By Henry Yates, Guitar World | The great black post-war bluesmen are almost gone now, and the passing of John P. Hammond – from a cardiac arrest in February at the age of 83 – is a stark reminder that time is also running out for the hip white kids who followed their lead.
“I’ve lost my best friend,” wrote the Grammy-winning guitarist’s frequent collaborator, Paul James, in the first of many tributes. “The blues world has lost a giant.”
From his birth in New York on November 13, 1942 – the eldest son of the noted Columbia Records producer John Henry Hammond, and a drop in the blue bloodline of the unfeasibly wealthy Vanderbilt dynasty – Hammond seemed destined to leave his mark on the world.
His middle name was a hint at the family’s connections, nodding to singer and civil rights activist Paul Robeson. But it was a meeting, in 1949, with another associate of his father – the blues giant Big Bill Broonzy – that proved his awakening.
“By the time I was in my early teens, I was a blues fanatic,” Hammond once said, citing titans such as Lead Belly, Josh White, Brownie McGhee and Chuck Berry, alongside Jimmy Reed’s seminal 1961 Carnegie Hall album. “When I got a guitar, that was it.”
Quitting his studies at Antioch College, Ohio, Hammond performed at the Newport Folk Festival before debuting with 1963’s self-titled album on Vanguard Records (notable as one of the first full-length white folk-blues releases). And while he was not yet much of a songwriter – for now covering the standards of Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson, Son House and Lightnin’ Hopkins – his interpretative skills were clear.
By the mid-’60s, Hammond was a fixture in the coffee houses of New York’s Greenwich Village, where for a time he seemed like the connective tissue between every artist who mattered.
[We’ll have to ask May’s speaker Steve Son if he ever ran into Mr. Hammond!]
In 1965, his So Many Roads album featured not only Mike Bloomfield but future Band principals Levon Helm, Robbie Robertson and Garth Hudson (it was largely down to Hammond that Bob Dylan chose them as his backing group). Three years later, at the city’s achingly cool Gaslight Café, he was flanked by both Clapton and Hendrix. In 1969, he was briefly bandmates with Duane Allman.
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Go here to read more of this bio; several photos & videos here:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/music/news/remembering-the-late-john-p-hammond-the-blues-genius-who-inspired-bonnie-raitt-and-countless-others/
This article first appeared in Guitarist.
Photo: Guitarist mag
