He expanded the blues genre for future generations of listeners and musicians.
The world lost one of the last true champions of country blues on February 28th with the passing of John Paul Hammond, son of legendary 20th Century record producer and musicologist John Henry Hammond. He was one of the original white solo blues artists playing the coffee house circuit that had grown up around the American folk revival, who brought many blues classics to the attention of a white audience for the first time. While his natural setting was as an acoustic solo performer keeping a tradition alive for new audiences, he supported and worked with a slew of young electric musicians in the late ‘60s that included Jimi Hendrix, Levon Helm and the Hawks, Mike Bloomfield, and Duane Allman. While he never achieved massive commercial success, he released thirty-five albums during his career that showed a surprising variety within the limits of country and electric blues traditions.
Born on November 13th, 1942, John Hammond was brought up by his mother, seeing his father, a descendant of Cornelius Vanderbilt, only a few times a year. He dropped out of Antioch College after one year to pursue a musical career, having been inspired by Jimmy Reed’s Jimmy Reed At Carnegie Hall in 1961. His 1963 debut album on Vanguard, John Hammond, was one of the very first albums recorded by a white blues artist and not only established Hammond’s reputation but also helped extend the blues genre. His 1965 album So Many Roads saw him backed by Levon Helm, Robbie Robertson, and Garth Hudson before they formed the Band on a set of electric blues that also featured Mike Bloomfield and Charlie Musselwhite. The session led to Hammond recommending the future Band members to Bob Dylan, and we all know what that eventually led to, and the album itself became a cornerstone of electric blues rock. Hammond was again at the leading edge when he recorded 1969’s Southern Fried in Muscle Shoals with the Swampers, who included Duane Allman on four tracks. While the song list comprised typical blues and R&B covers, the backing and recording gave them a new slant.
In 1973, John Hammond recorded with Mike Bloomfield and Dr John on Triumvirate, an attempt by Columbia Records at a roots music supergroup that included many fine individual performances but was never more than the sum of its parts. John Hammond remained true to his original ideals throughout the late ‘70s and ‘80s, supported by a loyal fan base before signing with Virgin’s Pointblank label in 1992. During his time with Pointblank, he managed to refresh his career recording with artists like J J Cale and Little Charlie & the Nightcats. His album of Tom Waits covers, 2001’s Wicked Grin, proved to be not only a departure from more traditional blues covers, but it was a surprising artistic and commercial success. Hammond continued to surprise on 2003’s Ready For Love, which included covers of the Rolling Stones, George Jones, Bessie Smith, and two more Tom Waits songs and featured producer David Hidalgo of Los Lobos. John Hammond recorded his last studio album in 2009, Rough & Tough, and it was a perfect collection of powerhouse solo recordings that looked back to his 1963 debut but also demonstrated the fruits of his long musical career and journey.
John Hammond was one of a very select group of artists who managed to sustain an active career of over fifty years while remaining true to his first ideals. Along the way, he was an inspiration to other artists, some followed a similar path, while others used what they learnt from him to create their own music. If he hadn’t decided to keep the blues tradition going into the ‘60s and beyond, the sounds of those eras would have been very different, and certain songs may have been lost forever. His legacy is best summed up by Tom Waits, who wrote in the liner notes of John Hammond’s recording in Owsley Stanley’s Bear’s Sonic Journals series that “John is an elegant Bad Ass of the Blues. He can sound like an oncoming train, or he can sound like he is drinking champagne on that train.”
