Long ago I heard a rumor to the effect that Harpo Mark revolutionized harp playing techniques. Is this true, and if so what was it he did and what effect did it have? And no, I don’t just mean his using the insides of a piano as a makeshift harp.
That doesn’t sound right to me. When I read Harpo’s autobiography, he had quite a bit to say about how he learned a lot on his own and did things very showily, but when he met highly trained harp players, he realized he actually didn’t know so much. IIRC he characterized his own playing as flashy but not truly wonderful.
It’s a wonderful book BTW, so go read it!
I suppose you could say he revolutionized it – but his revolutions never caught on. He was entirely self-taught, so did things like no one else. He originally even put it on the wrong shoulder.
In Harpo Speaks he tells about the time he decided to take a lesson (after playing for many years). The teacher would watch him play and keep saying “do that again” because he’d never seen a technique like that. Harpo ended up learning nothing in the lesson, but just showing the teacher what he did. I got the impression is involved how he fingered the strings – he was using the wrong fingers in the wrong order but somehow made it work.
So he did play in a unique manner, but it never caught on.
Thanks guys. That makes sense. In any case I agree with those who say he was the most talented of the brothers.
Exapno should know.
I don’t have much to add, and I’m not able to search through my books right now.
My memory agrees with Chuck that he learned to play with the harp resting on the wrong shoulder. That, and some odd tuning and fingering, set him off from the classical harp world.
I have no memory of anybody being influenced by him. He was sui generis.
Was he the most talented? I think each so developed his own specialty that it’s impossible to compare. But one of the writers gave an anecdote that goes approximately: “How can you write for Harpo? You just put down, ‘Harpo enters’ and he takes it from there.”
Yeah, with Harpo you just sort of gave him general stage directions and let him go.
Photos of Harpo actually show him playing the harp on both shoulders.
Here is one taken when he was appearing on Broadway. The harp is on his left shoulder. You can also tell it was early on, since his hair was dark: Harpo wore a red wig on stage, which looked black in B&W. As he made movies, he lightened it to try to give the impression it was red (he’s referred to in film dialog as a redhead), but most people thought it blond.
Here he is during his film career – light hair and harp on the right shoulder, where it should be.
Thanks Chuck! I’d never seen that early shot before!
Well Harpo Harpo
This is the angels and
where did you get that sound so fine?
Harpo Harpo
We gotta hear it.
Ooh ohh. One more time
-Jonathon Richman
The problem is that he switched shoulders early on in vaudeville, long before they hit Broadway. Harpo says they were in St. Joseph, Missouri, when he saw a picture of a harpist using the correct shoulder. I suspect the first photo is flipped. Also note the mechanism for changing the pitch of the strings is also on his right, whereas in a modern concert harp it’s on the player’s left, e.g., http://www.opticality.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/harp.jpg
