American folk guitarists

Question

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

Answer 1

Al Hurricane

Al Hurricane

Alberto Nelson "Al Hurricane" Sanchez (born July 10, 1936) is an American singer-songwriter, dubbed "The Godfather" of New Mexico music. He has released more than thirty albums, and is best known for his contributions to New Mexico’s unique style of Spanish music.

He received his nickname, Hurricane, from his mother. As a child, he would accidentally knock things over; the nickname became synonymous with his band, studio, and a recording label. His signature look, which includes an eye-patch, is due to an automobile accident that occurred during the 1960s. These things, as well as his performance style, have led to Al Hurricane being known for his ability to improvise and adapt. They have also led to his music and image being ultimately entangled with the history of New Mexico music.

Al Hurricane is often accompanied on stage by his children, sons Al Hurricane, Jr. and Jerry Dean, and daughter Erika. He has also performed frequently with his brothers Baby Gaby and Tiny Morrie. He was the subject of a tribute concert which was recorded as a set of two tribute albums, as well a DVD. He has also performed alongside Fats Domino, Marvin Gaye, Chuck Berry, Jimmy Clanton, and Chubby Checker.

Al Hurricane was born Alberto Nelson Sanchez the first of four children to Jose Margarito Sanchez (April 28, 1910, Ojo Sarco, New Mexico – September 10, 1979, Albuquerque, New Mexico) and Bennie L. Sanchez (November 26, 1918, Albuquerque, New Mexico – January 27, 2011, Albuquerque, New Mexico) in Dixon, New Mexico.

The Sanchez family moved to Silver City and the father worked in the mines, until he became injured. At which point Bennie returned to work as a clerk at a department store in a Silver City. Jose had a band, called Los Sanchez, Bennie would often join in on vocals and guitar. She eventually became a licensed practical nurse while traveling with physicians throughout Northern New Mexico. His father and mother were extremely supportive of their children. Jose, Al's father, was a miner during most of his childhood; but he still found the time to teach the five-year-old Alberto how to play the guitar. Al's mother, Bennie, made quite a name for herself, she became the president of Hurricane Enterprises. She not only promoted her musically-inclined family, but also promoted concerts for Johnny Cash, Ray Charles, Chubby Checker, Fats Domino, Little Richard and, the one she was particularly proud of, a 1972 Elvis Presley concert in Albuquerque. Her own musically talented family didn't just consist of her sons Al Hurricane, Baby Gaby and Tiny Morrie. It also consisted of Al Hurricane's sons Al Hurricane, Jr. and Jerry Dean; as well as Tiny Morrie's children Lorenzo Antonio and the members of Sparx.

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Answer 2

Pete Huttlinger

Pete Huttlinger (June 22, 1961 – January 15, 2016) was an American guitarist. A graduate of Berklee College of Music, Huttlinger was a Nashville studio artist. In 2000, he won the National Fingerstyle Guitar Championship at the Walnut Valley Festival in Winfield, Kansas. He performed around the world with such artists as John Denver, LeAnn Rimes and many others. As a solo artist, he performed across the U.S. and Europe.

Born in Washington, D.C., Huttlinger descended from two lines of prominent journalists. His grandfather on his mother’s side, Fred Walker, was an editor of the San Francisco Call-Bulletin, reporting directly to its owner and publisher, William Randolph Hearst. Huttlinger’s father, Joseph, was a White House correspondent and a publisher of his own newsletter on the oil industry. "My dad took my mom to the White House on their first date," Huttlinger says, "and while they were walking around, President Truman came out and said, ‘Hi, Joe.’ That got Mom’s attention.”

By the age of 12, Huttlinger had begun music lessons and by 14 he had settled on the guitar. Soon after he graduated from high school, a relative left him a small inheritance. He decided to use this windfall to study at Berklee College of Music.

During the early 1990’s, guitarist John Denver’s tour manager and producer Kris O’Connor heard Huttlinger on another project and recommended him to join Denver's band. Huttlinger toured, recorded and performed on television with Denver from 1994 until the singer’s death in 1997.

Huttlinger had performed on numerous Grammy-winning and Grammy-nominated projects. He had also been nominated for an Emmy for music he both composed and performed for a PBS special. His performances had been used in several national TV series, including the PBS Nature special "Let This Be A Voice." He created the theme song for ESPN’s Flyfishing America, a program on which he had made guest appearances.

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Answer 3

Janis Ian

Janis Ian

Janis Ian (born Janis Eddy Fink; April 7, 1951) is an American singer-songwriter who was most commercially successful in the 1960s and 1970s; her most widely recognized song, "At Seventeen", was released as a single from her 1975 album Between the Lines which reached number 1 on the Billboard chart.

Born in 1951 in New York, Ian entered the American folk music scene while still a teenager in the mid-1960s. Most active musically in that decade and the 1970s, she has continued recording into the 21st century. She has won two Grammy Awards, the first in 1975 for "At Seventeen" and the second in 2013 for Best Spoken Word Album, for her autobiography, Society's Child, with a total of ten nominations in eight different categories.

Ian is also a columnist and science fiction author.

Born in New York City, Janis Fink was primarily raised in New Jersey, initially on a farm, and attended East Orange High School in East Orange, New Jersey and the New York City High School of Music & Art. Her parents, Victor, a music teacher, and Pearl ran a summer camp in upstate New York.

As a child, Ian admired the work of folk pioneers such as Joan Baez and Odetta. Starting with piano lessons at the age of two (at her own insistence), Ian, by the time she entered her teens, was playing the organ, harmonica, French horn and guitar. At the age of 12, she wrote her first song, "Hair of Spun Gold," which was subsequently published in the folk publication Broadside and was later recorded for her debut album. In 1964, she legally changed her name to Janis Ian, taking her brother Eric's middle name as her new surname.

At the age of 14, Ian wrote and recorded her first hit single, "Society's Child (Baby I've Been Thinking)", about an interracial romance forbidden by a girl's mother and frowned upon by her peers and teachers. Produced by George "Shadow" Morton and released three times from 1965 to 1967, "Society's Child" became a national hit upon its third release after Leonard Bernstein featured it in a CBS TV special titled Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution.

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Answer 4

David Ippolito

David Ippolito

David Ippolito is an American singer-songwriter and playwright. He has self-released eight albums and is best known for his weekly summer performances in Central Park.

In 1992, Ippolito first performed an impromptu concert on a hill in Central Park in front of a small audience. Among those present was editor Jack Rosenthal from the New York Times, who the next day published an editorial about the performance. The next week, Ippolito played again, and began to gather a following. Since then, he has performed on a hill near a rowboat lake almost every summer weekend to crowds of passers-by and regulars, including international tourists, and has become a cult figure in New York.

His most recent CD, "Wouldn't Want It Any Other Way", was released in 2009. The album features "Keep Hope Alive", which was co-written with Sid Bernstein, the famous music promoter who brought the Beatles to the US. Ippolito has performed at venues throughout New York City, including an annual December performance at Merkin Concert Hall, as well as shows at the Leonard Nimoy Thalia, Symphony Space, The Red Lion on Bleecker Street, and Cast Party at the Birdland Music Club.

Ippolito's Central Park concerts are relatively well-known. However, in 2000, the Parks Department ordered him (and all other musicians in the park) to unplug his small speaker, which led to outcry from his fans and letters to the New York Times by supportive audience members. The current arrangement is that he has to select a month in advance which dates he wants to play, as well as pay for each permit, rain or shine. On the Sunday after the September 11 attacks, approximately 1,000 of his fans filled his guitar case in Central Park with more than $7,000, which Ippolito, the son of a retired New York City firefighter, delivered to Ladder Company 25 and the 9/11 Fund.

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Answer 5

Iron %26 Wine

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Answer 6

Sarah Jaffe

Sarah Jaffe

Sarah Jaffe (born January 29, 1986) is an American singer-songwriter from Denton, Texas.

Jaffe was born in Angelina, Texas to parents Roger Jaffe and Malea Jackson.

Jaffe self-released her first EP titled Even Born Again, which was recognized by Rolling Stone and the Dallas Observer. In late 2009, she was signed to Kirtland Records and released her first full-length album, Suburban Nature, in May 2010. She has previously toured with Lou Barlow, Norah Jones, Blitzen Trapper and Chelsea Wolfe, as well as fellow bands Midlake, Old 97's and Centro-matic.

In 2011, she released The Way Sound Leaves a Room, which was touted as an EP that included a DVD of her performance at Wyly Theatre in Dallas that February. This release included a cover of a Drake song: "Shut it Down". It was with this release that she started moving away from an acoustic folk sound to a more orchestral indie rock sound, but it was only a hint at what was to come.

In 2012, she opened on the New Multitudes Tour where she introduced fans to songs from her upcoming album. On April 21, she released her latest LP: The Body Wins, produced by John Congleton. On December 11, 2012, she performed "Talk", a single from that album, on Jimmy Kimmel Live.

Jaffe sings a cover of PJ Harvey's "Down by the Water" on 2013 recording with The Toadies, an alternative rock band from Fort Worth, Texas.

In 2013, she featured uncredited vocals on Eminem's song "Bad Guy" off his album The Marshall Mathers LP 2.

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Answer 7

Jandek

Jandek

Jandek is the musical project of Corwood Industries, a record label that operates out of Houston, Texas. Since 1978, Jandek/Corwood Industries has independently released over 100 albums/DVDs of unusual, often emotionally dissolute folk and blues songs without ever granting more than the occasional interview or providing any biographical information. Jandek often plays a highly idiosyncratic and frequently atonal form of folk and blues music, often using an open and unconventional chord structure. Jandek's music is unique, but the lyrics closely mirror the country blues and folk traditions of East Texas. The name "Jandek" is most commonly used to refer specifically to the project.

Only a handful of people claimed to have successfully contacted Jandek before he began regularly playing in public in 2004 (see below). He releases albums through his own record label Corwood Industries, keeping a Houston post office box so fans can write to Corwood for a typewritten catalogue and order Jandek’s albums, usually at low prices. Many of his albums feature photos of a caucasian man at various ages; although it seemed likely that this man was the principal performer, this presumption was not certain until his live debut in 2004.

Jandek now often performs live with other musicians, but these collaborations remain the extent of his engagement with the public.

It was widely accepted that Jandek's real name is Sterling Smith (probably born October 26, 1945); a review of the debut album Ready for the House (1978) in OP magazine, the first ever national press given to Jandek, referred to the artist as Sterling Smith, checks written to Corwood were returned endorsed by Smith, and Smith is listed as the claimant in the copyright records for Jandek's albums at the Library of Congress. Corwood has never used the name in connection with Jandek, and, in turn, many of Jandek's fans respectfully maintain this separation. He lives in the area of Houston, Texas, that is widely believed by his fanbase, as this is the location of the post office box (No. 15375) which has been used by Corwood from the beginning. There is also a telephone number for Corwood Industries listed in the phone book for the area.

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Answer 8

Tom Jans

Tom Jans (February 9, 1948 – March 25, 1984) was an American folk singer-songwriter and guitarist from San Jose, California. He is perhaps best known for his song "Loving Arms" (also known as "Lovin' Arms"), which has been performed and recorded by dozens of artists and bands, initially by Kris Kristofferson & Rita Coolidge, and later by Dobie Gray, Elvis Presley, Dixie Chicks, Natalie Cole, Olivia Newton-John, Petula Clark, Jon English, Livingston Taylor, Etta James, Millie Jackson, Jody Miller, The Beautiful South and The Cats, among many others.

The son of a farmer, Tom Jans was raised near San Jose. Jans's paternal grandmother had been involved in music, playing in the Rocky Mountain Five jazz group. His influences ranged from Hank Williams to flamenco (his mother was from Spain) to The Beatles. He studied English literature at the University of California at Davis, but rejected a graduate scholarship to Columbia University to seek a career in music.

Playing coffeehouses in San Francisco, Jans met Joan Baez, who introduced him to her sister Mimi Fariña in 1970. Fariña had achieved cult status as part of a duo with her late husband Richard Fariña. Fariña had begun writing new songs and was looking for a partner to perform them with; Jans seemed to be a similar collaborator and the two formed a new duo. The duo played San Francisco Bay Area clubs and received notice from their performance at the Big Sur Folk Festival. The group then toured extensively as a supporting act for Cat Stevens and then James Taylor. They received a recording contract from A&M Records, releasing the album Take Heart in 1971. However, the album received little notice and the duo split up in 1972.

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Answer 9

Mason Jennings

Mason Jennings

Mason Jennings (born March 19, 1975 in Honolulu, Hawaii) is an American folk-pop singer-songwriter. He is well known for his simple yet catchy melodies, intimate lyrics, literary and historical themes, and distinctive voice. His music has appeared in the surf film Shelter and he has toured extensively.

Born in Hawaii, Jennings moved with his family to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania at an early age. Jennings learned to play guitar at the age of 13, when he began writing songs. Jennings later dropped out of school and moved to Minneapolis to pursue his musical career.

Jennings produced his self-titled debut album in 1997 on an analog four-track in the living room of a rented home, playing all instruments himself. In October 1998, joined by drummer Chris Stock (a.k.a. Chris Stocksmith) and bassist Robert Skoro, he began a weekly gig at Minneapolis' 400 Bar as the Mason Jennings Band. The two week gig ended up lasting four months. In April 1999, six months after forming, The Mason Jennings Band was voted by the 1999 "Picked to Click Poll" conducted by Minneapolis newspaper, City Pages. Mason began touring nationally and expanded the depth of his sound by inviting saxophonist Chris Thomson to play with them occasionally and replacing Stock with Brazilian jazz drummer Edgar Olivera.

Birds Flying Away (2000) revealed his penchant for singing first-person narratives of imaginary rustic characters. Following the release of this album, Noah Levy of The Honeydogs took over drumming duties from Olivera. In 2002, Jennings released a studio album, Century Spring, and a "fans only" collection of acoustic songs, Simple Life. An EP supporting Century Spring was also released, featuring the album's opening track, "Living In The Moment," two live tracks, and the previously-unreleased "Emperor Ashoka." Jennings released all three discs — and re-released his earlier albums — on his homebrew record label, Architect Records.

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Answer 10

Jewel (singer)

Jewel (singer)

Jewel Kilcher (born May 23, 1974) is an American singer-songwriter, guitarist, producer, actress, author, and poet. She has received four Grammy Award nominations and, as of 2008, has sold over 30 million albums worldwide.

Jewel's debut album, Pieces of You, released on February 28, 1995, became one of the best-selling debut albums of all time, going 12 times platinum. The debut single from the album, "Who Will Save Your Soul", peaked at number eleven on the Billboard Hot 100; two others, "You Were Meant for Me" and "Foolish Games", reached number two on the Hot 100, and were listed on Billboard's 1997 year-end singles chart, as well as Billboard's 1998 year-end singles chart. She has crossed several genres throughout her career. Perfectly Clear, her first country album, was released on The Valory Music Co. in 2008. It debuted atop Billboard's Top Country Albums chart and featured three singles, "Stronger Woman", "I Do", and "'Til It Feels Like Cheating". Jewel released her first independent album Lullaby in May 2009.

Jewel was the co-host, as well as a judge, with Kara DioGuardi on the songwriting competition reality television series Platinum Hit, which premiered May 29, 2011, on the cable network Bravo. Jewel has the vocal range of a lyric soprano. On July 2, 2013, NBC announced that Jewel would be a judge on the fourth season of the a cappella competition The Sing-Off. Jewel's songs are represented by Downtown Music Publishing.

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