Harmonica man: J. Geils Band rocker will play in Blues Revue here 
Tommy Castro of the Tommy Castro band.

Magic Dick plays harp with the swagger of a Chicago bluesman: funky and soulful, swinging with attitude and virtuosity born from decades in juke joints blaring over a tight-rocking band. 

But he talks with the erudite calm of a friendly professor at some mythical college of musical knowledge. He’s thoughtful and polite, his observations delivered patiently and packed with context and well-considered opinions on “air support,” “the architecture of the harp,”and a passion for the “fundamentals of technique.” 

Ask him a simple question — what does he think of Bob Dylan as a harmonica player? — and he’ll give you a detailed 10-minute explanation of straight harp versus cross harp, Dylan’s “mystery and genius,”and why it’s difficult for even an accomplished harmonica player to mimic his style. 

“He found a way of being real simple with it, not a lot of fancy technique, but the way he used it and the statements he made on the harp were in my mind a kind of perfection,” Dick said. “And he was stylistically unique. I mean, he could claim that.” 

With the exception of the comments regarding technique — Magic Dick’s a long-time student of wind instruments who has stamped a truly personal style on the harmonica—he could’ve been talking about himself. His unique brand of rock harp will be on display in Toledo Feb. 4 when he plays with the Tommy Castro Band as part of the Legendary Rhythm and Blues Revue. 

Dick was a key part of the J. Geils Band’s sound from their early days as a knock-off blues band to their massive popularity of the early ’80s. 

Along the way he forged a sound that was a centerpiece of the band’s driving rock sound and he almost single-handedly brought the harmonica to album-oriented radio in songs like “OneLast Kiss,”“Must of Got Lost,”“Give it to Me,”“Centerfold,” and his signature piece, “Whammer Jammer.” 

“He’s not just a harmonica player — he’s a real musician,”said John Rockwood, who is a local blues musician and record producer with his own Blue Suit Records. “He was breaking ground.” 

Dick has always been able to take a wide array of influences and incorporate them into his sound, said Rockwood, a harmonica player for the Toledo band Voodoo Libido. 

 “He’s got that roots thing, the Little Walter thing, but he took that stuff — basically the Muddy Waters harmonica [style] — and took it another notch. He plays a lot of horn licks, like a soul guy,” Rockwood said. 

Roots rock 

Born Richard Salwitz, but commonly known by the moniker he’s been carrying for more than 40 years, Dick is a true student of jazz and the blues. For years 
he played in one of the hardest working, hardest partying bands in the world that also became one of the biggest in the early ’80s, but he never lost track of his roots. 

Growing up in New London, Conn., in the ’50s, his Uncle Harry turned him on to the best jazz of the time. He started playing trumpet in third grade and calls 
Louis Armstrong his “premier musical idol.” 

“I always wanted to play like Louis Armstrong and then subsequently Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker. This was the music I loved the most,” he said in a phone 
interview from his New England home. “I wasn’t really all that into rock and roll.” 

His interests centered on music, art, and physics, and while he was a student at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, Mass., he started playing harmonica 
with guitarist J. Geils and bass player Danny Klein, forming the J. Geils Blues Band in 1968. 

A year later they moved to Boston and hooked up with lead singer Peter Wolf, keyboard playerSeth Justman, and drummer Stephen Jo Bladd, forming the 
nucleus of the J. Geils Band. The band started out jamming with their idols, musicians like Muddy Waters, Little Walter, and James Cotton before evolving quickly. 

“Although we started out as a blues band, we fairly quickly moved into rock and rock and roll, which I liked. I felt that we were sort of better at that than the way we were doing blues at 
the time.” 

The band was a legendary live act because of Wolf’s showmanship and the blues/rhythm and blues base of a sound that also rocked extremely hard. Dick’s harmonica was always at the 
center of the sound, both as a lead and rhythm instrument, and it set the group apart. They recorded 14 albums before breaking up in the mid 1980s after Wolf left the band. 

 The influences Dick brought into play introduced rock listeners to different genres of music. 

Their cover of Armstrong’s “I’m Not Rough” on the “Monkey Island” album exposed rock fans to big band jazz, and the bluesy side of his playing directed young rockers to Chicago and Memphis-style roots music. 

But it was the instrumental “Whammer Jammer” for which he is most well-known. A compact tune that rarely lasts longer than three minutes, it was a staple of the J. Geils Band’s live shows and was recorded twice: on their second studio album, “The Morning After” and on the classic live album, “Full House.” 

Dick still plays it and, surprisingly, he never grows weary of it. 

“That song is an amazing challenge to play well — to play it effectively — because it incorporates all these different techniques which I’ve used for many years but continue to try to make better,” he said. “So that tune to me is a test of how I have everything working. It’s very demanding in terms of precision and rhythm.” 

When he composed “Whammer Jammer,” Dick built the song around his various infl uences, paying homage to Little Walter, Sonny Boy Williamson, and others while focusing on his most basic skills. 

“My task in performing that tune is to lay down a groove, a foot-tapping kind of thing, and keep that groove together,” he said. “And in order to keep that rhythm together it’s not just a matter of playing the right notes. It’s really all about rhythmic feel and tone, and the rhythmic feel is a direct outcome of what you’re bringing to it right at that moment. 

For me it’s been a fascinating study.” 

Dan Hubbs, a Toledo-area blues harp player known as “Mudfoot,” said every young harmonica player has to try to learn 
“Whammer Jammer.” 

“Magic Dick was like the Stevie Ray Vaughan of harmonica playing. He became the standard of what harmonica playing was supposed to be at the time,” he said. “If you were a harmonica player if you couldn’t play ‘Whammer Jammer’... people kind of frowned on that.” 

 The popularity of the J. Geils Band in the ’70s and early ’80s pushed Dick to the forefront of the instrument, Hubbs said. 

“I think he was probably the most influential rock harmonica player. That’s what’s so special and innovative about him because rock music was so much more popular than the blues.” 

Woodshedding 

After the band broke up, Dick, who is 62, spent his time pursuing a number of other interests. He and Geils formed a group called Bluestime, recording a couple of albums of swinging Chicago-style blues before disbanding a few years ago. He tours with fellow harmonica player Mark Hummel and is a regular on the Legendary Rhythm and Blues Revue with Tommy Castro, Deanna Bogart, and Ronnie Baker Brooks, which will be in Toledo Feb. 4. 

Along with his business partner Pierre Beauregard, he also has patented a line of harmonicas that are in different tunings than standard harps. They allow musicians to play different chord structures and notes and expand the instrument’s range, he said. The hard part is marketing them, something Dick said has been frustrating. 

“People have been asking me about this for years and they’ve heard me play some of these and when they hear them demonstrated they say, ‘Wow, that’s unbelievable. When can we get them? Why can’t we get them?’” he said. “I have to give this explanation that’s very frustrating. My forte is not being a businessman. 

I’m an artist and an inventor. I’m not comfortable wearing the businessman’s hat.” 
He also spends considerable time practicing, both his harmonica playing and singing, trying to refine his technique in both areas. It is difficult to imagine someone who has spent decades playing an instrument, breaking his technique down at this point and spending hours rebuilding his style, but that’s what Dick is doing. 

Comparing his approach to Tiger Woods dramatically revamping his golf swing a few years ago, he said he is trying unlearn old bad habits and refi ne his skills even more. It’s a version of what his old jazz heroes called woodshedding: 
spending hours going over fundamentals and doing musical exercises. 

“It’s not a fun period in that regard. So much of what I’ve been doing for the past two years is wrestling with the implications of this and it involves going back to the most fundamental things in terms of playing the harp and the 
equipment,” he said. 

“I’m trying to take an approach where I want to present the most direct connection to the audience between the sound in my hands and what they hear.” 

 The Legendary Rhythm and Blues Revue featuring the Tommy Castro Band, Magic Dick, Ronnie Baker Brooks, and Deanna Bogart will perform at Gator’z Feb. 4. Doors open at 7 p.m. and the show is at 8. Tickets are $17.50 in advance and $20 at the door. They are available at Toledo and Sylvania Harley Davidson, at www.WXKR.com, or by phone at 419-482-8499.