JOHN AUGUSTINE HARTFORD
John Hartford remains best known for the country-pop standard "Gentle on My Mind,"
a major hit for
Glen Campbell and subsequently covered by vocalists ranging from Frank Sinatra
to Aretha Franklin. The song remains among the most often recorded in the
history of popular music, its copyright netting Hartford well over a hundred
thousand dollars annually for many years. But there was more to Hartford than
that curious mix of highly literary folk music and MOR romantic nostalgia, told
from the perspective of a homeless man remembering days of perfect love.
Hartford was a multi-talented old-time musician, a riverboat captain, a
satirical songwriter, a one-man showman of exceptional talents, and one of the
founders of both progressive country music and old-time string music revivalism.
John Harford (the added "t" was the brainchild of Chet Atkins) was born in New
York City to a medical resident and his painter wife but grew up in St. Louis
near the Mississippi River he would always love. His first job, on a riverboat,
came at age ten. As a boy he liked the traditional country music he heard on the
Grand Ole Opry radio broadcast from Nashville, and by age 13 he was an
accomplished fiddler and five-string banjo player whose main influences were
Stringbean and Earl Scruggs. Soon he added guitar and mandolin to his repertoire.
He founded his first bluegrass band in high school and dropped out of Washington
University after a year to pursue his music. Performing and working as a DJ and
sometimes as a commercial graphic artist in Missouri and Illinois, Hartford made
a few singles for small local labels in the early '60s. In 1965 he moved with
his wife and son Jamie to Nashville, taking a DJ job at radio station WSIX. It
didn't take him long to meet the other architects of the city's songwriting
renaissance -- Kris Kristofferson, Mickey Newbury, and the Glaser Brothers, who
owned a state-of-the-art recording studio and began promoting Hartford and his
songs around Music Row.
Signed to RCA in 1966, Hartford went into the studio to record his debut album,
John Hartford Looks at Life, which was produced by Atkins. "He is himself and
will not be told how to write or sing, because he has only his own world," wrote
Johnny Cash in the liner notes. Hartford's second album, Earthwords & Music,
featured "Gentle on My Mind" (a modest hit) along with songs that pointed
forward to his independent-minded career as a solo performer: "The Good Old
Electric Washing Machine Circa 1943" featured a charming mouth-music imitation
of that appliance. In 1968 Hartford moved to Los Angeles, appearing regularly on
CBS's Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour and later on The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour.
He also played on the Byrds' 1968 album Sweetheart of the Rodeo and Doug Dillard's
The Banjo Album. By the end of the decade, Hartford also earned his riverboat
pilot's license. Financially secure thanks to "Gentle on My Mind," he decided to
spend the rest of his life pursuing an artistic vision rooted in country music
traditions.
In 1971, Hartford returned to Nashville and founded a bluegrass band featuring
guitarist Norman Blake, dobro player Tut Taylor, and master fiddler Vassar
Clements. The all-acoustic Aereo-Plain album recorded for Warner Bros. that year
(and its successor Morning Bugle) featured a free bluegrass feel often cited as
seminal both by progressive bluegrass musicians and by adherents of the modern
jam band movement. Hartford made guest appearances on albums by James Taylor,
Seals & Crofts, and Hoyt Axton, and he cut the bluegrass Tennessee Jubilee album
in 1975 with the assistance of Benny Martin and Lester Flatt.
In the mid-'70s Hartford worked out a solo act in which he appeared in a
trademark bowler hat and black vest. He began to record unaccompanied, releasing
the unclassifiable Mark Twang in 1976 and winning a Grammy award for Best Ethnic
or Traditional Recording. That album was the first of a series of mostly solo
albums Hartford recorded for the Chicago-based Flying Fish label, featuring a
mix of traditional material with Hartford's own trenchant originals. Though
Hartford had diverged sharply from the sphere of commercial country music, he
continued to live in Nashville and to appear as a session man on such albums as
the Dillards' Permanent Wave and Shel Silverstein's The Great Conch Train
Robbery. He also became involved with Opryland, where he helped launch an old-fashioned
steamboat ride.
By the late '80s Hartford was battling non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, but he continued
to record and perform until he lost the use of his hands shortly before his
death in 2001. He performed and recorded with his son Jamie, re-recorded and
reissued his earlier work on his own Small Dog Barking label, and kept busy with
a host of side projects such as narration for the Ken Burns public-television
series The Civil War. His later albums, several of them recorded for Rounder,
were highly individualistic gems: 1998's Speed of the Old Long Bow was a tribute
to a little-known fiddler named Ed Haley on which Hartford not only performed
Haley's music but also added lyrics that traced his life and career. As word of
Hartford's illness spread, his well-wishers included a long parade of musicians
he had worked with and influenced profoundly. ~ James Manheim, All Music Guide
John Hartford remains best known for the country-pop standard "Gentle on My Mind,"
a major hit for
Glen Campbell and subsequently covered by vocalists ranging from Frank Sinatra
to Aretha Franklin. The song remains among the most often recorded in the
history of popular music, its copyright netting Hartford well over a hundred
thousand dollars annually for many years. But there was more to Hartford than
that curious mix of highly literary folk music and MOR romantic nostalgia, told
from the perspective of a homeless man remembering days of perfect love.
Hartford was a multi-talented old-time musician, a riverboat captain, a
satirical songwriter, a one-man showman of exceptional talents, and one of the
founders of both progressive country music and old-time string music revivalism.
John Harford (the added "t" was the brainchild of Chet Atkins) was born in New
York City to a medical resident and his painter wife but grew up in St. Louis
near the Mississippi River he would always love. His first job, on a riverboat,
came at age ten. As a boy he liked the traditional country music he heard on the
Grand Ole Opry radio broadcast from Nashville, and by age 13 he was an
accomplished fiddler and five-string banjo player whose main influences were
Stringbean and Earl Scruggs. Soon he added guitar and mandolin to his repertoire.
He founded his first bluegrass band in high school and dropped out of Washington
University after a year to pursue his music. Performing and working as a DJ and
sometimes as a commercial graphic artist in Missouri and Illinois, Hartford made
a few singles for small local labels in the early '60s. In 1965 he moved with
his wife and son Jamie to Nashville, taking a DJ job at radio station WSIX. It
didn't take him long to meet the other architects of the city's songwriting
renaissance -- Kris Kristofferson, Mickey Newbury, and the Glaser Brothers, who
owned a state-of-the-art recording studio and began promoting Hartford and his
songs around Music Row.
Signed to RCA in 1966, Hartford went into the studio to record his debut album,
John Hartford Looks at Life, which was produced by Atkins. "He is himself and
will not be told how to write or sing, because he has only his own world," wrote
Johnny Cash in the liner notes. Hartford's second album, Earthwords & Music,
featured "Gentle on My Mind" (a modest hit) along with songs that pointed
forward to his independent-minded career as a solo performer: "The Good Old
Electric Washing Machine Circa 1943" featured a charming mouth-music imitation
of that appliance. In 1968 Hartford moved to Los Angeles, appearing regularly on
CBS's Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour and later on The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour.
He also played on the Byrds' 1968 album Sweetheart of the Rodeo and Doug Dillard's
The Banjo Album. By the end of the decade, Hartford also earned his riverboat
pilot's license. Financially secure thanks to "Gentle on My Mind," he decided to
spend the rest of his life pursuing an artistic vision rooted in country music
traditions.
In 1971, Hartford returned to Nashville and founded a bluegrass band featuring
guitarist Norman Blake, dobro player Tut Taylor, and master fiddler Vassar
Clements. The all-acoustic Aereo-Plain album recorded for Warner Bros. that year
(and its successor Morning Bugle) featured a free bluegrass feel often cited as
seminal both by progressive bluegrass musicians and by adherents of the modern
jam band movement. Hartford made guest appearances on albums by James Taylor,
Seals & Crofts, and Hoyt Axton, and he cut the bluegrass Tennessee Jubilee album
in 1975 with the assistance of Benny Martin and Lester Flatt.
In the mid-'70s Hartford worked out a solo act in which he appeared in a
trademark bowler hat and black vest. He began to record unaccompanied, releasing
the unclassifiable Mark Twang in 1976 and winning a Grammy award for Best Ethnic
or Traditional Recording. That album was the first of a series of mostly solo
albums Hartford recorded for the Chicago-based Flying Fish label, featuring a
mix of traditional material with Hartford's own trenchant originals. Though
Hartford had diverged sharply from the sphere of commercial country music, he
continued to live in Nashville and to appear as a session man on such albums as
the Dillards' Permanent Wave and Shel Silverstein's The Great Conch Train
Robbery. He also became involved with Opryland, where he helped launch an old-fashioned
steamboat ride.
By the late '80s Hartford was battling non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, but he continued
to record and perform until he lost the use of his hands shortly before his
death in 2001. He performed and recorded with his son Jamie, re-recorded and
reissued his earlier work on his own Small Dog Barking label, and kept busy with
a host of side projects such as narration for the Ken Burns public-television
series The Civil War. His later albums, several of them recorded for Rounder,
were highly individualistic gems: 1998's Speed of the Old Long Bow was a tribute
to a little-known fiddler named Ed Haley on which Hartford not only performed
Haley's music but also added lyrics that traced his life and career. As word of
Hartford's illness spread, his well-wishers included a long parade of musicians
he had worked with and influenced profoundly. ~ James Manheim, All Music Guide