hypersongs

John Hartford

A banjo and fiddle player, songwriter and Mississippi riverboat pilot, writer of "Gentle on My Mind" and leader of the 1971 Aereo-Plain band that helped invent newgrass.

St. Louis and the river

John Cowan Harford was born in New York City on December 30, 1937 and grew up in St. Louis. By thirteen he was an accomplished old-time fiddler and banjo player, at sixteen he first worked on the Mississippi, and he studied at Washington University in St. Louis. He later added the t to his surname on Chet Atkins's suggestion, and Atkins signed him to RCA in 1966, after he moved to Nashville the year before. He earned a steamboat pilot's license, and spent summers piloting the Julia Belle Swain; the license is dated to the 1970s by Wikipedia and to the end of the 1960s by the official site.

He wrote "Gentle on My Mind" in 1966 after seeing Doctor Zhivago, and his royalties gave him, he said, his freedom. In 1968 he moved to Los Angeles, played on the Byrds' Sweetheart of the Rodeo, and was a regular on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour and The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour, and appeared on The Johnny Cash Show.

Newgrass and the later years

In 1971 he left RCA for Warner Bros., and Aereo-Plain (September 1971, produced by David Bromberg) used a band of Norman Blake on guitar and mandolin, Vassar Clements on fiddle, Tut Taylor on dobro and Randy Scruggs on bass. It reached number 193 on the Billboard 200, and Sam Bush said without Aereo-Plain and its band there would be no newgrass music. Morning Bugle followed. Mark Twang (Flying Fish, June 1976), on which he plays all the instruments, won a Grammy for best ethnic or traditional folk recording at the 1977 ceremony.

He founded his own label, Small Dog a'Barkin', in 1991, and from 1990 researched the blind fiddler Ed Haley, which led to The Speed of the Old Long Bow (Rounder, May 5, 1998) and a Haley book, written with Brandon Ray Kirk, that was left unpublished. He made Retrograss (1999) with Mike Seeger and David Grisman, contributed to the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack, and toured with Down from the Mountain in 2000. He died in Nashville on June 4, 2001, aged 63. The International Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame inducted him in 2010.

Albums

  • Earthwords and Music 1967 · RCA Victor

    His 1967 RCA album, with every song his own, including the first recording of "Gentle on My Mind".

Songs

  • Gentle on My Mind Earthwords and Music · 1967

    His 1966 song of a wanderer's memories, a Grammy winner in 1968 through Glen Campbell's record and one of the most played songs in BMI's history.

Sources

  1. John Hartford, Wikipedia
  2. About John, johnhartford.com
  3. Aereo-Plain, Wikipedia
  4. Mark Twang, Wikipedia