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HERMONICAS.COM—WOMEN WHO PLAY BLUES HARP AND
MORE

American blues radio DJ Norman Davis has been in love with the
medium since his first radio appearance at the age of five, when he
played his violin on an early morning religious program sponsored
by his grandmother’s church. The rest — as they say — is history!

His broadcast career began at KGEM in 1954 in his hometown of
Boise, Idaho (US) and continued on at different radio stations in
such US cities as Spokane, San Francisco, Denver, Kansas City,
Portland, Los Angeles, to name a few. His broadcast journey has taken
him full circle, back to Boise, where he currently hosts his syndicated “Midnight
Flyer” 2—hour blues show, and his “The Juke Joint”

show on KRBX, Radio Boise.

Davis has interviewed a slew of blues artists
including Roy Buchanan, Jimmy Reed, Honeyboy

Edwards, Gatemouth Brown, Barbara Dane, Snooky
Prior, Odetta, Paul deLay, and John Mayall, just to
name a few! Along the way he became interested in
women who play the harp. Noting that there wasn’t
a lot of attention out there to these talented ladies
he did a little research. Norman stumbled upon such
female harp players as Gaye Agegbaloloa, from the

group Saffire, The Uppity Blues Woman, and Kat
Baloun, an American player who successfully
relocated to Berlin. Lo and behold ……
www.hermonicas.com was born.

I asked Norman to tell us a bit about “Hermonicas”. This is what he told me …….

LL: What inspired you to create the Hermonicas website?

ND: I played a recording by Big Mama Thornton on my radio show. There was a nice harmonica solo
on it, and I looked to see who it was. To my surprise it was Big Mama! It was the first time I’d heard
B a woman playing the mouth harp and got me to wondering if there were others. My research turned

up several more, but I was shocked at how little attention had been paid to these women. There was
no website that featured woman harmonica players, so I decided to start one. I was talking to a
friend about this and he misspoke and said “hermonica” instead of “harmonica”. “That’s it!” I
shouted, “That’s the name for my website.”

One of the other things I did to promote women harp players was to produce a double CD album,
released in 2015 on Ruf Records. The album features 29 of the “Hermonicas” women harmonica
players and is still the only album ever made to feature these women. It is titled "Blues Harp
Women".