I picked up a neat Hohner Echo Elite harmonica last week for a very reasonable price. I am not a professional but I can play a few tunes on a standard Marine Band model. The Echo Elite really caught my eye because it had a very familiar art deco style to it.
It is one of several designs patented in 1939 by John Vassos. The Regina was another and was similar in design but only one-sided. The Comet 10-hole diatonic was the third design. My “new” Echo Elite plays both C and G keys however another shorter-lengthed version of the Elite looks identical stylistically but plays C and D. The main reason it caught my eye was its similarity in design to another automotive icon, Harley Earl’s 1950 GM Futurliner.
One of the surviving Futurliners was featured at our 2008 New England Concours D’Elegance last July.
The two art deco designs seem so similar to me that I wonder if somebody on the GM design team was also a harmonica player. Not only the lower skirt treatment but the molding just behind the side window look to me like they came right out of the same design studio as the harmonica. Could this be just a coincidence?
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