Traditions: Ohio Heritage Fellows; 201; Larry Nager interview with Wallace Coleman, part 2 of 10

Q:

LARRY: What made Wallace, I think, so... so (PAUSE) What made the music of Sonny Boy Williamson and Little Walter so important, I think, for Wallace and for a lot of young guys, was the fact this was new. No one had heard the harmonica played like this. That distorted, huge sound coming out of the speakers, coming out of the jukebox in—in the roadhouse. Uh, that was a... it was a... it was that post World War II amplification. You saw that—and remember the big bands were around, right, but you didn’t need the big bands anymore, you just needed a small combo, ‘cause people had amplifiers. And, the harmonica players had amplifiers. And this... this changed... (PAUSED)

Q:

LARRY: After World War II you saw the growth of these small combos, small jazz bands instead of the big bands and you also saw the jump blues bands. What allowed them to... to work these big halls was abnification(?). Now, it wa—you weren’t just louder, it sounded different and that, I think, is the thing that caught Wallace’s ear was, this was not the country harmonica player and he’d grown up with. This was not the, you know, the Defford Bailey on the Grand Ole Opry or, you know, uh, Lonnie Glosson and Wayne Randy. This was a completely new sound. It was tough, it was raw and it was rocking. This—it wasn’t... (PAUSED)