Tin Sandwich Music Productions

Let’s get things off on a good foot here and say that there has never been a harmonica player like Mike Turk. Nor is there likely to be any time soon. Yet the musical virtues he embodies are so out of currency as to render him invisible. I believe, and have for the last 30 years, that Turk is the best harmonica player ever to pick up the instrument. He really does have it all – time, tone, phrasing and musical taste that verge on the incredible, and he really can play it all – blues, bebop, swing, standards, country, classical, and any number of shades in between. His playing is so elegant and measured that it tends to go in one tin ear and out the other. When, that is, there’s a tin ear there to hear him. Mike Turk should be the first studio call for harmonica in New York, Nashville and Los Angeles. But he’s not. In an approximately ideal world, the guy would need a full-time secretary. But he doesn’t. Is there any other musician of whom it can be said that he or she is arguably the best on his or her instrument, and who remains so under-recorded and under-recognized?

It didn’t always use to be like this. For years, no - for decades, “Beans Taste Fine,” recorded in 1975, has been the Holy Grail and the Rosetta Stone for aspiring harmonica players (is there any other adjective to describe harmonica players when confronted with Turk’s accomplishments?). He got a lot of work in the ‘70s and early ‘80s, some of which is documented on this collection, culled from his archives. Bear in mind that Boston at that time had what was probably the most vibrant harmonica scene around. Al Wilson was from greater Boston, and in the ‘70s you could count Pierre Beauregard, Magic Dick, Richard Hunter and James Montgomery, among many others, as local players exchanging big ideas. And then there was Turk, who was working on the biggest ideas of all. Some of those ideas are on this collection. Just listen to his work with Richard Johnson, or his work with John Kolstad, or the legendary 45 recording of “Roly Poly” and “Hurricane Blues,” about the holiest of grails for harmonica aficionados. The original masters have disappeared, so - in the time-honored tradition of historic recordings - these (and others on this recording) have been taken directly from the vinyl. His diatonic playing was the best in the business. It still is. And he was playing better chromatic harmonica, more than 30 years ago, than anyone not named Toots or Stevie.

At the moment, he’s playing the best chromatic harmonica we’ve ever heard. Yet, Turk’s best work has never been recorded, as anyone who has ever heard him live can attest. There is some of his best work on this collection, and some work that is little more than a document of one of the planet’s great musicians coming to terms with his musical vision. In an approximately ideal world, that should be cause for celebration.

 

Warren Blumberg November 2007