" He's a great force of nature. John sounds like a big train coming. He chops them all down." - Tom Waits
He smiles and nods towards the audience while slipping back onto a stool in the center of the stage. He runs a rough and weathered hand through his thick gray hair, drops a harmonica rack over his neck and props his National Steel up on his lap. He eases the slide onto the third finger of his fretting hand and drops his head slightly. It is curious to watch, to see, this distinguished looking man who looks like he just walked out of a corner office of a Fortune 500 company, go through this ritual. Then he strikes a string, the slide hits the neck of the guitar and makes a mad run along its length, the lone note screams into a blue register. The player raises his head and grins at his audience. Seconds later you're hearing one of the deftest interpreters of the Delta blues, playing with the passion of a man obsessed and singing with the same mix of joy and pain that marked the blues originators.
John Hammond plays the blues with a passion that is just as hot now as it was when he started 40 years ago.
Born on November 13th, 1942 in New York City, Hammond (the son of legendary talent Columbia Records talent scout John Henry Hammond) didn't make the decision to go into music until he went to college. John has always disputed what many of said by implying that his father had nudged him into the music business. "People assume I grew up in a musical bonanza, surrounded by it all the time, which was not the case". According to Hammond in an interview with the Los Angeles Times in 1995, "My parent divorced when I was five and I lived with my mother and my brother Jason. I wasn't aware of my fathers position until I was a lot older, until I had gone on the road as a musician myself. Then I had to clarify that in fact I got into this on my own and my dad didn't nuture me. He wasn't thrilled when I began this career."
Perhaps there was something in the blood that drew him to the blues and the older recordings. Maybe his father was somehow subliminally driving John into the music arena. But no matter how it happened, John found himself fascinated by the music that his own father had a hand in bringing into the mainstream with his 'Spiritual to Swing' concerts at Carnegie Hall in the 30's. As a teenager, Hammond listened to practically any blues record he could get his hands on citing influences like Jimmy Reed, Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker. But it was the then rare and difficult to find recordings of Robert Johnson that captivated him most. "In hearing Robert's music, I was moved so deeply that I felt changed inside," Hammond confessed in an interview with Sheila Daughtry in Players in 1992.
"Something emerged in me and built up 'til it just had to come out."
He picked up his first guitar in his late teens and like so many before and since, immersed himself in it deeply, never taking a lesson and learning to play by ear. "I got a guitar when I was 18 and drove all my friends nuts for about a year-and-a-half. I got a little better and a little better, and became a raging fanatic."
While attending Antioch College in Ohio, Hammond began performing for other people. Once he left college, he hitchhiked to California and worked the local coffee houses. But coffee house gigs were few and far between and Hammond spent a lot of time busking on the streets of L.A. Country star Hoyt Axton found Hammond on the street and managed to get him his first club gig playing at The Satire Club. It began a string of gigs in various haunts in and around the L.A. area.
He worked his way back across the country finally ending up back in New York City after spending some time in Chicago where he befriended Mike Bloomfield and Sonny Boy Williamson. While he was in New York, Hammond secured a set at the Newport Folk Festival where he scored many favorable reviews, most notably in The New York Times. Shortly afterwards Hammond recorded his debut album for Vanguard Records.
Hammond began to spend time in Greenwich Village, which at the time was the hub of the burgeoning folk scene spending time with Bob Dylan, John Sebastian, Rory Block, Richie Havens and blues greats like Mississippi John Hurt and the Reverend Gary Davis. For a brief time, he befriended a young guitarist by the name of Jimmy James (later known as guitar great Jimi Hendrix) and even shared a stage with him.
"He (Hendrix) was playing at a place called Café Wha and a friend of mine said 'You've got to hear this guy, he's great,' Hammond said in a recent interview. "I was playing at the Gaslight and Hendrix was just fired from the Curtis Knight band and was stranded in New York. He and I met between gigs and he asked me if he could play. I was delighted."
That lasted for a few weeks before Hendrix was discovered by Chas Chandler and taken to the U.K. where he was transformed into a superstar.
Hammond recorded and released three more albums in 1964 for Vanguard and was becoming a recognizable name in the New York folk/blues scene. In 1965 Hammond recorded So Many Roads and was backed by a band that had three members who would become founding members of The Band shortly thereafter; Garth Hudson, Levon Helm and Robbie Robertson (blues luminaries Michael Bloomfield and Charlie Musselwhite also played on the disc).
Hammond continued to record and tour throughout the 60's, building his reputation as one of the countries most true and accurate blues interpreters. Often times Hammond's recordings would showcase guest spots and cameos of some of the biggest names in blues and rock including Duane Allman, Dr. John and Michael Bloomfield. By 1970, Hammond was brought onto Columbia by Clive Davis (the very label that Hammonds father had helped make famous). In 1971, Hammond wrote and recorded the soundtrack for the Dustin Hoffman film Little Big Man.
Although the 70's and 80's were lean times for many blues artists, Hammond managed to continued to tour and record regularly. According to Hammond,”There were folk festivals in the summer, coffee houses and colleges that weren't dependent on the radio or media and blues has never gone out of style, it's always been there."
By 1975 Hammond had begun to grow weary of playing with a band and decided to go back to solo work. He jumped back to Vanguard Records and returned to the sound that had launched his career. It was a shrewd move and again propelled Hammond into the world-wide blues lime light. He continued on, taking his blues on the road internationally.
In 1983 Hammond played the Montreaux Jazz Festival alongside Stevie Ray Vaughn, Koko Taylor, J.B. Hutto, Sugar Blue and Luther 'Guitar Junior' Johnson and the live recording of the showcase, titled Blues Explosion, won a Grammy award. Hammond was then recruited to play on John Lee Hookers comeback albums The Healer and later, Mr. Lucky both which were warmly received by both critics and fans alike. Again, Hammond was sought out by various labels and continued to record solo albums that were produced by artists as varied as J.J. Cale, Tom Waits and Duke Robillard.
In his career that spans 40 years, Hammond has never been short of work. In an interview, Hammond is quoted as saying "It won't die; they can't kill it. They tried. God knows, in the 70's they x-ed the blues off the airwaves, and the big labels axed all their blues-oriented artists." But the phenomenal success of the release of the Robert Johnson box set (by Columbia in 1990) revived interest in the blues yet again. "Its almost immediate worldwide success made everybody go: 'Geez, there's a lot of blues clubs all over the place that we didn't notice'. All these years, I've never been out of work."
When asked about surviving in the business and on the road for such a long time, Hammond said "You have to go on the road to make money unless you are the best studio musician in the world. Then you have to learn how to live on the road. Since I don't make rock star money, I have to play a lot. I play smaller theatres and clubs. With experience you learn how to maintain you energy and not blow it."
And at 68 and still on the road, Hammond clearly hasn't 'blown it'. He still draws everywhere he plays and still grins wide every time he takes the stage. He may be a bit older now but it's evident in his eyes, his voice and in his hands that he's still the same kid who was moved by the blues early and has no intention on stopping his lifelong blues mission trip any time soon.
[FONT=Tahoma]"All I can do is be me ... whoever that is". Bob Dylan [/FONT]
