like suck in all in. It was my blues lessons. I would say “I don’t know if I’m supposed to be up playing with you all”. And they said, “You’re playing, you’re playing, go on” and so I was in. It was a pretty cool moment.

LW:

So you’ve found some top blues guys to play with. Is this the point you feel you’re a full time musician?

BC:

Well at a point in time, I was wondering where my life was gonna go, because I was doing these little ghetto gigs and they weren't paying much and if you did the nights, it was very hard to do the day gig. And I had just quit drinking at age 24, and at age 25 I moved to Phoenix to help my brother for a year. I thought it was just gonna be a year. So I ended up being joined by Louisiana Red, who I played with down at the fish market sitting in and he called me up and said, “Hey, you’re in Phoenix now? I’m thinking about coming and hanging out with a woman I know there.” So he had an interest in this woman who settled for about a week and a half before she kicked him out. Next thing you know, Louisiana Red was mine and my brother’s roommate, and I'm playing the heaviest of blues with him every day. I'm kinda making Phoenix my home a little bit because he's helping me establish myself musically. Red went on tour, met his wife and stayed in Germany. I joined Big Pete Pearson’s band. I was doing some gigs with Tommy Dukes. In Phoenix there's a little blues scene that you wouldn’t expect. They didn't have, you know, a Chess Records or a record label that would promote blues per se but there was a blues contingency here including some cool old timers. And so I definitely was hanging out with them, and I found myself working quite a bit in Phoenix. And next thing you know in 1984 I started a blues radio show, which is still going on today. So I played in various bands and then in 1986 I got Chico Chism, who was Howlin’ Wolf’s last drummer, to move out to Phoenix.

LW:

That’s a real coup!

BC:

Yeah, he spent the last 20 years of his life here, and we partnered up and made a lot of recording sessions, played a lot of blues, played Chicago blues in Phoenix. We constructed a Chicago blues band. That just kept it going. In 1991 I had the opportunity to start a nightclub, the Rhythm Room. And that really was a boost to who I was. And I had produced a couple records in Chicago before I moved: one by Little Willie Anderson, who played very much a later Little Walter style; and then Big Leon Brooks, who was a big, heavy guy with a great voice. I co-produced the Big Leon Brooks one with a friend named Steve Wiseman. So I had some history of recording, and as I got better at harmonica, I wanted to start making some records.

LW:

Can you tell us a bit about the Rhythm Room and the records that have come out of it?

BC:

Well, when I opened up the Rhythm Room, I realised I was going to be in the path of a lot of greatness as they would come through to play the club. So I was able to offer people a gig over at the Rhythm Room and a gig in the recording studio. And with Chico Chism by my side, we put together a nice little house band, and we recorded all these different artists that were coming through. I was doing it with such frequency - once a month there might be a session. Sometimes it might be Jimmy Rogers, sometimes it might be people you wouldn’t heard of but I got to do some really heavy sessions. Sometimes local guys. Sometimes there's just somebody coming through that just was cool and I just wanted to record with. And before I knew it, I had all this stuff, and at some time I had to put some stuff out. My parents were a little bit ill at that time, I didn't want to start something until I felt that my my responsibilities as a son were completed. But my dad died in ‘94 and my mom in ‘98 and then in 1999 I put out my very first record that compiled some of the highlights of those sessions. It was a cool record. People liked it, but they said, “This is kind of a good record, and I love all these special guests.” Guys like Bo Diddley, RL Burnside That's Burnside and Jimmy Dodson. There's all these cool people, but they go, “Who's this Bob Corritore?” I was only developing as a harmonica player but some of those sides a really still cool to this day. But you know, that just led to a start of a career, which I didn't know what to do with. Some people go and they tour. I wasn’t really quite in gear to do that. I had started the Rhythm Room, I had a business to run, all that stuff. But I was playing quite a bit, doing all that, and through all the years you develop and I’ve learned a few things.

LW:

So what would you say in the most important thing for any aspiring blues harmonica player?

BC:

I think the most important thing is to learn the basics from the originators, because you’ve got Little Walter who broke the world of what all the rules were. That was a real powerful thing. No one’s ever going to be Little Walter, but you can glean aspects of that, and you can create your own style by reinterpreting that, and also learning the language and trying to find your own conversation, because that's what you want to do. You want to learn the basics, but you want to be able to find your own things to say with it. And again, if you're doing a Sonny Boy song which is very solid, you wanna be playing that style, but you want to add your own touch to it. You want to put your signature on everything you do. And you also want to find other things that are going to be uniquely yours. So when people get done seeing a show by whatever harmonic player say, “Oh, that's what that harmonica player does. That's uniquely that harmonic player”. I would recommend that to your students and your followers, because that's the cool thing about what you're doing.

LW:

How do you learn from the masters but still find our own sound?

BC:

At one point, Kim Wilson came into the world and everybody’s like, “Oh, he's got the feeling of Little Walter.” We all wanted to sound like Kim Wilson a little. Now Kim Wilson, I’m completely inspired about his work, he's a good man and a friend, but he's got his thing. I wanna be the best Bob Corritore I can be. I wanna get something that is mine. Over the years, I've learned how to add something to that big pile of harmonica knowledge that’s already out there. So what can I contribute? What can I do that’s a little different? How can I interpret this in a way that I can put my soul, my personality through it.

LW:

I love that as a point, and it's something that comes up with students who are sad because, for example, their vibrato doesn’t sound like so-and-so. They can’t accept that their vibrato sounds great too.

BC:

That's especially important, because each of us have a different physicality, and therefore each of us have our own unique vibrato. It might be close to this or that, but it's going to be our vibrato. Some people do it fast. Some people have a slower vibrato. Some people have a deep one, some people have a little bit more of a lighter, but whatever it is, it's your vibrato. Own it, enjoy it, because that's your signature right there.

LW:

You’ve mentioned seeing these big names coming through town when you were young. How mainstream was the blues scene at that point?

BC:

Well it had its own scene, but it was very accessible to people. And Chicago was such a blues centre. The history of Chess Records and all that, people wanted in on that. And it was also the popular black music of that time. And so there were a lot of people that could play, but maybe they would seek a career, and then all of a sudden they find that maybe that’s where they’re headed, or they get on stage with a jam session and find an audience for themselves. So the late 1940s to the ‘50s is where this classic Chicago blues sound happened, and it had sometimes no bass, sometimes acoustic bass. It had this particular thing: Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Little Walter getting his start. All of that created its own little world. But that world did change in the ‘60s, with the advent of the electric bass, that became a different thing. And within that, there's other elements that began to move into it. You know, this is maybe a more guitar-oriented sound. Junior Wells and Buddy Guy created their little niche. All of that just had a different grooviness to it while it was still very Chicago, but completely a different thing than the ‘50s. I've worked with John Primer, and sometimes we'll get a rhythm section, we have to un-‘50s them, because John wants to play in the 1970s style of Teresa's house band, or Magic Slim and the Teardrops, that’s what he's looking for in a drummer and bass player.

LW:

Which style do you prefer?

BC:

I love it all, but you have to adapt to whatever circumstances that you're playing with. And sometimes I’ll play with some guys that are complete traditionalists and we’ll go straight to a ‘50 sound, and they’re all able to do that. But sometimes I'm playing with guys like John Primer and they want that ‘70s sound which I’m very comfortable with, because that's how I grew up and I learned that sound, and you could adapt some of the rules of the ‘50s into the 1970s but it was a different sound.

LW:

Could you explain a little more about the differences between the ‘50s sound and the ‘70s sound?

BC:

James Cotton and Junior Wells were prominent [in the 1970s]. Little Walter was somewhat going out of style, but at same time, he was still very prevalent in what people were doing, like what Carey Bell was doing. But Little Walter was a such a master of subtlety that when music got louder, which it did in the ‘60s, it changed. It changed how things were happening. Little Walter changed how he played; some of the stuff that he played in the ‘60s, to me was some of the heaviest stuff, because it was really staccato and rough-edged, and he played with a kind of reckless abandon that always landed perfectly on its feet. I just loved how that happened. Little Willie Anderson caught aspects of that, and Louis Myers, all those guys had aspects of that. But it was all with electric bass, it was all with a sparser guitar thing. It had a different vibe. And so that was kind of how people would do that. The guitar had a more lead-oriented kinda thing. You know, Carey Bell was playing slow blues. He'd leave a lot of space and just be oftentimes, a guitar or bass and a drummer and the harmonica, and so he'd leave space and the guitar would do all these beautiful flourishes and fills and guitar licks in between all that they just gave everybody a place to live.

LW:

I'm glad you mentioned space. I've just heard you sound checking for a show tonight, and you're doing a trio thing, and it seems that there's loads of space in there. What's your approach to playing in that context, as opposed to with a full band?

BC:

Sometimes in the context of just one guitar, sometimes I'll play more because that's what's called for. I used to do a lot of duo stuff with Louisiana Red, and the harmonica was always part of the bed of sound that you wanna hear. But if we’re doing a Jimmy Reed song, you don't want to play all the way through a Jimmy Reed song, and you want to play sparser. I mean, you could play like Little Walter on a Jimmy Reed song, but it wouldn't feel right. Jimmy Reed had a particular thing. And the guy I’m working with, Jimmy ‘Primetime’ Smith, he learned how to play guitar from Jimmy Reed directly. Jimmy Reed was staying at his house when he was a kid, and actually giving him his first guitar lessons. And so, you know, it's been great to grow further into the Jimmy Reed thing, and I've got aspects of that. Jimmy Reed was so elusively wonderful, and I listen to his records, and there's all these little subtle tricks that he had there. Each one’s different too. People say he played the same. Well, no. He played different each song. There’s something really cool that you can get from all that.

LW:

There's another thing you just did during the sound check. During the guitar solo, you sat underneath that and didn’t play much at all, kind of accenting the solo. I thought it was a great example of how to support the guitar in that situation

BC:

Well, I just do it because that’s how I feel. I mean I wasn’t even aware that I did that. But I think it’s important. You could very easily play too much harmonica. Make your choices and make each one of them have some impact. Have a little bit of pain or meaning or whatever, or a little rhythm to it, something that’s gonna keep what you are doing. You want to have the harmonica introduce itself and then have a role within each song. But you don't want to over-harmonica it, because it's an instrument that you can easily get tired of if you are overplaying. And it's always nice to have a well-constructed area when it’s your time to solo, make a statement and maybe finish it with a flourish of notes, where you resolve into something and leave a little space so that your audience can absorb it, because if you hit them with another thing right after that, where do you go from there? You want to tell a story, and you want to have that little pause to let that particular line sink in and then prepare people for the next one. So that they’re waiting with bated breath to see what the hell you’re gonna do next. At least that’s been my philosophy and I hope I demonstrate that tonight when I play for you.

LW:

There's a musician I knew when I was starting out, Ron Savory, and he used to say, it's not just about ability, it's about suitability.

BC:

Yeah and I also think that if you're going to play harmonica with a band all night, how are you going to occupy the interests of everybody? And I think the way to do it is to use the tools in your toolbox sparingly. So, in other words, if a particular song has a thing going for it, make that the hook of the song. Make it a particular lick or style, or lean into like a Little Walter staccato or a Big Walter vibrato or something like that. Make that the kind of elements that you're going to use to form the personality of that song. The best thing and the only thing you should ever do as a harmonica accompanist is to serve a song, because what else are you doing? If you're doing a front man thing or an instrumental, then the band needs to serve where you're going with that, but it's a give and take. The cool thing about when you're playing real Chicago blues is that you're having a conversation with every element of that. Jimmy and I have a band at home, and Brian Fahey is a great drummer at interacting with the harmonica. And so we'll have our little dance where I'll do some stuff that sets them up to do some cool stuff. We just enjoy doing that. We encourage that.

LW:

Would that change if you’re backing someone else?

BC:

Now, if we're doing it with John Primer, he’s gonna want more of a straight beat, he's not going to want it to deviate like that. So we throw in what we can with still keep it to the assignment, but you got to serve with the leader of the song. You've got to serve the song itself. You have to serve the instruments by playing in a way that's going to be pleasant and accessible for people to hear. Again, it’s so easy to play too much. You reach the end of the show and you’ve done a whole bunch of this explosion of harmonica but that's not what I'm looking for. I want to hear a story being told. I want to hear a mood being created. I want to hear an extension of what the message of that song is. And the harmonica can do that, and if it's playing like an instrument instead of like a bunch of licks, you're going to get the ability to do that. I always strive to do things musically. I love Chicago blues, I can play it all day and all night, and that's my default position. But on my records, I’ve got some soul songs written by Johnny Rawls and I find parts in those that are different from I would normally ever have to do. I have to stretch myself out to do that. So you want to serve the song. Johnny is off on it, because it’s his philosophy too. He's all about songwriting. I'm all about serving his songwriting. I'm all about adding nuances to what he's trying to get across with his voice and his chord changes and his cool stuff.

LW:

You play some interesting positions on your album ‘Taboo’ including a track in fifth position which is not too common. How do you approach playing in different positions?

BC:

The harmonica is a diatonic scale so it doesn't have all the notes, so you're hitting what you have available to you, and you have different varieties more available in different positions. And so you play positions to bring out the best parts of that position. So Jimmy Reed style, with the high notes in first position, and then some of the low stuff that people have done in first position. That’s a whole different thing than second position, which is the most widely used, of course. Third position is a great position and has the qualities that are minor-esque, but is best played in a major scale, with the minor creating some tension with the major. I always think that's a pretty cool thing. And there's some minor qualities to the fifth position and fourth position is a whole different animal, too. You know, that's a little less, a little less versatile but I’ve used it.

LW:

Beginners often seem to work out things in fourth position – the relative minor - although they don’t necessarily know that’s what they’d doing.

BC:

Yeah it’s beautiful, it’s limited but it’s got its own thing. But in third position, the west coast players use all those octaves. Little Walter always used it as a split chord. When I first heard some of that third position stuff I thought it sounded like a horror movie. I thought “what is that?”

I learned about fifth position from Louisiana Red. I actually heard heard this position on a Sammy Lewis record called ‘Somebody Stole My Love from Me’, which I actually covered. I’m actually copying some of what he did exactly while adding my little thing to it. So I asked Louisiana Red, “what’s that funny position you’re playing?” and he showed me how to play some of that. And then on ‘Taboo’ I recorded a whole instrumental in fifth, which I don’t think anyone had done before. They might’ve but I missed igt. You can get a kinda interesting thing with fifth because it’s kinda dissonant.

LW:

So where’s the best way people can get hold of your music?

BC:

Amazon’s great, you can contact me through my website but it might cheapest to go to your local Amazon. Come to a gig, sometimes I bring stuff that’s out of print now. I have a lot of love I put into each of these.

Thanks to Bob Corritore for such an interesting interview.

I hope you enjoyed my Bob Corritore Interview. You can check out more of my interviews with harmonica legends by clicking here.

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