Harmonica history in the 40's
Hi Winslow,
So a lot of blues players were at least playing harmonicas in the 40's. Where were they getting the harps from since we were at war with Germany, and also, do you know how long it took before Germany started sending them here again. I guess what I basically asking is, how did WWII affect American Harp Players?
-Taylor
If you happen to read German (my comprehension is pretty rudimentary), there's a very detailed 670-page book on Hohner's marketing history, Zwischen Kleinstadt und Weltmarkt: Hohhner und die Harmonika 1857-1961 by Hartmut Berghoff. He has chapters on the WWII and immediate postwar period.
If you'd asked this question 10 or 20 years ago, there'd still be a lot of older players around who could give their recollections of harmonica availability during and immediately after the war.
Random thought: Some harmonicas might have come in through indirect channels, although the problem with that is that ANYTHING made in an enemy country was legally contraband. Sometimes you see harmonicas stamped MADE IN OCCUPIED JAPAN or OCCUPIED GERMANY. These were made immediately after the war, and to make it perectly clear that these were completely legal to import; they were stamped this way to show that they were made after Germany and Japan had sued for peace and we were no longer at war with them.
Cool. Thanks for the great info! It's an interesting topic.
Looks like Kratt was the #1 US maker during the war, with the help of Wayne Raney:
"... in 1941 ... Raney moved to Cincinnati and settled in for a long stretch with [Lonnie] Glosson at WCKY, performing, spinning records, and selling mail-order Kratt 'talking harmonicas.' 'They sold for a dollar sixty-nine,' recalled Raney. 'We did taped shows for two hundred thirty different radio stations, and in a five-year stretch we sold over five million harmonicas.'" (from Harmonicas, Harps, and Heavy Breathers by Kim Field}
Five million seems like a lot but earlier Field notes that "More than 30 million harmonicas had been imported into the United States between 1936 and 1939."
Larry Adler reported that he had to scrounge and patch as a chromatic player during the war. I think a lot of repair-savvy players had to go that route, just as people had to do with cars, although because US auto mfrs were diverted to war materiel.
I'm not aware of reports re diatonic and/or blues harmonica players and how they made do during the war; it's an interesting question. Did harmonica popularity decline after the war? I don't know whether it did, but it's a question worth asking. If it did, it might have something to do with reduced availability during the war, although it could also have to do with changing musical trends - during the 1950s guitar took popularity away fro the accordion and possibly other instruments as well.
There were US-made harmonicas, mainly from the Wiliam Kratt company in New Jersey, but Hohner certainly dominated the market both before and after the war, so I'm not sure that Kratt had a significant impact (I bought one of their harps in the early 1970s and it was not very good). If they had, Kratt might have become more than a marginal player. (Though I've also heard that Hohner used strong arm tactics to push out competitors at the dealer level by withholding product from dealers who sold other brands).