Jean-Baptiste ‘Toots’ Thielemans and the enduring appeal of the harmonica

As an exhibition in Thielemans’ hometown of Brussels charts his life and music, Kevin Le Gendre looks at the history of an underappreciated instrument

Thielemans worked with everyone from Quincy Jones to Paul Simon (KBR)

Every instrument has an image. The piano is largely synonymous with bourgeois respectability and the electric guitar with youthful rebellion. Perhaps more importantly, both of these devices has a pantheon of great players who are too numerous to mention. The harmonica, that small, flat, shiny rectangle that looks like a metal door wedge, lacks the curves and fancy design of a horn, and occupies a far smaller space in public consciousness. Yet it is anything but a footnote in 20th century music. And its history has a real virtuoso, a true icon.

Between the 1950s and millennium the Belgian harmonica player Jean-Baptiste “Toots” Thielemans worked extensively in jazz, pop and film music, recording dozens of tracks that have classic status. Several of the groundbreaking albums by the legendary Quincy Jones, the producer, feature Thielemans purring away quite gloriously, a highpoint of their collaboration being the sumptuous reprise of Marvin Gaye’s soul anthem “What’s Going On”.

A-list pop stars such as Paul Simon, Bobby McFerrin and Billy Joel also availed themselves of the sound of Toots, but it was by way of the small and big screen that he was able to reach the biggest audience imaginable. Consider the following tunes: the breezy, sunny skip of “Sesame Street”, the fraught, shadowy lament of “Theme from Midnight Cowboy” and the poignant strains of Verdi’s heartbreakingly solemn “La Forza Del Destino”, from Jean De Florette. Gracing these soundtracks that marked mainstream global culture between the hippie Sixties and the yuppie Eighties is Thielemans’s harmonica. He played with a delicate, often dreamy finesse, reflecting his origins as an accordion player, but he also had a bold, wily improvisational flair that saw him hold his own among a number of star soloists.