In the mid-1800s, a German harmonica manufacturer named Hohner started exporting his product to North America. Being relatively inexpensive, relatively easy to play and extremely portable, the ...

Most nights, you can walk into a blues club and find a harmonica player blowing their heart out onstage. The wailing, honking sound associated with Western movies and juke joints is what many harp ...

“Classic Harmonica Blues,” out on May 21, features 20 tracks by the blues’ greatest harmonica players. Photo courtesy of Smithsonian Folkways Recordings In the early 20th-century, southern black ...

“Write this down: Blow 3, blow 4, draw 3, blow 3,” Phil Kaplan said to his new class of Newton harmonica students. Kaplan told the class he pulled the riff from “Mannish Boy,” the popular 1955 Muddy ...

Among the harmonica’s many wonderful and unique traits, there is this: You have to really suck to be good at it. As one of America’s finest and busiest harmonica players, Denver’s Ronnie Shellist ...