Gary "Sonny Jr." Onofrio worked as Sonny Terry's aid and driver from 1976-78. During that time, he learned to play in Sonny Terry's style and became Sonny's harmonica duet partner, performing 5-6 songs a night at venues all over the world. Sonny Jr. was the last person to do this, as the agent for Sonny and Brownie put a stop to it in an effort to hopefully bring the two closer together.
Since leaving the road and settling back in Connecticut he has added a Chicago flavor to the solid roots of Sonny Terry's style, fusing them together for his own style and developed his own line of amplifiers designed for harmonica players. The whoops and hollers, intricate chugging patterns and haunting single notes are still there... now merged with Little Walter inspired amplified tone.
DC: When did you get interested in the harmonica?
SONNY: In the early 70's,the influence was Lee Oskar from War. I loved his melodic sound and his style. That's what drew me in the harmonica.
DC: Did you try teaching yourself at that point?
SONNY: Yes, for about six months. Then I tracked down the local harp player who was a nice guy and he took me under his wing for about a year.
DC: Did the blues "creep around the edges" at that time or was it mostly rock 'n roll, Lee Oskar music for you?
SONNY: At that time it was rock, Jay Geils kind of stuff. John Mayall, Jay Geils, James Cotton. Mostly in that vein.
DC: When and how did you get hooked up with Sonny Terry?
SONNY: I was only playing about a year, year and a half when Sonny (Terry) came to Toad's Place in New Haven (Connecticut). Probably around 1975. I had certainly heard his albums and tried to do his stuff. But at that point he had another driver who did a harmonica duet with him. When they took a break I went downstairs and just introduced myself to Sonny. Really low key. Not some big rock star type thing. We struck up a conversation and we got along pretty well. I got him a soda and sat next to him. Being blind he has to go by the feeling. So after talking he gave me his phone number which he said he really doesn't do. He said check in every now and then. I would call once a month for about four or five months. Then his wife called near Christmas time 1975 and said that Mark Lavoie, his other driver, had moved on and wanted to know if I wanted to drive for them. And I just said yes at that point.
DC: Yes, after taking just half a breath.
SONNY: That was it. No not even [half a breath]. I was working for the post office and going to refrigeration and air conditioning school at the same time. I was getting ready to be hired full time at the post office which your family says "security", blah, blah, blah. I was trying to get a trade. But I didn't like either one particularly. So I just said "Yeah". Packed everything up I owned in two suitcases and was gone.
DC: That certainly must have been interesting to be around Sonny, go to the different gigs and watch and listen to him play. But as a player, what did that mean to you as you were trying to develop your own playing skills?
SONNY: When you are playing that early, a year and a half, you are really not developed into anything. So at that point I was listening to everybody of that era; Charlie McCoy, [James] Cotton, Sonny Boy [Williamson]. All the traditional guys plus anything else I could listen to harmonica-wise because we were, sometimes, driving fourteen hours a day. And then to actually work with Sonny. As soon as I started with him we started working on different things. His other guy Mark used to do one song, "Mean Woman Blues". After a couple of months of Sonny and I sitting together, he had me come up on stage and do that song. And then we worked into about six, seven songs. We would do three or four per set of each show. They would do two shows. So it really developed into a harmonica duet part of the show. And there would be times just looking over and seeing what I was doing, actually playing with the greatest player, in my eyes, that I had ever heard, it was kind of surreal at times. The road being what it is there is a lot of dead time where you are driving. You could give each other's lives in a short period of time. Then from there on in there is a lot of just driving time and just asking questions. I didn't want to impose a lot. But certainly showing me different things and picking his brain. Because at that time he was 65, I think, and he liked to rest during the day. But come the nighttime, he just came alive. A lot of just sitting and listening to the shows over and over, watching the showmanship; every part of it was a great learning experience. Because it was seeing it at a good level. At a high level. There was no getting stiffed for money at the end of the night. Everything was correct. We worked through an agency. I had an itinerary for three months at a time. So I would map out where we were going. I'd find the hotel. And I was 21 at the time. Where we could eat together. All the accommodations. As soon as you get to the club you find the guy who was going to pay you and get things squared away. The dressing rooms could have been above the basement or somewhere else. It was nothing lavish about this experience. They were the best that there was, but it wasn't at the next level of a touring bus. We drove in our own separate car. Sonny and I had a '76 Chevy Caprice that we put about 100,000 miles on. I drove with him from '76 to '78 all over the country.
DC: He certainly had and has a very distinctive playing style and approach to the harmonica. How did he describe it when he was talking about it to you or anyone else?
SONNY: There was nothing philosophical. There was no way of describing it like it is described in any kinds of lessons today. It was more or less, he'd play and you would have to play along with him. It would be like, "It goes like this". I'm serious. That's the way it was and you had to pick it up. I practiced four to six hours a day, literally. I must have annoyed the living hell out of him because most of it was in the car. Driving with my leg and playing, it had to be annoying (Laughs) So I give him a lot of credit. He put up with a lot. That's where it was learned from. He would just show you things and you picked it up or you didn't. But playing together with him was that much more experience because you got to hear the sound along with yours. And just try to be in unison with him. In a lot of the duets we did were the exact same line and then he gave me variance to do different things. He would have one part of the show where he would let me play. I did Summertime from Porgy and Bess and then broke into a hoopin' thing. So he just let me go and then he would go after me and kick my butt. And that was that. What he would do was a completely different style.
DC: Those years that you drove, playing and practicing, did that then make a decision for you as to the thing you would pursue in your life? Or did you see it, as young as you were, as a short-term thing when this is done we'll see what happens next? Or was music and harmonica something I see myself doing for a long, long time?
SONNY: There weren't really decisions being made at that time. It was just kind of living as you went [along]. There was no real future thought of. I didn't think at the time that I was going to make living at it. I always knew I was going to play harmonica. That was a given. As far as financially what was going to happen from there I didn't think of it. I was still relatively early at it, three or four years by the time I was done with Sonny. From there it was just a bad experience because I walked off the road with him on really bad terms. The last couple months we argued quite a bit because they pulled me from the show thinking that it would bring Brownie (McGhee) and Sonny closer together. Brownie was really getting upset because we were taking part of the show. So the agent had me come off. It really just wasn't the same just driving after playing for two years with him. So we really had a falling out. As soon as I got off the road it was a tough time cause I fell into cocaine addiction. Then into heroin addiction along with it. Basically right from the day I walked off the road I fell into something that was a bad experience. And that took me thirteen years of my life. To the point where I lost my freedom for about a year and a half in a really tough environment called Daytop, a therapeutic community. Always played harmonica, but they actually took my harmonica away and made me find out who I was. And that was a different experience because I played basically every day of my life since I picked it up. Then I got into the field of substance abuse counseling about two years after getting out in 1989. And have been in that field since. That's been my primary job along with two or three other small businesses that I do at the same time.
DC: When did you get into, really into, the amp thing? Since Sonny's sound was acoustic and you are listening to all these other artists, was it the early 90's before you started to develop you own amp?
SONNY: Developing an amp was around 1995. I have always loved amplified (sound). Even after getting off the road with Sonny I had put things together. And it would be amplified. But there would be a part of the show where it was acoustic. The two different styles kind of take you away from each other. If I was to do this full time I would probably have to spend separate time for each style individually. Around 1995, after experimenting with a lot of different types of things you could plug into. After having regular Fender amps, somehow finding a stereo console, I think, was the first time I saw that you could plug into other tube things. And from there it just went. I'm an extremist in whatever I do. So I went berserk with all these stereos and PA heads. And this was before Ebay. So it was finding this stuff wherever I could and experimenting. There is a tech here in Connecticut who is a NASA engineer that I bought some amps from initially. Then we started this working relationship. I sold, actually, stereos that we converted into harmonica amps for probably my first ten amps. Fisher was another one. Bogen, things like that. Putting them in cabinets that a guy built with different speaker configurations. There are some strange "Sonny Jrs." out there. Like actually stereos where there are two separate channels, left and right. All kind of things. And then we said 'Let's develop our own'. Then Tom, from Cotton Amps, designed a pre-amp circuit around the basis of the Masco [Electronics] which I felt that Little Walter probably played something like that because he was known to play PAs. And after having probably hundreds of PA heads, finally I said this sound is really close to what I hear on the recordings. So we developed the amp around what I knew. Little Walter played 8" speakers on the Danelectro Commando and I knew he played PAs. I tried to put the two together. So we built an amp with a Masco and then developed our own side of the pre-amp section along with four 8" speakers. Initially it was finding old Jensen wherever I could, having them re-coned and putting them into new amps. Then I came across the Piles by accident. After about the first eight or nine amps that had Jensens, we started using a Pile speaker. Then worked with Pile to develop my own speaker which was a larger magnet than what they had originally had (in their speaker). So I developed my own speaker by the Pile Manufacturing Company. After about the first eighty amps, Pile went out of business. Which is where I stopped with the Sonny Jr. 2s because I never could find an 8 that sounded that good. Then developed into re-issued Bassman. Got the "bug" again and was going to write a book. Then I fell into these capacitors and knowing what I could do with the Bassman, it started to morph together. The production of this (new amp) is no simple task because Tom is not doing it any more. So there is still the process going on of the actual production of the amp. It's not like in one house where it's just a line and you build an amp. I think they would be pretty amazed. (Laughs) By the time it gets to my basement, which is a really small house, that's where it's done.
DC: Your are now talking about the new Sonny Jr. Four-Ten?
SONNY: Yes, everything else was built by Cotton Amplifiers. So I would go up test it and work with it. And that would be that. It was completely done amp. Now, I'm not doing any of the soldering, but I am having it built in all different parts of the country.
DC: With all that amp experience you must have seen and heard a large number of players that have tried amps and adjusted amps trying to get a certain sound, are there a couple of common things that players seem to struggle with to get a good amp sound?
SONNY: All the years I've done this, I've had players come over that I really wonder what is going through their head when they are playing. Because they are at a completely beginning level, and if they plug into the wall socket they would sound the same. So the main thing is where people are at when they are trying to do this and understanding that so much of the sound is going to come from them and the amp. I think the biggest struggle is with guys not cupping it correctly against their face because nobody was ever taught. Dave [Barrett] has brought everybody to a higher level because of the basics that are taught were never done in my era. There was no instruction on even how to cup it; or hold a microphone. And I think that's one of the main things. I will show some guys and in ten seconds they have a deeper sound.
DC: Yeah, I think a lot of players, particularly early on, are looking for a "silver bullet". And they think the "silver bullet" is either a special microphone or a special amp. Then they get both of them and they wonder why they still sound the same. Or not as good as they want.
SONNY: Or the wrong information about what's the right amplifier. They'll see Kim Wilson playing a Sovtek Mig 50 on any given night. Or a (Fender) Twin. Or God knows what he is going to play on any night. They will look at the settings, go home and buy that amp and try to do the same thing. Well, then it's, "It must be the amp. Something is wrong with the amp". Yeah, a lot of players are looking for that. And I always did myself. I was always trying to emulate the Little Walter sound and trying to find amps that close to that. After playing for ten, fifteen, twenty years trying to marry that into the amplifier and being able to produce those sounds if the amp will allow it. And that is what I have always tried to do; just make the amplifier be able to give everybody that had the amp the maximum potential they have.
DC: When you play amplified now, do you intertwine the Sonny Terry style into the Little Walter Chicago amplified style? Or do you try to stay into one style?
SONNY: No, I've tried to do what he (Sonny Terry) told me, "Take what I give you and make it your own". So it's more of a freedom of playing right now where I don't feel confined. I have a really bad time of trying to remember song, like note for note. There are some songs like Juke (Instrumental song by Little Walter) or certain things that I will try to play to the exactness of it. And really spend time doing that. But it's something I haven't spent a lot of time, other than tag lines, playing certain things note for note. I've just tried to learn the instrument. It's a combination of the styles because there was so much freedom in what he [Sonny Terry] did. At any given moment it was explosive. It wasn't necessarily on a certain beat. It was just anywhere. Or to just be haunting. Or to not play something, which was one of the main things he said. He said some of the best notes you play, are the one you don't play. And it's that space letting people's ears "breathe" for a little bit.
DC: Have you ever done any recordings?
SONNY: I've done small things locally. And I did something with Matt Murphy on one of his CDs but it was very basic. I haven't really done what I am setting out to do which is my own CD of original works based on Sonny's style. It will a tribute to him and be my first CD. With probably four electric songs on it.
DC: Is that near-term? This year?
SONNY: I just hope it happens. I've been saying this for too many years, so I'm not even going to put a time on it.
DC: One last thing, in case anyone is interested in getting information on your new amp...
SONNY: It's www.sonnyjr.com. Or contact me directly. That's the thing about my company. You call me, you get me (Laughs). I pack it. I do the whole thing.
DC: Thank you Sonny. I appreciate your time and insight from all stereo consoles sacrificed in the pursuit of a better harmonica amp. Best of luck with your venture.
