Dave Mudgett
From:
Central Pennsylvania and Gallatin, Tennessee
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Posted 30 Sep 2021 11:35 pm |
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My brother in the blues, Pete "The Jukester" Sheridan passed a week or so ago. We'll be laying him to rest tomorrow - a 10am Catholic service at St. Joseph's Church in Mechanicsburg PA, a reception at the Sheridan house in Mechanicsburg, and then the long drive up to Graysville Cemetery in Spruce Creek, PA for burial.
Pete was instrumental in getting me back into the music world in a serious way, back in the 1980s and early 1990s, right after I got out of grad school the first time. First the jump blues band, The Jumpin' Mudcats, and then AAA Blues Band. We played for pretty close to 20 years together, and no blues harp player ever laid out blues harp better than The Jukester, and that's saying a lot.
Pete literally "wrote the book" on tube amps for blues harp - see, e.g., "The Quest for Tone in Amplified Blues Harp", and he wrote several other serious scholarly (if I may be allowed to use that word in this context - he'd have kicked my butt to use the 'scholarly' phrase because he was all about bringin' it "to the people") works on how to get great sound for blues guitar and harp.
All I can feel right now is the pain of losing one of my best friends for the last 33 years.
You harp players - this is a reverb link of one of these self-published books - https://reverb.com/item/319086-pete-sheridan-the-quest-for-tone-in-amplified-blues-harp-vintage-harmonica-amp-guitar-book - generally considered out of print, but I'm pretty sure there's still some left. If you haven't got a copy, you owe yourself to find one. Steve Melkisethian of Angela Instruments has championed these books for the last 20-30 years. Hopefully I'll see him tomorrow and we'll see about getting Pete's remaining copies distributed. |
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