Bo Hansson
| Bo Hansson | |
|---|---|
Hansson in 2007
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| Background information | |
| Born |
10 April 1943 Sweden |
| Died | 23 April 2010 (aged 67) , Sweden |
| Genres | Rock, jazz |
| Occupation(s) | Musician |
| Instruments | Hammond organ, guitar |
| Years active | 1960s–2010 |
| Labels | Polydor, Silence, Famous Charisma, Sire |
| Associated acts | The Merrymen |
Bo Hansson (10 April 1943 – 23 April 2010) was a Swedish musician best known for his four instrumental albums released in the 1970s.
Hansson spent his early life in a remote village in the pine forests of northern Sweden, but a change in his parents' fortunes forced a move to and they were forced to leave the young Hansson behind, in the care of family friends. As a teenager he joined his parents in Stockholm, where he soon became interested in the burgeoning rock and roll scene and taught himself to play the guitar, before joining the band Rock-Olga.
After the rock and roll craze gave way to jazz and blues in the late fifties, he joined 'Slim' Notini's Blues Gang as a guitarist. Hansson was able to move on and form his own blues group The Merrymen, who supported The Rolling Stones on an early Scandinavian tour.
In 1966, Hansson saw American jazz organist Jack McDuff perform at Stockholm's Gyllene Cirkeln Club, and was so captivated by the performance that he decided to leave The Merrymen to expand his musical horizons. Encouraged by fellow Merryman Bill Öhrström, he eventually acquired his own Hammond organ. Öhrström became an A&R man and producer at Polydor Sweden, and introduced Hansson to other musicians, one of whom was drummer Janne Carlsson. Hansson and Carlsson immediately hit it off and were signed by Polydor under the band name Hansson & Karlsson, playing up-tempo Hammond organ based music and releasing three albums between 1967 and 1969. They became immensely popular in their home country and some parts of Europe, and even reached the ear of Jimi Hendrix, who took time out from his tour to jam with the duo, along with George Clemons on drums and Georg Wadenius on guitar, at the Klub Filips in Stockholm in late 1967. Hendrix went on to record a Hansson song, "Tax Free".
By 1969, Janne Carlsson had become a successful comedian and TV host, and Hansson decide to break up the partnership. Entranced by a copy of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, which he had purloined from his girlfriend, he moved into a friend's vacant apartment and started writing. When the unfortunate friend returned, he found that he had been evicted from his apartment after numerous complaints about the noise Hansson was creating. Hansson retreated to a remote cottage on an island off Stockholm where he, drummer Rune Carlsson and engineer Anders Lind, who had worked previously with Hansson & Karlsson, spent the winter of 1969 recording what was to become Hansson's debut solo album on a borrowed four track recorder. The resourceful Lind was even able to gain use of the only eight track recorder in Sweden at that time at the Swedish National Radio station, on the pretext that he was interested in buying one himself and wanted to test it. Once there, he persuaded session musicians Gunnar Bergsten and Sten Bergman to flesh out the recordings.
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