#JOHN HARTFORD STELLING SERIES#

Among his recordings were two albums in 19 with Doug and Rodney Dillard from The Dillards, with Sam Bush as a backing musician and featuring a diversity of songs that included ' Boogie On Reggae Woman' and ' Yakety Yak'. He switched to the Flying Fish label several years later and continued to experiment with nontraditional country and bluegrass styles. Sam Bush said, 'Without Aereo-Plain (and the Aereo-Plain band), there would be no newgrass music.' He recorded several albums that set the tone of his later career, including Aereo-Plain and Morning Bugle. Records, where he was given more freedom to record in his nontraditional style, fronting a band that included Vassar Clements, Tut Taylor, and Norman Blake. Hartford recorded four more albums for RCA from 1968 to 1970: The Love Album, Housing Project, John Hartford, and Iron Mountain Depot. In live performances, John Hartford was a true one-man band he used several stringed instruments and a variety of props such as plywood squares and boards with sand and gravel for flatfoot dancing. He also was a regular on The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour (as the banjo picker who would stand up from his seat in the audience to begin the theme music) and The Johnny Cash Show.

#JOHN HARTFORD STELLING SERIES#

His success on the Smothers Brothers series was enough that Hartford was offered the lead role in a TV detective series, but he turned it down to move back to Nashville and concentrate on music.

He also played with The Byrds on their album Sweetheart of the Rodeo.

Hartford played banjo and sang the vocal harmonies on the Guthrie Thomas song 'I'll be Lucky'. Īs his popularity grew, he moved to the West Coast, where he became a regular on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour other television appearances followed, as did recording appearances with several major country artists. It became one of the most widely recorded country songs of all time, and the royalties it brought in allowed Hartford great financial independence Hartford later said that the song bought his freedom. At the 1968 Grammys, the song netted four awards, two of which went to Hartford. His recording of the song was only a modest success, but it caught the notice of Glen Campbell, who recorded his own version, which gave the song much wider publication. In 1967, Hartford's second album Earthwords & Music spawned his first major songwriting hit, ' Gentle on My Mind'. In 1966, he signed with RCA Victor and produced his first album, Looks at Life, in the same year. In 1965, he moved to Nashville, Tennessee, the center of the country music industry. He immersed himself in the local music scene, working as a DJ, playing in bands, and occasionally recording singles for local labels. Louis, completed four years of a commercial arts program and dropped out to focus on music however, he did receive a degree in 1960.

Hartford formed with his first bluegrass band while attending John Burroughs School, a local private high school.Īfter high school, he enrolled at Washington University in St. By age 13, Hartford was an accomplished old-time fiddler and banjo player, and he soon learned to play guitar and mandolin as well. Hartford said often that the first time he heard Earl Scruggs pick the banjo, it changed his life. His early musical influences came from the broadcasts of the Grand Ole Opry and included Earl Scruggs, nominal inventor of the three-finger bluegrass style of banjo playing. From the time he got his first job on the river, at age 16, Hartford was on, around, or singing about the river. He spent his childhood in St. Louis, Missouri, where he was exposed to the influence that shaped much of his career and music: the Mississippi River. Harford (he changed his name to Hartford later in life at the behest of Chet Atkins) was born on December 30, 1937, in New York City to parents Carl and Mary Harford.

John hartford stelling