MESHA MAREN REPORTS TRENTON DOYLE HANCOCK's

PUBLISHED IN PARTNERSHIP WITH THE UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL ARKANSAS WEST VIRGINIA IN TRANSITION: MESHA MAREN REPORTS ART PORTFOLIO: TRENTON DOYLE HANCOCK’s ECSTATIC RESISTANCE FICTION BY A MAGAZINE OF THE SOUTH • SPRING 2019 SUSAN CHOI & KEVIN WILSON the narrator’s excuses as heartbroken delusions. for several decades. Raphael, sixty-seven, ickey Raphael learned everything he Perhaps it’s the acute sense of identifica- doesn’t do anything else on stage; he doesn’t Mknows about the harmonica from Don tion with the song’s listener that I hear in play tambourine, and he’s barely capable on Brooks, a harpist four years his senior who Raphael’s playing that made me fall into the guitar and piano. (One of Raphael’s favorite was already touring with Jerry Jeff Walker very same trap as the hotel-lobby stranger, sayings: “If I got out there with my talent on by the time Raphael was in high school. “He that compelled me, in the second of our series the guitar, which equals how some people showed me the diatonic scale, the pattern of of phone conversations last year, to tell one of play the harmonica, I’d be run off the stage.”) the harmonica, how all the notes fit together, the world’s greatest living harmonica players He remembers “winging it” on the accordion how the notes were laid out. It was the basics that I, too, can play. in performance once in the early nineties and for everything. He opened everything up. He Raphael reacts with less than enthusiasm seems to regret having done so. He doesn’t was the key.” when I bring up my own meager history of even sing background vocals, not since the Raphael talks about Brooks in the reverent dabbling in the instrument, which I offer just seventies, at least, and anyway he was on tone that an apprentice reserves for a mentor. I moments after Raphael has finished explain- drugs back then. wanted to know more: When did Mickey first ing that he’s spent much of his life listening “The world’s greatest job” is how Joe Fi- meet Brooks? How long did he study with to people like me telling him exactly that. lisko, a harmonica player who customizes him? “Well,” he says, making it clear I had “Uh-huh,” he says. A few minutes later, the instrument for the world’s greatest play- misunderstood. It turns out his tutelage took he asks if he can call me back. ers (including Raphael), describes Raphael’s place during a chance meeting in between high-profile gig with Nelson, one that in- sets in a Dallas folk club called the Rubaiyat. was about thirteen when I received my first volves nothing more than playing harmonica. “We sat on the steps behind the venue, and Iharmonica. My dad brought it home from “Even Charlie McCoy sings.” he showed it to me in five minutes,” says a road trip, a Hohner Blues Band (still the Since its introduction from Germany to the Raphael. “He wrote it all out on a napkin or best-selling model in the world) that he had United States in the 1830s, the harmonica has something.” absentmindedly purchased at a Cracker Bar- uniquely grasped the American imagination. I shouldn’t have been surprised. Mickey rel. I had just enough intuition from several “It serves our collective, subconscious notion Raphael has a profoundly unsanctimonious years of indifferent clarinet lessons to toy that such a universal and unassuming device relationship toward his instrument, and if around with a few melodies, and, eventually, is a fitting symbol for humankind’s boldest he’s spent his entire life not being taken as copy my favorite folk-rock harmonica solos, democratic experiment,” Kim Field, author seriously as other similarly virtuosic instru- at least the ones in the key of C. of Harmonicas, Harps, and Heavy Breathers, mentalists—Buddy Emmons on pedal steel, A dozen years later, I still play—with the writes of the instrument’s enduring American James Jamerson on bass, Pee Wee Ellis on bedroom door closed, when no one else is appeal. McCoy, the legendary Nashville ses- sax—he’s uninterested in touting his own home—in much the same way. I’ve added a sion harpist, puts it more plainly: “It doesn’t expertise. “I’m sure,” he says, “that I could few more keys to my collection—a G, B flat, matter what the skill level of the player is, make a lot more noise about who I am or what F (for “Thunder Road”), and E (for “Just Like the sound of it catches your ear.” I do.” “Oh, nice. My uncle plays harmonica.” Charlie McCoy country kind of thing, and a Woman”), and if I get lucky, I may acciden- Raphael told me he learned to play har- It seems fair to estimate that, apart from That’s what Raphael, arguably the most then there’s blues, r&b stuff, then there’s the tally improvise along to an instrumental jam monica in much the same way as I did. He perhaps Stevie Wonder, more humans around highly esteemed cross-genre harmonica chromatic jazz sound. Mickey has another if it’s blaring loudly enough to obscure what was a solitary teenager, growing up in Dallas the world have heard Raphael’s harmonica player of the past half century, typically sound. I don’t know how to put my finger I’m playing. in the sixties. During lunch period in high than that of any other living player, but to hears in return. on it. All I know is if I hear a record on the For a nonmusician like me who spends the school, Raphael would escape and wander the Raphael, the idea of serving as a representa- Willie’s This idea of the harmonica’s universality radio and Mickey’s on it, I can pick him out majority of his time listening to and writing school’s ball field by himself, toying around tive for the instrument is entirely unappeal- has been both a blessing and a burden for as well as I can pick out the singer.” about music, the harmonica can feel like my with the harmonica he’d brought with him ing. “I know nothing about the history of the Other Voice Mickey Raphael, who, in addition to helping Compared to more technically proficient only bridge, a most fragile crossing, into the to school (to this day, he never goes anywhere harmonica,” he says. “I’m not necessarily an shape the sound of 1970s outlaw country harpists like Sonny Terry or Paul Butterfield, world of performance and music-making to without one), messing around with blues riffs ambassador.” BY in his work with Nelson, Emmylou Harris, Raphael has a fundamentally responsive which I am otherwise merely reacting. Playing he’d started to fall for as a teenager enthralled After starting his career playing with the JONATHAN and Guy Clark, has also played on records by style, as if he were reacting to whatever song the harmonica—the only Western instrument with the folk revival. Dallas country-pop singer B. W. Stevenson BERNSTEIN everyone from Wynton Marsalis and Mötley he is playing as a mere listener or fan. Listen that produces music from inhalation as well as Raphael came of age during an unexpected (“My Maria”), Raphael was invited to tour Crüe to U2 and Snoop Dogg. Raphael’s All- to how he interacts with Stapleton’s voice on exhalation—feels like sucking in the air from an resurgence in the instrument. The harp’s popu- with Nelson in 1973 after a chance meeting Music page puts the number of albums he’s a rendition of Nelson’s “Last Thing I Needed, alternate reality, one where I can create music, larity had boomed during the Great Depression, in a Dallas hotel room after-party thrown contributed to at five hundred fifty-one. If First Thing This Morning,” how he fills in a reality in which oxygen is the Chicago blues when, according to Field, an estimated two by their mutual friend, Darrell Royal, the you’re wondering how a new artist, say Chris the space between the vocals, anticipating and no one has any trouble breathing. thousand “harmonica bands” formed. That led University of Texas football coach. He made Stapleton, can instantaneously communicate the emotional fallout of a lyric. Listen to the After a dozen years of fooling around on to an unlikely decade of harmonica prominence, his recording debut with Nelson on the 1975 play the harmonica.” a certain rootsy intimacy, the answer is prob- way his harmonica trails off in defeat after the harp, I decided I needed to speak with in which thirties vaudeville acts like Borrah breakout classic Red Headed Stranger, with That’s how Mickey Raphael re- ably: he hired Mickey Raphael. Stapleton sings about an alarm clock that rang Mickey Raphael. I wanted to learn what it Minevitch and His Harmonica Rascals starred most of the world first hearing Raphael the “I sponds when a stranger in a hotel Buddy Cannon, the producer who has be- two hours late, the way he stays quiet in the was like to devote oneself to an art that most in films and live revues that, confounding as it same time they first heard Nelson, on “Blue lobby or roadside truck stop—places you come best known for his work with Nelson, second verse until he begins to dance around take for granted, especially when that art sounds today, featured the instrument as their Eyes Crying in the Rain,” the singer’s first frequent when you’ve been touring with finds Raphael’s work distinctive, if uncat- the narrator’s excuse for their partner’s drunk- form barely still exists.

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