American folk guitarists

Question

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

Answer 1

David Blue (musician)

David Blue (musician)

David Blue (February 18, 1941 – December 2, 1982), born Stuart David Cohen, was an American folk music singer-songwriter and actor.

The son of a Jewish father and Irish Roman Catholic French Canadian descent mother, David Blue quit high school at age 17, left home, and joined the Navy, but was soon thrown out for his “Inability to adjust to a military way of life.”

Hitchhiking back east, David discovered Greenwich Village, finding it an environment where he did not have to adjust but could simply hang out. At first he got a job washing dishes in the Gaslight Cafe. "Allen Ginsberg used to do readings there, Jack Elliot played guitar; I ran into Bob (Dylan) in the kitchen." David took acting classes, wrote poetry and songs, and began performing in Village clubs. When he began singing professionally, at the urging of Dylan and others, he changed his name to Blue. "Actually, I got the name from Eric Andersen. We were together one day, and I knew there were two other David Cohens in the music business, one with Country Joe and The Fish, the other a studio cat in LA. We felt that was too many. So Eric said: 'You’ve got such blue eyes, you should be David Blue.' I decided to do it. I called Ramblin’ Jack Eliot and Dylan because they had changed their names and Dylan thought it was very funny and started singing to me, 'It’s all over now, David Blue'."

Blue became an integral part of the Greenwich Village folk music scene in New York, which included Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Dave Van Ronk, Tom Paxton, Bob Neuwirth, and Eric Andersen. Blue is best known for writing the song "Outlaw Man" for the Eagles, which was included on their 1973 Desperado album, as well as released as their second single from this album. Blue's original version of "Outlaw Man" was the lead track of his own Nice Baby and the Angel album, issued on CD, with the entire David Blue catalogue, in 2007 on Wounded Bird Records.

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Answer 2

Suzy Bogguss

Suzy Bogguss

Susan Kay "Suzy" Bogguss (born December 30, 1956) is an American country music singer and songwriter. Bogguss began her career in the early 1980s as a solo singer. In the 1990s, she released one platinum and three gold albums and charted six top ten singles, winning the Academy of Country Music's award for Top New Female Vocalist and the Country Music Association's Horizon Award.

After taking a brief recording hiatus in the mid-1990s to start a family with her husband, songwriter Doug Crider, Bogguss returned to the country music industry, but did not match her earlier chart success. Although she last appeared on the Billboard Hot Country Singles Chart in 2001, Bogguss continues to record and tour extensively.

Susan Kay Bogguss was born in Aledo, Illinois, the youngest of four born to Barbara "B.J." (née Stewart) and Charles "Bud" Bogguss. Charles was an Army officer who served in the Pacific Ocean theatre of World War II, and later became a machinist who worked at an International Harvester plant at East Moline. B.J. was a secretary-auditor for a Midwest grocery chain. Her grandmothers played piano at theaters. At age 5, she began singing in the Angel Choir of the College Avenue Presbyterian Church in her hometown. With her parents' encouragement, she took lessons in piano and drums, and as a teenager picked up the guitar as well. In her youth, Bogguss would visit Roy Rogers and Dale Evans at their home in Apple Valley, California, as they attended the same church as her grandparents. She starred in several musicals at Aledo High School, where she was crowned homecoming queen during her fourth year. After graduating in 1975, she enrolled at Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington, but later transferred to Illinois State University (ISU) in Normal. She graduated from ISU in 1980 with a bachelor's degree in metalsmithing. She would later use these skills to design her own jewelry.

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Answer 3

Fred Booker

Fred Booker (1939–2008) was an American author and singer-songwriter. Booker immigrated to Canada in 1966 where he became a notable member of Vancouver's music and literary scenes. His intimately personal songs were often characterized by his versatile acoustic guitar riffs and resonating vibrato voice. Amongst Booker's influences were Black American poetry and spoken word, gospel, folk and jazz music, some of which he accredited to his experience growing up in a Baptist church and hearing the blues and gospel songs that were often sung in his childhood home. His experience as a black man in Vancouver and the "Pacific Rain Forest of British Columbia" became the subject of much of his poetry and songwriting, where he reflected on things like his time travelling and touring Canada, his hardships amidst the starkly contrasting class structure of Vancouver, and his continuous admiration for the mystery of both his urban and rural surroundings.

In 2006, the Vancouver-based black literary press Commodore Books published Fred Booker's first collection of short fiction entitled Adventures in Debt Collection, and in 2007, two of his short stories were dramatized on the CBC Radio One show Between the Covers.

Book One: Songs, Voice & Guitar of Fred Booker. LP. Rulebook Records, 1974. Recorded at Stoney Production Studios, North Vancouver, BC.

Road Song. LP. Rulebook Records, 1976. Recorded at Stoney Production Studios, North Vancouver, BC.

Booker, Fred. Adventures in Debt Collection. Vancouver: Commodore Books, 2006.

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Answer 4

Crystal Bowersox

Crystal Bowersox

Crystal Lynn Bowersox (born August 4, 1985) is an American singer-songwriter and actress, who was the runner-up on the ninth season of American Idol. She was the first female finalist in three years.

Bowersox's debut album, Farmer's Daughter, was released on December 14, 2010 by Jive Records. Bowersox released her second album, All That for This, on March 26, 2013.

Bowersox and her fraternal twin brother, Karl, were born in Elliston, Ohio to Kelly Lynn Bowersox (née Bowlander) and William Lester Bowersox. Her parents divorced when she was two years old. At age six, Bowersox was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. She attended Oak Harbor High School in Oak Harbor, Ohio and later attended the Toledo School for the Arts in Toledo, Ohio. She was in choir and played flute in the school marching band. Bowersox performed her first professional gig at the age of 10. She appeared at local bars in Toledo, most popularly Papa's Tavern, and The Village Idiot in Maumee, Ohio.

At the age of seventeen, she moved to Chicago, where she played music as a busker at train stations, including the Washington and Lake Redline stops. She frequented open mics, such as the In One Ear show at the Heartland Cafe, and Uncommon Ground Clark and Grace, and Devon locations. She also played extensively in Chicago's Lakeview neighborhood. According to Bowersox, she lived in poverty at this time, and had to resort to begging for insulin at a pharmacy to manage her diabetes after her health insurance expired.

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Answer 5

Creed Bratton

Creed Bratton

Creed Bratton (born William Charles Schneider; February 8, 1943) is an American actor and musician. He was a former member of the band The Grass Roots. He is more recently known for playing a fictional version of himself on The Office on NBC.

He was born William Charles Schneider in Los Angeles, and he grew up in Coarsegold, California, a small town near Yosemite National Park. His father died when he was two years old after an airplane he was working on exploded while he was stationed in Hawaii. His grandparents, mother, and father were musicians, and he took a liking to music at a very early age. At 13, he received his first guitar from a Sears mail order catalog. He became a professional musician during his high school and college years.

He decided to try life as a traveling musician and made his way on a global excursion, during which he changed his name to Creed Bratton. He traveled through Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. He played guitar at a large folk festival in Israel, appearing with his group the Young Californians. Fellow American and guitarist Warren Entner witnessed Bratton's performance and asked him to give him a call when he got back to the United States. In 1966, they formed a partnership and recruited the remaining members needed for their group, the 13th Floor. Bratton played lead guitar, Rick Coonce played drums, Entner played rhythm guitar, and Kenny Fukomoto played bass. They recorded a demo and sent it to Dunhill, a new record company headed by Lou Adler.

Producers/songwriters P. F. Sloan and Steve Barri heard the demo and liked it. They needed new band members for a folk rock group that they had created in 1965. The 13th Floor lost its bass player to the draft during this time, and quickly recruited Rob Grill, changing its name to The Grass Roots for prior name recognition. The group went straight to the top 10 with their first recording, "Let's Live for Today" in 1967. The group continued in its hit-making vein and toured the United States. Iconic hit songs such as "Midnight Confessions" cemented the group's standing as major contributors to the rock music scene.

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Answer 6

Edie Brickell

Edie Brickell

Edie Arlisa Brickell (born March 10, 1966) is an American singer-songwriter widely known for 1988's Shooting Rubberbands at the Stars, the debut album by Edie Brickell & New Bohemians, which went to No. 4 on the Billboard 200 chart. She is married to Paul Simon.

Brickell was born in Oak Cliff, Dallas, Texas, to Larry Jean (Sellers) Linden and Paul Edward Brickell. She was raised with her older sister, Laura Strain. She attended Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Dallas, and later studied at Southern Methodist University until she joined a band and decided to focus on songwriting.

In 1985, Brickell was invited to sing one night with friends from her high school in a local folk rock group, New Bohemians. She would join the band as lead singer. After the band was signed to a recording contract, the label changed the group's name to Edie Brickell & New Bohemians. Their 1988 debut album, Shooting Rubberbands at the Stars, became a critical and commercial success, including the single, "What I Am." The band's follow-up album, Ghost of a Dog (1990), was a deliberate effort to highlight the band's eclectic personality and move away from the pop sensibility of their first record.

Brickell had a role as a folk singer in the 1989 film Born on the Fourth of July. Her version of Bob Dylan's "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" is featured on the film's soundtrack. She also sang a cover version of Lou Reed's "Walk on the Wild Side" in the 1990 film Flashback.

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Answer 7

George Britton (musician)

George Britton (19 October 1910 - 12 February 2010) was an American singer, actor, and guitarist. A classical bass-baritone, he had an active performing career in operas, concerts, and musicals during the 1930s through the 1960s. As a stage performer he is best known for succeeding Ezio Pinza in the role of Emile de Becque in the original Broadway production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific. He portrayed the role for two years opposite Martha Wright as Nellie Forbush.

Britton began performing concerts of folk music in the 1950s, accompanying himself on the guitar. In 1957 he cofounded the Philadelphia Folksong Society and the Philadelphia Folk Festival in 1962. In the 1960s his career moved primarily into performing folk music. He also taught guitar and voice at his studio, the George Britton Folk Studio.

Britton was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, to parents of Irish and Pennsylvania Dutch descent. He studied at Columbia University where he graduated with a music degree in 1932. He notably was awarded the Gold King's Crowns Award by the University his senior year. He pursued graduate studies in voice at the Juilliard School, studying voice with Anna E. Schoen-René, a student of Pauline Viardot-García and Manuel García, earning a master's degree in 1936. While at Juilliard he notably appeared in the New York premiere of Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos and portrayed Etienne in the world premiere of Robert Russell Bennett's Maria Malibran opposite Helen Marshall in the title role and Risë Stevens as Cornelia.

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Answer 8

Matt Bronleewe

Matthew Ryan Bronleewe (born December 13, 1973) is an American record producer, musician, novelist and songwriter.

Matt Bronleewe was born on December 13, 1973, in Dallas, Texas, but as a young boy moved to central Kansas, Lorraine, with his family so his father could take on the family farm, where he was raised with his two younger sisters. The family moved onto the farmstead a few years later and Matt lived there until he graduated from Quivira Heights High School in 1992.

Bronleewe studied music at Greenville College in the town of Greenville, Illinois, where he met Dan Haseltine, Charlie Lowell and Stephen Mason. Together the four of them formed the group Jars of Clay, named after a verse in the Bible. The group began performing around their college and later recorded their debut demo album Frail. Following the demo's release, the group's fame spread, and they were approached by Christian record label Essential Records to record a full-length studio album. At this time, the group had not completed their studies. Bronleewe decided to stay behind to finish school, while the rest of the band members decided to accept the recording offer. Bronleewe left the group and Lowell suggested his New York-based friend Matt Odmark to take Bronleewe's place.

Matt was married in August 1994 and lived for one year in Sterling, IL where he continued to work on his studies. In the summer of 1995, Matt was invited to reenter the world of music when another Greenville College student, Sarah Jahn invited him to play guitar for an independent CD she was recording, and later asked him to play guitar for her full-time. Matt moved to Nashville, Tenn., and played with Jahn as well as pursuing other avenues of song writing and record production. Bronleewe had become known as a previous member of Jars of Clay as the group had rightly credited him as a co-songwriter for several songs from their album, which had gone platinum. With this, Bronleewe worked with several musical artists, most notably producing the debut album by Plumb, for which Jars of Clay member Haseltine co-wrote the song "Concrete" with Bronleewe and Arbuckle (the lead singer of Plumb). Following this successful release, Bronleewe collaborated with Christian singer-songwriter Chris Tomlin, with whom he was nominated for a 2003 GMA Dove Award. Bronleewe continues to collaborate with various musicians in the American Christian music scene such as Michael W. Smith, Stephen Curtis Chapman, Kari Jobe, and Leeland. Outside of the Christian music genre, Bronleewe has worked with artists such as Australian Natalie Imbruglia, actress Hayden Panettiere, former Tonic frontman Emerson Hart and American Idol finalist Kimberley Locke.

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Answer 9

Michael Owen Bruce

Michael Owen Bruce

Michael Owen Bruce (born March 16, 1948) is an American rock musician, best known as a member of Alice Cooper.

Michael Owen Bruce was born to Alvin and Ruth (Owen) Bruce. The Bruce and Owen families had moved to Arizona from Kansas. The family ancestry includes Cherokee, Scottish, Irish, English and Norman French. Ruth's father, Clarence Glenn Owen, was a veteran of World War I and also a professional baseball player: "Blacky" Owen. "Al" was in the military during the 1940s and, Ruth played piano on the radio and performed for many U.S.O. functions. After the military, "Al" worked for The Coca-Cola Company. Michael and his brothers, David and Paul, attended North High School in Phoenix, Arizona.

Bruce began his professional music career in the mid-1960s. Like so many young people of that time, he found a fiery inspiration in The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. After playing with The Trolls, Michael became part of Mick Mashbirs (who later played on Billion Dollar Babies and Muscle Of Love and also went to Camelback High,the same high school as Neal Smith) band The Wildflowers and started taking lessons.4 songs were recorded by this group ("A Man Like Myself", "One A Day Like Today", "More Than Me" and "Moving Along with the Sun").Mick had a place in the desert where they rehearsed but it was also a party place and the alice cooper gang would hang out and party. According to Bruce, the masters were bought from a man in Phoenix by Bear Family Records (A Germany-based independent record label that specializes in reissues). There was another short lived group that Michael was a part of called Our Gang (Our Gang also featured North High School friend and member of The Tubes, Bill Spooner). They made no known recordings. In 1966, he replaced John Tatum in a Phoenix band called The Spiders; featuring Glen Buxton, Dennis Dunaway, John Speer (replaced by Neal Smith), and Vince Furnier; all from area high schools. One of their top venues was the VIP Club in Phoenix. In 1967 they changed the band's name to The Nazz but had to change it again in 1968 after a legal-issue over Todd Rungren's band, Nazz. The band's new name was Alice Cooper.

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Answer 10

Bryyn

Bryyn (Welsh pronunciation: [ˈbrɨn ˈ]; born Bryn Martin, January 31, 1980) is an American singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist based in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. His music has been described to be a new wave and independent folk pop intertwined with experimental and creative sounds. Bryyn is noted for self-recording and producing all of his music and released many songs under the creative commons license.

Bryyn was born in Woodridge, Illinois, and homeschooled during elementary school. He learned piano under the Suzuki method from the age of five and also studied flute. At age 14 Bryyn began playing guitar and started the Chicago based alternative rock band Ophur with neighborhood friend singer-songwriter Benson Krause. Bryyn performed as the lead guitarist and backup vocalist in Ophur, opening for national acts including The Plain White T's, Sum 41, Violent Femmes, Local H, Lucky Boys Confusion, Veruca Salt, Two Skinee J's, Duvall, and Sleeping at Last. Ophur held their final performance in 2003. The lead singer, Benson Krause, died of apparent suicide on January 22, 2008 after his car was struck by a commuter train. Bryyn also performed in the Downers Grove North High School jazz lab band and joined the College of DuPage Jazz ensemble. During high school and college, Bryyn worked as a clarinet, flute, and pipe organ repair technician and started a garage recording studio.

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