American folk guitarists

Question

This piglix contains articles or sub-piglix about American folk guitarists

Answer 1

Jeff Hanna

Jeffrey "Jeff" R. Hanna (July 11, 1947) is an American singer-songwriter and performance musician, best known for his association with the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. His professional music career has spanned six decades.

Hanna was born in Detroit, Michigan. In 1962 at age 15 he moved with his family to Long Beach, California. As a high school student there, he and some friends started a jug band that ultimately evolved into the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.

He was one of the founders and is the longest-serving member of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, where he has been a singer, songwriter, lead guitarist, drummer and washboard player. Through the years, he has been a major force in keeping the band together and maintaining its blend of folk, country and rock music.

Hanna has over 380 recording credits, primarily as a composer, but also as a vocalist, guitarist (acoustic, electric, steel, slide, twelve-string, and baritone), arranger, and producer.

In addition to the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, his credits include work with artists such as Linda Ronstadt, Suzy Bogguss, The Texas Tenors, Patty Loveless, Rascal Flatts, Matraca Berg, Hannah Montana, Emmylou Harris, The Chieftains, Johnny Cash, June Carter Cash, Earl Scruggs, Michael Martin Murphey, and Steve Martin.

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Answer 2

R.W. Hampton

R. W. Hampton (born June 17, 1957 in Houston, Texas) is an award-winning American western music singer-songwriter, actor and playwright. Hampton has achieved both critical and popular success, winning multiple awards from the Western Music Association and the Academy of Western Artists and three separate Wrangler Awards from the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, as well as developing a widespread devoted fan base.

A prolific writer and popular performer, Hampton is known for his patriotism, his family values and Christian beliefs. His wife, Lisa, doubles as his manager & agent.

After more than a decade as a dedicated cowboy enjoying the hard-working western ranch lifestyle, Hampton decided to explore his other passion: music. In 1984, he released his first album, Travelin' Light, and began building a reputation for his songwriting and performance talents, with appearances at The Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. His music caught the attention of Kenny Rogers who used R. W. to play himself, a cowboy singing at the campfire, in the television movie, Wild Horses.

Hampton worked at assorted duties—repairing fences, fall and spring roundups, and checking windmills—in numerous places, including the former Spade Ranch in Texas, the IL Ranch in northern Nevada, the ZX Ranch in Oregon, and the Pickerel Land and Cattle Company in Wyoming, but he preferred the Texas Panhandle and eastern New Mexico, where he owns the Clearview Ranch, located some twenty miles southwest of Cimarron.

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Answer 3

Woody Guthrie

Woody Guthrie

Woodrow Wilson "Woody" Guthrie (/ˈɡʌθri/; July 14, 1912 – October 3, 1967) was an American singer-songwriter and musician whose musical legacy includes hundreds of political, traditional, and children's songs, along with ballads and improvised works. He frequently performed with the slogan This machine kills fascists displayed on his guitar. His best-known song is "This Land Is Your Land". Many of his recorded songs are archived in the Library of Congress. Songwriters such as Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Johnny Cash, Bruce Springsteen, Robert Hunter, Harry Chapin, John Mellencamp, Pete Seeger, Andy Irvine, Joe Strummer, Billy Bragg, Jerry Garcia, Jay Farrar, Bob Weir, Jeff Tweedy, Bob Childers, Sammy Walker and Tom Paxton have acknowledged Guthrie as a major influence.

Many of his songs are about his experiences in the Dust Bowl era during the Great Depression when he traveled with displaced farmers from Oklahoma to California and learned their traditional folk and blues songs, earning him the nickname the "Dust Bowl Troubadour". Throughout his life Guthrie was associated with United States Communist groups, though he was seemingly not a member of any.

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Answer 4

Kristy Hanson

Kristy Hanson

Kristy Hanson is an American singer-songwriter, who has released a number of folk-pop albums.

Hanson was born in Cleveland, Ohio, where she lived in the Shaker Heights area. Her family moved to south Florida in 1986. She attended the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor from 1999–2004, earning degrees in English Language and Literature and vocal performance and studying with former Metropolitan Opera diva Shirley Verrett.

Hanson performed in school and All-State choirs as a child, and began studying voice at 12. She began performing her own songs and other folk music in bookstores and coffee houses as a high school student, after having taken up guitar. Her initial influences included Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez and current folk artists such as the Indigo Girls. Throughout college she performed at Ann Arbor venues, most notably The Blind Pig, and put on several concerts for University of Michigan students. It was during her college years that she released her first two albums, Half the Moon (2001) and She's Been Waiting(2003).

She performs throughout the country, often with other female artists, and she works actively to promote other independent artists as a performing member of Indiegrrl and as the Media/PR Coordinator for Songsalive.

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Answer 5

Tim Hardin

Tim Hardin

James Timothy "Tim" Hardin (December 23, 1941 – December 29, 1980) was an American folk musician and composer. He wrote the Top 40 hit "If I Were a Carpenter", covered by, among others, Bobby Darin, Joan Baez, Johnny Cash, The Four Tops, Robert Plant, and Johnny Rivers; his song "Reason to Believe" has also been covered by many artists, notably Rod Stewart (who had a chart hit with the song), Neil Young, and The Carpenters. Hardin is also known for his own recording career.

Hardin was born in Eugene, Oregon and attended South Eugene High School. He dropped out of high school at age 18 to join the Marine Corps. Hardin is said to have discovered heroin while posted to the far east.

After his discharge he moved to New York City in 1961, where he briefly attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. He was dismissed due to truancy and began to focus on his musical career by performing around Greenwich Village, mostly in a blues style.

After moving to Boston in 1963 he was discovered by the record producer Erik Jacobsen (later the producer for The Lovin' Spoonful), who arranged a meeting with Columbia Records. In 1964 he moved back to Greenwich Village to record for his contract with Columbia. The resulting recordings were not released and Columbia terminated Hardin's recording contract.

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Answer 6

Ben Harper

Ben Harper

Benjamin Chase "Ben" Harper (born October 28, 1969) is an American singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. Harper plays an eclectic mix of blues, folk, soul, reggae and rock music and is known for his guitar-playing skills, vocals, live performances, and activism. He has released twelve regular studio albums, mostly through Virgin Records and has toured internationally.

Harper is a three-time Grammy Award winner, with awards for Best Pop Instrumental Performance and Best Traditional Soul Gospel Album in 2005 and Best Blues Album in 2014.

Harper was born in Pomona, California. His father, Leonard, was of African-American and possibly Cherokee ancestry, and his mother, Ellen Chase-Verdries, is Jewish. His maternal great-grandmother was a Russian-Lithuanian Jew. His parents divorced when he was five years old, and he grew up with his mother's family. Harper has two brothers, Joel and Peter.

Harper began playing guitar as a child. His maternal grandparents' music store The Folk Music Center and Museum laid a foundation of folk and blues for the artist, complemented by regular patrons Leonard Cohen, Taj Mahal, John Darnielle, and David Lindley and quotes of William Shakespeare and Robert Frost made often by his grandfather.

In 1978, at the age of 9, Harper attended Bob Marley's performance in Burbank, California where Marley was joined by former bandmate Peter Tosh for the encore, It was, according to Harper, an important influence.

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Answer 7

Emmylou Harris

Emmylou Harris

Emmylou Harris (born April 2, 1947) is an American singer and songwriter. She has released many popular albums and singles over the course of her career, and – as of 2016^[update] – she has won 13 Grammys as well as numerous other awards.

Her work and recordings include work as a solo artist, a bandleader, an interpreter of other composers' works, a singer-songwriter, and a backing vocalist and duet partner. She has worked with numerous leading artists, including Gram Parsons, Bob Dylan, John Denver, Linda Ronstadt, Dolly Parton, Roy Orbison, the Band, Patty Griffin, Mark Knopfler, Albert Lee, Delbert McClinton, Guy Clark, Willie Nelson, Bright Eyes, Rodney Crowell, John Prine, Neil Young, Steve Earle, Garrison Keillor, and Ryan Adams.

Harris is from a career military family. Her father, Walter Harris (1921-1993), was a Marine Corps officer, and her mother, Eugenia (1921-2014), was a wartime military wife. Her father was reported missing in action in Korea in 1952 and spent ten months as a prisoner of war. Born in Birmingham, Alabama, Harris spent her childhood in North Carolina and Woodbridge, Virginia, where she graduated from Gar-Field Senior High School as class valedictorian. She won a drama scholarship to the UNCG School of Music, Theatre and Dance at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where she began to study music seriously, learning to play the songs of Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan and Joan Baez on guitar. She dropped out of college to pursue her musical aspirations, and moved to New York City, working as a waitress to support herself while performing folk songs in Greenwich Village coffeehouses during the 1960s folk music boom. She married fellow songwriter Tom Slocum in 1969 and recorded her first album, Gliding Bird. Harris and Slocum soon divorced, and Harris and her newborn daughter Hallie moved in with her parents in Clarksville, Maryland, a suburb near Washington, D.C.

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Answer 8

Jesse Harris

Jesse Harris

Jesse Harris (born October 24, 1969) is a Grammy Award-winning American singer-songwriter. He has collaborated with several musical artists including Norah Jones, Melody Gardot, Madeleine Peyroux, Nikki Yanofsky, and Lizz Wright.

Harris was born in New York City, along with his twin sister. He graduated from Cornell University in 1991 with a Bachelor of Arts degree, in English.

Harris gave guitar lessons and performed in musical groups before he formed the duo Once Blue with singer-songwriter Rebecca Martin.Once Blue released its self-titled debut on EMI Records in 1995 and nine additional songs were included in the album's re-release in 2003.

Harris became a songwriter for Sony Publishing for a time and then made three self-released recordings with his new band, The Ferdinandos, consisting of Harris, Tony Scherr, Tim Luntzel, and Kenny Wollesen. The band released two more albums on Verve Records. Harris recorded three solo albums Mineral, Feel, and Watching the Sky on his own label, Secret Sun Recordings. In 2003 he was awarded a Grammy Award for Song of the Year for "Don't Know Why," performed by Norah Jones.

In 2007, Harris contributed songs to the soundtrack of the film The Hottest State. He also acted in the film and sang with Willie Nelson, Emmylou Harris, Feist, Cat Power, M. Ward and others singing the rest of Harris' compositions. His music has been described as a "blend [of] folk, rock, jazz, and world rhythms."

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Answer 9

John Hartford

John Hartford

John Cowan Hartford (December 30, 1937 – June 4, 2001) was an American folk, country and bluegrass composer and musician known for his mastery of the fiddle and banjo, as well as for his witty lyrics, unique vocal style, and extensive knowledge of Mississippi River lore. His most successful song is "Gentle on My Mind" which won three Grammy Awards and was listed in "BMI's Top 100 Songs of the Century". Hartford performed with a variety of ensembles throughout his career, and is perhaps best known for his solo performances where he would interchange the guitar, banjo, and fiddle from song to song. He also invented his own shuffle tap dance move, and clogged on an amplified piece of plywood while he played and sang.

John Hartford was the great-great-great-grandson of Karl von Rotteck and the great-great-grandson of James Overton Broadhead. His grandfather, Edwin Marvin Hartford, was a first cousin to Tennessee Williams.

Harford (he would change his name to Hartford later in life at the behest of Chet Atkins) was born on December 30, 1937 in New York City to parents Dr. Carl and Mary Harford. He spent his childhood in St. Louis, Missouri. There he was exposed to the influence that would shape much of his career and music—the Mississippi River. From the time he got his first job on the river, at age 16, Hartford was on, around, or singing about the river.

His early musical influences came from the broadcasts of the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, and included Earl Scruggs, nominal inventor of the three-finger bluegrass style of banjo playing. Hartford said often that the first time he heard Earl Scruggs pick the banjo changed his life. By age 13, Hartford was an accomplished old-time fiddler and banjo player, and he soon learned to play guitar and mandolin as well. Hartford formed his first bluegrass band while still in high school at John Burroughs School.

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Answer 10

Richie Havens

Richie Havens

Richard Pierce Havens, known professionally as Richie Havens, (January 21, 1941 – April 22, 2013) was an American singer-songwriter and guitarist. His music encompassed elements of folk, soul, and rhythm and blues. He is best known for his intense and rhythmic guitar style (often in open tunings), soulful covers of pop and folk songs, and his opening performance at the 1969 .

Born in Brooklyn, Havens was the eldest of nine children. He was of Native American (Blackfoot) descent on his father's side, and of the British West Indies on his mother's. His grandfather was Blackfoot of the Montana/South Dakota area. Havens' grandfather and great-uncle joined Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, got off in New York City and ended up on the Shinnecock Reservation in Long Island. There he got married then moved to Brooklyn.

As a youth in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Havens began organizing his neighborhood friends into street corner doo-wop groups and was performing with the McCrea Gospel Singers at age 16.

At age 20, Havens left Brooklyn, seeking artistic stimulation in Greenwich Village. "I saw the Village as a place to escape to, in order to express yourself," he recalled. "I had first gone there during the Beatnik days of the 1950s to perform poetry, then I drew portraits for two years and stayed up all night listening to folk music in the clubs. It took a while before I thought of picking up a guitar."

Havens' solo performances quickly spread beyond the Village folk circles. After cutting two records for Douglas Records, he signed on with Bob Dylan's manager, Albert Grossman, and landed a record deal with the Verve Folkways(later Verve Forecast) label. Verve released Mixed Bag in late 1966, which featured tracks such as "Handsome Johnny" (co-written by Havens and actor Louis Gossett Jr.), "Follow", and a cover of Bob Dylan's "Just Like a Woman".

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