Harmonicas

William Clarke, a blues harmonica player known for combining the sounds of Chicago and the West Coast on a large chromatic harmonica, has died at 45. Clarke died at a Fresno hospital Saturday after surgery for a bleeding ulcer. He had collapsed the day before in his hotel room shower before he was to perform at a club, said Marc Lipkin, a spokesman for his record label, Alligator Records.

James Cotton says he never gave a thought to becoming part of the Chicago blues boom of the 1950s. Then, as quickly as Saturday night turns into Sunday morning, he was on the road north from Memphis in the illustrious company of Muddy Waters.

The third annual Harmonica Blowdown wasn't quite the night of the endless shuffle, but there were enough up-tempo blues at the six-hour performance to satiate the capacity crowd at the Music Machine on Saturday night. The blowdown, a benefit for the family of the late George (Harmonica) Smith, paired hometown stalwarts William Clarke and James Harman with two veterans making their local debuts.

Eddy Lawrence Manson, internationally known harmonica player and composer of background music for television and motion pictures, has died. He was 77. Manson died Friday in Los Angeles of congestive heart failure. As a virtuoso harmonica soloist, Manson performed concerts in such venues as the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles, Carnegie Hall in New York and Gorki Park in Moscow.

Question: When does "Pictures at an Exhibition," tiresomely ever present at Hollywood Bowl, come as a relief? Answer: When it follows 25 minutes of solo harmonica playing, as it did Thursday night, courtesy of Larry Adler. Not that there's anything inherently wrong with the mouth organ--in cabaret music or sea chanteys. But on a Los Angeles Philharmonic program, midweek, presumably before the pops slot, such scheduling leaves a lot to be desired.

Audiences at this week's "Open House at the Hollywood Bowl," the weekly performance series for ages 3-12, are being treated to a taste of the blues courtesy of Brody Buster, a blues harmonica virtuoso fresh from the Montreux Jazz Festival who shares the bill with acclaimed storyteller Diane Ferlatte. Buster, who has played with and won the esteem of the legendary B.B.

Think about it. How many unique voices, the kind you recognize in an instant, are there? In any field? It's not a list that goes on for pages. In acting, you could name Laurence Olivier, Katharine Hepburn, John Gielgud; in classical music you'd consider Jessye Norman, Luciano Pavarotti, Itzhak Perlman. In jazz, the distinctive, one-of-a-kind sounds have belonged to such artists as Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong, Stan Getz, Miles Davis, Bill Evans and Toots Thielemans.

When Billie Holiday, the legendary singer, heard Larry Adler play the harmonica, she marveled, "Man, you don't play that thing, you sing it." Adler, a slight man with a brassy personality, did not argue. Nor would a host of top names in music, from George Gershwin to Maurice Ravel, who raved about his prodigious talent for producing the lush sounds of a full orchestra from the humble harmonica. "Singing the instrument is exactly what I try to do," Adler once told the New York Times.

To most people, the harmonica may be at home on the range, in smoke-filled joints or even in jail cells, but it would seem misplaced in the polite company of symphonic instruments. Harmonica player Robert Bonfiglio continued his quest for parity on Wednesday at the Fullerton First United Methodist Church in a performance sponsored by the North Orange County Community Concerts Assn.

Lester Butler, 38, a blues harmonica player and singer. Growing up in Santa Monica, Butler started playing the harmonica when he was only 6. He recorded two albums, "King King" and "13 Featuring Lester Butler." In the early 1990s, Butler led a band called the Red Devils, which toured nationally and had such celebrities as Mick Jagger, Bruce Willis and ZZ Top sit in on sessions.