“I think you want to try it a little slower,” the conductor says, beating the table with his pencil.
The 15 people seated flip through the pages of their scores.
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They come from all over, including Wisconsin and Indiana, to Elmhurst’s First Congregational Church for weekly meetings of the Windy City Harmonica Club, where amateur and professional harmonica players get together to share tricks of the trade. Most of the members are older men, 30 to 50 of whom make every meeting. There are air-conditioner repairmen, retired construction workers, retail salesmen, a golf instructor, a schoolteacher, and even a professional musician who used to be a member of the Harmonicats. Some of them have played harmonica at local club gigs, and a few of them once entertained fans at Wrigley Field.
Almost everyone carries a briefcase filled with different kinds of harmonicas. They bring standard diatonic harmonicas, which you can buy for ten bucks at your local music store. And they bring a few unusual types, including bass harmonicas and chord harmonicas, which look like hole punchers from a distance.
“Aha!” McCormick says. “You’ve just learned an important lesson about diatonic harmonicas–they don’t play all the notes. At the bottom you can’t play ‘Do Re Mi.’”
“How much is it?” Wally asks.
“I play it everywhere I go,” McCormick says. “I play it in the car–one hand on the wheel, one hand on the harmonica. I’ll be blowing it when I’m at a red light. I drive a lot for business. I wish I would have picked it up earlier. I wouldn’t have been so bored in the car.”
