Play True
Legendary harmonica player Mickey Raphael has shared the spotlight with the best—Willie Nelson, Miles Davis, Bob Dylan. Here’s his story blow by blow . . . by Holly Gleason
M
ickey Raphael wasn’t much more than a kid when he ran away with the circus. Well, not the circus, but something equally off-kilter and unlikely. After a stint playing harmonica with Dallas’s progressive folkie/country songwriter B.W. Stevenson—known for “My Maria”—Raphael got an invitation from University of Texas Longhorns football coach Darrell Royal to a jam session he was hosting after a big game. “I had big hair,” he laughs, “and was listening to the Rolling Stones, the Byrds, Gram Parsons, the Burritos . . . I didn’t know who Haggard or George Jones was. But I figured I’d go.” In that hotel room pickin’ party, the harmonica player found himself jamming with Willie Nelson and Charlie Pride. If he didn’t look the part, something about his tone—honed via the folk-blues of Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee—caught Nelson’s ear. Raphael was invited to play a Volunteer Fire Department benefit at a local high school. And so it began. In the days before tour buses when everyone drove their own cars to the various gigs, the hippie-looking 20-year-old had to wait for the rest of the band to arrive before heading into the Texas icehouses where they were playing. But it wasn’t long before the rise of Nelson’s legendary 4th of July Picnics in Dripping Springs and the hippie/redneck nexus of Austin’s Armadillo World Headquarters.
“I remember playin’ to junkies and transvestites at Max’s Kansas City. Waylon had been there, so they were ready for us. Sandy Bull was there, Bobby Neuwirth, Jim Carroll . . . rumors of Bob Dylan.” So began a forty-year odyssey that’s seen the dark-haired musician share stages with Miles Davis and Neil Young, recording studios with Emmylou Harris and Mötley Crüe, even musically anchoring a Bob Dylan show noted choreographer Twyla Tharp was staging. Known to many as the young Turk with Nelson’s Family, Raphael is a musical journeyman who’s spent his career searching for opportunities to conjure the emotional tone various artists are seeking. “Miles Davis told me it’s the space between the notes that matters,” Raphael explains. “You want to paint a picture. [Harmonica]’s such a soulful instrument, you wanna create the mood—a lot of times that’s subtle, but what you pull out really colors the track or the moment.”
74 | July 2014 NashvilleArts.com