John P. Hammond, Pioneer in 1960s Blues Renaissance, Dies at 83
With his acclaimed interpretations of Delta Blues standards, he was a fixture on the Greenwich Village music scene for decades.

March 4, 2026

John P. Hammond, a singer and guitarist whose virtuosic performances of classic Delta blues tunes in the coffeehouses of Greenwich Village in the 1960s helped instigate a renaissance in blues music, died on Saturday in Jersey City, N.J. He was 83. His wife, Marla Hammond, said his death, in a hospital, was from cardiac arrest.

Through his father and namesake, who had been an influential jazz, blues and folk producer, Mr. Hammond encountered a wide variety of music. Paul Robeson was his godfather, and the swing-era band leader Benny Goodman was his uncle by marriage. From a young age, he was entranced by the blues. “When I first heard blues, I was completely turned on to it, and it became larger than life,” he told The Colorado Springs Independent in 2010. “And then it became my life.”

Soft-spoken in interviews, Mr. Hammond exploded onstage, with a rollicking barrelhouse style and an unexpectedly guttural voice that impressed veteran musicians. “Man, I don’t know where you learned this stuff,” he remembered being told by Pops Staples of the Staple Singers, “but don’t ever stop doing it.”

To many white audiences, blues in the early 1960s was still an obscure genre, even as they embraced other forms of traditional American music, like folk and old time.

In Manhattan, Mr. Hammond became a fixture in the coffeehouses and nightclubs of Greenwich Village, playing songs by artists like Mississippi John Hurt, Skip James and Robert Johnson.

Mr. Hammond often used an acoustic steel guitar, made by the National Reso-Phonic Co., that was seven years older than he was. Sometimes, he played harmonica. Usually, he played alone.

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