Rarely does a single compilation cover so vast an array of skills and techniques in blues harmonica. I didn’t know it, but I’d just purchased a blues harmonica master class. So basically, the first straight blues album I bought featured three of the best blues harpers you could expect to find in a studio in the mid-70s. It also featured two live tracks from Muddy “Mississippi” Waters – Live. I’d never heard of James Cotton, but that electric riff came shredding through my earphones like demonic buzz-saws being shot outta Satan’s crossbow.Īs I later learned, this was a compilation comprising tracks from the three smoking studio albums Muddy Waters cut with Blues Sky records: Hard Again (with James Cotton), I’m Ready (with Big Walter Horton and Jerry Portnoy) and King Bee (with Portnoy). With Muddy on vocals, Willie Big Eyes Smith on drums, Bob Margolin on guitar and Johnny Winter on slide, the track’s signature riff has James Cotton on harp. I don’t recall the first listening per se, and yet I know exactly how it must have felt, because this bellowing, ball-tightening number still sends giant surges of electricity down the ole tendons. I can’t remember where I found the CD, but I do remember it just jumped right out of the shelf at me: Blue Skies, by some soulful-looking fellow named Muddy Waters. I was 18 years old, doing a crappy internship in a run-down part of the most boring town in England, and I decided to go shopping for music in my lunch hour. I’ll never forget the day I decided to take up blues harmonica. Which record got you hooked on blues harmonica? This week the Harp Surgery team goes back to Original Spin…