I've been listening to John Hammond since '69 and he's a hell of a guitar player, musician, singer and performer. My fave album of his was this one below with Duane Allman and was made about the time I got to first see him perform.

I think it's great he lives here, now if only we could get someone to book him to perform for all of JC; Liberty Park perhaps?

Quote:

Thank you John Hammond for justifying my existence.

(I'm talking about the music)

at least according to bluesman John Hammond in today's NYT.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/05/nyr ... dnj.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

JERSEY CITY


In the Region
THIS city may or may not be the hotbed of hipsterism it has been made out to be lately, but it has at least one big point in its favor: John Hammond Jr. lives here.

Mr. Hammond, a blues legend with a voice like Robert Johnson?s and a demeanor that belies his tear-it-up might before an audience, has a history of being on hand during significant cultural moments.

As a Greenwich Village resident in the 1960s, he got Jimi Hendrix the local gig that would kick-start his career. Later Mr. Hammond played a weeklong residency at the Gaslight, another local spot, with Eric Clapton and Mr. Hendrix.

By 1965 he had helped introduce Robbie Robertson, Garth Hudson and Levon Helm of the Band to the world through his fourth album, ?So Many Roads? (Vanguard), after luring them to New York as session players. And though his father, the celebrated music-business executive John Hammond, gets credit for signing Bob Dylan to Columbia Records in 1961, it was the younger Mr. Hammond whom Mr. Dylan turned to early on for the low-down on musicians.

?Bob always looked to me for guitarists,? Mr. Hammond recalled recently in his bright, narrow, LP-lined apartment in Jersey City. On Mr. Dylan?s 1965 and 1966 ?electric? tours, he said, Mr. Robertson, Mr. Hudson and Mr. Helm were in Mr. Dylan?s traveling band; Mr. Hammond had introduced them.

Now 64, he spends about 250 days a year on the road playing the blues, and says performing is his only reprieve from a stutter he?s had since childhood. Touring a countrywide circuit of blues festivals this summer, he will perform closer to home next month, with shows at the Brokerage Comedy Club in Bellmore, N.Y., on Sept. 12 and the Havana nightclub in New Hope, Pa., on Sept. 13.

Mr. Hammond released his 31st album, ?Push Comes to Shove? (Back Porch Records), in January. That it is among the best in his career, according to critics and Mr. Hammond himself, may have something to do with the life he has carved out here not far from the Holland Tunnel entrance.

?This is the nicest place I?ve ever lived,? said Mr. Hammond, from a leather couch. He credits his wife, Marla, executive producer of the new album, for making it so. When he met her 16 years ago, while living in New York, ?I had been through a hideous divorce,? he said. ?I lost everything.? Marla helped him get back on his feet financially, he said.

The Hammonds were married in 1993, and they bought their apartment in 1998, when a nearby charter school was once an abandoned brewery and the Grammy Award on their living room shelf (from 1984, for Best Traditional Blues Recording for Mr. Hammond?s album ?Blues Explosion?) would have been an unlikely find in the neighborhood.

?Jersey City is also the most integrated city I?ve ever lived in,? he said. ?There?s a certain lightness that?s wonderful, and it?s so ready for culture. Right now it?s like New York ought to have been, or was once, or something.?

Life here has afforded him the comfort level to take risks. If there is a scuff on Mr. Hammond?s mostly spotless reputation, it is over his reliance on the material of his heroes and mentors; he regularly interprets the songs of Bo Diddley, Willie Dixon and Lightnin? Hopkins.

In 2003, though, more than 40 years into his career, he turned an artistic corner. ?Somehow, I had the perspective on things to start writing,? he said.

Songs have come slowly. For the 2003 album ?Ready for Love? (Back Porch Records), he wrote one song; for ?In Your Arms Again? in 2005 (Back Porch Records), three. On ?Push Comes to Shove,? he has five writing credits.

With them, a newfound sense of adventurousness has reared up: to produce the new CD, he enlisted the artist G. Love, a longtime fan.

?Garrett was really on the ball,? said Mr. Hammond, who calls G. Love by his given name, Garrett Dutton. ?Everybody there to play came to play. There was elements of what I did in the ?60s and ?70s, and elements of the album I did with Tom Waits,? he said, referring to ?Wicked Grin? (Virgin Records, 2001), an acclaimed collection of covers of Mr. Waits?s songs produced by Mr. Waits.

Notable about the recording was the studio in which it took shape. ?It was this hole in the wall in West Orange our engineer knew of,? Mr. Hammond said.

Then again, he said, ?I?m used to raunchy joints.?