Pete's Pantheon: John Hammond, An Uncanny Ear for America

Has anyone ever listened to the chorus of American voices more sensitively, carefully and passionately than John Hammond? Let's look at the record (sorry). Mr. Hammond is generally credited with discovering or at least being crucial to the careers of...

• Billie Holiday
• Charlie Christian
• Benny Goodman
• Count Basie
• Pete Seeger
• Aretha Franklin
• Bob Dylan
• Leonard Cohen
• George Benson
• Bruce Springsteen
• Stevie Ray Vaughn


Not only that, Hammond brought the iconic Delta Blues recordings of Mr. Robert Johnson to their first national recognition.  To his further glory, he is accorded no involvement whatsoever in the careers of Kenny G, Justin Beiber or Wayne Newton.

His love of music was coupled with bold commitment to Civil Rights. This Yale blueblood invested in the first integrated nightclub, Cafe Society, and arranged legendary concerts at Carnegie Hall that featured African-American music played for an integrated audience. These were watershed events in the late 1930s called "From Spirituals to Swing". Hammond wanted Robert Johnson to feature as the representative performer of the Country Blues. By then Johnson had passed out of this world but not yet into history. One of his 45rpm recordings was played instead, through a gramophone on stage. The slumbering giant of Rock and Roll stirred in its sleep as the thin, haunted sound of the dead man's guitar drifted over the audience.  

Hammond found at least one other way to contribute to the music world. He and his wife were the parents of Bluesman John Hammond, a talented guitarist and blues interpreter.

Hammond, played by Herbert Anderson, appears as a character in The Benny Goodman Story. It's a biopic about the great clarinettist who was married to Hammond's sister. But Hollywood missed a bet in not making a companion flick based on the life of this unlikely genius. The soundtrack alone would have been a blockbuster.

Pete's Pantheon: Martin Carthy, Discovering the Funk Deep in the Soul of British Folk Music.

If Martin Carthy's music never existed, I'm convinced that I would be haunted by a feeling that the world was missing something. His playing seems like a fundamental part of the Universe, like gravity.

Who is Martin Carthy? Only the guy who taught Paul Simon to play "Scarborough Fair".  The guy whom Bob Dylan tapped for his knowledge of British Ballads. The guy from whom Johnny Marr said he cribbed guitar lines,  merely speeding them up. Michael Hedges and Pierre Bensusan have praised him and worked elements of his playing into their approaches.

Carthy has an uncanny ability to carve away everything inessential from a song. His sense of time is exquisite. He plays the silences as well as the notes. His brilliant and bold use of dissonance and modal scales, combined with his unique percussive guitar transfixed me since I first heard him in the late 1970's. Somehow Carthy discovered the funk deep in the soul of British Folk Music.

He applies the same ruthless genius to his accompaniments for other musicians, creating lines that interact and enhance others melodies with subtle invention. He builds in tension and releases it at the last instant, infusing drama where so many others can't even imagine it.

In addition to his playing and singing, he has been a collector and restorer of damaged or fragmented songs. With the fine eye of a diamond carver, he will fit a husk of an old song with a new tune, add carefully chosen words, and bring it alive, widening the repertoire.

I've learned over time that some people just don't get Martin Carthy and are happy to do without his music. I could do that. Right before I give up breathing.