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: Chris Whitley, Sacred and Profane

From the time of his spectral first U.S. release "Living With The Law" Chris Whitley seemed to consort with ghosts. His singing frequently leaped up in the midst of a phrase into an eerie falsetto that recalled the great Delta bluseman Skip James. His chosen instrument was the metal-bodied dobro a nearly extinct artifact of the pre-amplification era of music. The instrument came to life at the caress of his slide and cried and whined in a way it only does for a gifted few. His songs tended toward a private world, artfully suggested more than directly spoken, embodying the old blues tension between the holy and the profane. He was always the next big thing, and numbered Dave Matthews and Bruce Springsteen among his admirers.(On his early acoustic demo of "Countin' on A Miracle" you can hear Bruce channeling Whitley.) When Whitley came in October of 2004 to play in Anchorage, he looked like a man with one foot in the grave, haggard and thin as a whip, but he sang with fervid beauty. In a year he was dead of lung cancer. "At the border town they shook my hand, Was the gateway to some other land. Now the border town is the great divide, is a gateway to some other side."

Pete's Pantheon: Richard Thompson, Incandescence in the Dark

Is there anyone out there who can match Richard Thompson stride for stride as a guitarist, singer and songwriter? Neil? Bruce? Tom?... anyone? Richard seems to have been issued a guitar with notes on it that others can't find or are afraid to play. His bends in the studio version of "Calvary Cross" open holes in reality through which you glimpse an abyss. And he's only deepened as a player since then (compare the playing on his score to Herzog's "Grizzly Man" to his younger but still amazing take on the same material on his "Strict Tempo" recording.) As a prolific songwriter he has created a coherent body of work that ranges from the timeless longing of "Dimming of the Day" the poignant specificity of "Al Bowlly's in Heaven" and the reckless high spirits of "1952 Vincent Black Lightning" Many find his singing an aquired taste. I suggest you acquire it.
Drawn with Sketchbook Pro on iPad