The Cuckoo (WNCR Cleveland Radio Session / 1973)

[Intro: Roy Gallagher & (Kari Komey)

You wanna do another one?

Yeah, I'll try another one

Yeah, it's an old traditional song called "The Cuckoo"

I've never got that one

Standard tuning

We're learning all the tuning processes, sure

Get this out of the way

Oh, the cuckoo, she's a pretty bird

And she waddles as she flies

And she never hollers cuckoo

Until the first day of July

Jack of diamonds, Jack of diamonds

You're the meanest card I know

Well, you robbed my poor pockets

And you nearly stole my soul

I'm going up upon a mountain

I'm gonna build me a whiskey still

And I'll sell you one gallon

For a twenty dollar bill

Jack of diamonds, Jack of diamonds

You're the meanest card I know

Well, you robbed my poor pockets

Of the silver and of gold

Well, I'm going up upon a mountain

I'm gonna stand looking down

So I can see my little baby

Whenever she comes walking 'round

Jack of diamonds, Jack of diamonds

You're the meanest card I know

Well, you robbed my poor pockets

And you nearly stole my soul

[Outro: Roy Gallagher & (Kari Komey)

Woo, woo, woo, woo

Woo, woo, woo, woo

Hmm, nice

This is WNCR in Cleveland where we're

Listening to the fantastic acoustical sounds

A bit of a change for the Roy Gallagher that

We're all probably used to, rocking and rolling

But, uh, this is our guest tonight, Roy

Gallagher and his guitar and harmonica

I'd like to hear another harmonica tune, Roy, if you have one

'Cause I'm trying to learn to play

Can you give me some pointers on beginning playing harmonica?

Uh, well, if you wanna play sort of folk

Music or blues, you gotta use a vamper

It's a marine band harmonica

That's what I have

Yeah, and you gotta play it back to front

If you're playing a song in the key

Of A on the guitar, use a D harmonica

So you play it back to front, you see?

Okay, I see

Which means that you can sort of bend the notes

Whereas, like, with a normal harmonica

You play it straight, you know?

You play a tune that way, you know?

Old-fashioned way, but this way, you play it back to front

Well, there is a difference

So you can bend the notes

If you keep doing it, you eventually

Find that the reed will bend inside you

Nice, how long does it take to get like that, Rory?

I've been working for four weeks

And it takes me twenty minutes to get

From the station from where I live

And the stoplights are horrendous, so

Every stoplight, I pull it out and I

And it's taking a long time, really

I'm working on a Siegel-Swall thing, and I'm not coming up to par

But now that you've told me playing it back to front, I'll try that

Well, I mean, if you're playing sort of

Like, um, sort of orchestral type

You use the big harmonica, chromatic

Yes

I mean, it's a little harder to use a chromatic on some tunes, alright

But basically, you use the small vamper

And you use it back to front

It's the only way I could explain it

Just work on the reed, you know, sucking the one note

It's a nice tone

One hole, and you just get the two notes in it

And of course, you split, you can get half a tone then

And then you get some people who

Even from the one note, go right down

Al Wilson used to be able to do all different scales

So it is a very creative instrument

People don't realize that about a harmonica

They think they can just pick it up and blow into it, you know?

Yeah

But there's a lot to do with it

You have all now learned more about your harmonica, so use it

Let's hear another tune

Let me see, uh