Charlie Sayles

"Sayles' harmonica style sounds contemporary without losing the traditional thread like too many other young harpists on today's scene, and his compositions are original enough to leave a lasting impression." - Living Blues Magazine

"Sayles is a superb and talented harmonica player with stunningly individual songs of his own creation performed in a fine vocal style." - Blues Unlimited Magazine (UK)

"A unique bluesman, he plays harp like no one else around: Tough and fierce..." - Juke Blues Magazine

Charlie Sayles' first album came out in 1976, this is his second. Somewhere round about 1986, I got to hear that first album, and it was apparent that in Sayles we are not dealing with yet another of the clones that the US blues labels have been churning out so assiduously for the past few years. He is, indeed, a unique talent, both as harp player and as songwriter.

The thing that most impresses about this CD every time I play it is its truth. Sayles has lived it, and has the blessed ability to communicate it.

His sound is different, too, his playing more intense, emotional, the distortion seeming to occur more as a result of the raw power of his music trying to get out of the loudspeakers than any electronic effects. Many of the tracks feature a second harmonica, played by Larry Wise, and this idea works very well to my ears. Wise tend to hold down a riff during a number, which adds a bit of spice to the guitar, bass and drums line up.

The album is entirely compose of self-written material, and has an overall air of menace that makes it compulsive listening. I was lyrical, I fear- but I wouldn't be without this words. If you can't afford it right now, remember- Christmas is coming! -SJ - Charlie Sayles- "Night Ain't Right" JSPCD241

A documentary video, "Blues House Party" was produced and sold by the D.C. Blues Society for many years, into the '90's, and may still be in print. Larry Wise contributes a performance on this (ca. 76?). Larry did some of the festival work in the late seventies for Ralph Rinsler, former "Greenbriar Boys" Cambridge bluegrass singer of the sixties, by the seventies the originator and head of the annual Smithsonian Folklife Festivals.

About this time (74?) Ralph had been in New York City on a visit when he came across an incredibly talented black harmonica player playing unaccompanied through a portable amp on the street in Greenwich Village. A crowd of literally about a hundred or so people was gathered around--Charlie Sayles was a phenomenon. (Around this time a visiting camera crew from the BBC happened to come across one such performance, and filmed Charlie and crowd for the BBC series "Omnibus," where Charlie first received international recognition.) Sayles was fresh out of Vietnam in those days, and a bit of a loner in the time he lived in N.Y.C., but was raking it in as a street performer, averaging $500 weeks (in small denominations).

British blues scholar Dave Sax hired a guitarist and a drummer and recorded Charlie's first album there in New York, now a rare collector's item, on his own "Dusty Roads" label (500 copies pressed)--"THE RAW HARMONICA BLUES OF CHARLIE SAYLES" (74). Anyway, Rinsler was knocked out by Charlie's playing, asked him if he would come to Washington and play the Folklife Festival, and Charlie ended up having Rinsler become his manager, opening many doors for him.

Charlie moved to DC, lived in Rinsler's basement on Capitol Hill, and was introduced to Rinsler's inner circle of friends, and was soon playing with the likes of Bill Monroe (who literally asked Charlie is he would tour with the band, but Charlie declined. Also Pete Seegar, who was eventually to invite Charlie and Kerry Sayles to play Carnegie Hall for the 50th Anniverary, 1992.) Reviews started appearing in blues magazines about Charlie, mostly as a result of his Dusty Roads album, comparing him to DeFord Bailey, Sonny Boy Williamson (II) and Joe Hill Louis in harmonica style.

But Charlie at this point was not used to being backed by a band, being self-taught (Including Tony Glover's harp instruction book, which pointed Charlie in the direction of which harp masters he should pick up on--Little Walter, Sonny Boys I & II, Big Walter Horton,etc.) Charlie made his debut in Washington at the Folklife Festival of 1975, where Bruce Ewan first saw him, playing through a small "pig nose" amp at a harmonica work shop also attended by the great Walter Horton, (who visibly showed his disdain for this upstart Sayles) Rinsler wanted to put Charlie in front of a band, so he contracted the Incredible Snakes to make a practice tape of them backing Charlie, so that he could study it, (I think I have a copy of that tape--got it from Charlie) and eventually master fronting a band, with his own songs. (Rusty can give you background on that). - Liner notes for Bruce Ewan/Big Gilson Live at the Blue Note. Written by Mark Wenner, Harmonica play