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Long Life - Blues Life
John Hammond
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Published: September 25, 2008
Updated: 09/24/2008 08:55 pm
John Hammond, a singer and guitarist, would be guaranteed a footnote in the Great Book of Rock 'n' Roll even if he wasn't one of the most respected bluesmen of the contemporary era.
He has been making music for more than 45 years. In that time he has shown an uncanny knack for attracting talented musicians who later became cultural icons.
In 1965, Hammond recorded with a trio of musicians who left him mightily impressed. He told his friend Bob Dylan about them, and the next thing he knew, Dylan had snatched the musicians -- Robbie Robertson, Garth Hudson, Levon Helm and the rest of The Hawks -- for his maiden tour playing electric music.
The Hawks later morphed into The Band.
In 1966, Hammond was playing in a Greenwich Village club when Jimmy James, a shy guitarist in his pickup band, started attracting huge crowds to hear his amazing abilities. Chas Chandler, the bassist for The Animals, signed the guitarist to a management contract halfway through the residency and whisked him to England.
The next time Hammond saw James, he had a new name -- Jimi Hendrix -- a new look and was in the process of forever redefining electric guitar in modern music.
In 1969, Hammond was recording in Muscle Shoals, Ala., when a gifted young hippie session guitarist asked him to show him some of his slide-guitar licks. The next time Hammond saw the guitarist, Duane Allman, he was leading the innovative Allman Brothers Band and playing slide guitar with skill and ferocity.
The list goes on and on, a Who's Who of traditional and contemporary blues -- Michael Bloomfield, Al Wilson of Canned Heat, J.J. Cale, Charlie Musselwhite, Delaney Bramlett, Charles Brown, Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon, Howlin' Wolf, Son House, John Lee Hooker, Skip James, the Rev. Gary Davis, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Willie Dixon, Lightning Hopkins, Bukka White….
"Whenever I stop and look back at the list of people who I have had the fortune to work with, it makes me shake my head in amazement," Hammond, 65, said, laughing. "It is mind-boggling. To be honest, I'm surprised that after all these years, more people don't know how plugged-into things I've been.
"Then again, blues music and musicians have never really been top of the pops."
Hammond said that he feels he was born with an affinity for blues. He was 7 when his father, the legendary producer John Hammond Jr., took him to hear bluesman Big Bill Broonzy. "It sounds ridiculous, I know, but from that moment on I felt I had found my path," Hammond said. "The music spoke to me, even as a child. I couldn't get enough."
By the time Hammond turned 20, he was building a reputation as a skilled guitarist and blues scholar. He found himself in the middle of the folk-blues boom, which enabled him to perform with and learn directly from such great Delta bluesmen as Son House, Bukka White and Skip James.
"It was really an unbelievable time, not unlike getting to study Shakespeare at the feet of Shakespeare," he said. "But there was never any feeling that I was not accepted by these blues greats. There was no racial divide. The music transcended all that. It was a chance for me to experience their passion and artistic feelings, and to absorb it all so I could then honor them and share it in my way. We all were bound by expressing a fundamental take on the human condition -- and that hasn't changed in the way I approach the music.
"All humans are still making the same dumb mistakes."
Hammond has released 41 albums, including compilations and repackagings. The vast majority of these are dedicated to his skillful delving into the work of the great blues masters. The passion and detailed authenticity of his performances have earned him a reputation as one of the great interpreters of the blues canon.
Hammond certainly appreciates the sentiment, but he said that he doesn't care for the word "interpreter."
"The word interpreter means translator, and that's not what I do," Hammond said. "For me to do justice to an old song, I have to find a way to make it my own, to put my own emotion, drawn from my life, into the song's perspective. It's part of what keeps the music alive."
Hammond's most recent album, Push Comes To Shove, produced by G. Love, continues a trend that Hammond began on Ready For Love, his 2003 album produced by David Hidalgo of Los Lobos.
On Ready For Love, Hammond, the great collector of blues songs, wrote the first song of his career. He said that he enjoyed the process so much that writing is threatening to become a habit.
"There are five songs on the new album, so people can no longer say that I don't write my own songs," Hammond said, laughing. "Back in 2001, I made this album, Wicked Grin, which was nothing but songs by Tom Waits. I was invigorated by his distinctive take on things, the way he captures images and feelings of life.
"I walked away from that really inspired, and before I knew it, I had written a song. My wife was very encouraging, my band was very encouraging, and my audience was very encouraging.
"Those who get it, get it. And those who don't, wonder about it. I can live with that."
If you go
John Hammond will perform at 8 p.m. Tuesday at The Garage. Tickets are $20. The Whipshaws will perform after Hammond at 10 p.m. The show is co-sponsored by The Piedmont Blues Preservation Society and The Piedmont Guitar Society. Visit www.the-garage.ws or call 777-1127.
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