Who influenced you to become a musician

Subject: RE: Who influenced you to become a musician
From: Strollin' Johnny
Date: 09 Dec 04 - 10:39 AM

Hank B. Marvin, James Burton and the lead players in Gene Vincent's 'Bluecaps' and Johnny Kidd's 'Pirates' whose names I no longer remember (help me someone??). All long before I got into Folk music.
S:0)

Subject: RE: Who influenced you to become a musician
From: chris nightbird childs
Date: 09 Dec 04 - 12:53 PM

Well, after I started teaching myself guitar at the age of 20 or so, I became influenced by the songwriting of Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Nick Drake...
I also fell in love with the blues (specifically country blues) of Robert Johnson, Son House, Willie McTell, and a lot of Delta and Georgia players...

Subject: RE: Who influenced you to become a musician
From: GUEST
Date: 09 Dec 04 - 01:46 PM

Lonnie Donegan's recording of "Lost John" b/w "Stewball" in 1956.

Subject: RE: Who influenced you to become a musician
From: GUEST,DaveC
Date: 09 Dec 04 - 10:38 PM

First, Kingston Trio, then The Weavers and Pete Seeger. A 60s herd-follower -- too bad the herd has thinned out as it has. Later on -- much later -- Tom Pease.

Subject: RE: Who influenced you to become a musician
From: Margo
Date: 10 Dec 04 - 12:22 AM

God. Can't not do it. It's part of my being.

Margo

Subject: RE: Who influenced you to become a musician
From: kendall
Date: 10 Dec 04 - 02:07 PM

Wilf Carter and Pete Seeger

Subject: RE: Who influenced you to become a musician
From: GUEST,Geoff Nendick
Date: 12 Aug 09 - 06:21 AM

I'd really like to know who I influenced, who are you Stu? - Geoff

Subject: RE: Who influenced you to become a musician
From: Captain Farrell
Date: 12 Aug 09 - 06:35 AM

Buddy Holly/That`ll be the day guitar lick and also opening to Shakin All Over Johny Kid and the Pirates

Subject: RE: Who influenced you to become a musician
From: erosconpollo
Date: 12 Aug 09 - 06:49 AM

First, Burl Ives, whose 45s for children (and adults, for that matter) I wore out as a six year old. I could tell then that they were several cuts above the other kids' music I'd heard.

Later, the Smothers Brothers -- when I realized you could make music AND be funny at the same time, I was sold.

Subject: RE: Who influenced you to become a musician
From: maeve
Date: 12 Aug 09 - 06:58 AM

GUEST,Geoff Nendick- I sent a Private Message to s&r to let him know you stopped by here. If you were to become a member (free) you could exchange PMs with him yourself.

Welcome to Mudcat.

maeve

Subject: RE: Who influenced you to become a musician
From: s&r
Date: 12 Aug 09 - 07:05 AM

Many years ago at Rediffusion Training School you sang 'Dirty Old Town' to a picked guitar. You were on one of my courses (Colour TV? Video?) That set in motion a passion for music that chand my life/career/wife...

Do you still play?

Stu

Subject: RE: Who influenced you to become a musician
From: The Sandman
Date: 12 Aug 09 - 08:05 AM

no one in particular,just enjoyed making musical sounds,perhaps the first person who gave me a guitar.
then the ba#####,who sold me a left handed guitar strung up right handed,when i was 15,which made me abandon the guitar for a while and take up the concertina.

Subject: RE: Who influenced you to become a musician
From: Mark Ross
Date: 12 Aug 09 - 09:34 AM

My parents had THE WEAVERS AT CARNEGIE HALL LP on Vanguard. I was 7 or 8. Then, when I was 14 going to hear Mississippi John Hurt, Rev. Gary Davis, Brownie McGhee & Sonny Terry, and Sister Rosetta Tharpe at Hunter College(all for 2 bucks!).

Guy Wolff. it wasn't Stills frailing the banjo on that recording, it was my old friend Charlie Chin.

Mark Ross

Subject: RE: Who influenced you to become a musician
From: GUEST,TJ in San Diego
Date: 12 Aug 09 - 12:54 PM

Oddly, it wasn't a folk musician, but the sweet sound of a jazz trombone that first caught my attention. In the 1940's and early '50's, my folks shared a mountain cabin retreat in the Sierras which counted an ancient tabletop Victrola amoung its attributes. We listened to everything from "The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down" to Chopin to Bing Crosby on that thing. My favorite was Jack Teagarden, an early jazz/blues trombonist. I first played cornet in elementary school. My music teacher, a 70-something part-timer who had played trumpet with John Philip Sousa's Marine Band, encouraged me. From then on, it was just finding what really suited me and it eventually led to guitar.

Subject: RE: Who influenced you to become a musician
From: bankley
Date: 12 Aug 09 - 01:00 PM

my older brother, Barry.... showed me my first chords and gave me my first axe, an old Kay archtop....
then cousin Dougie Trineer who was playing like Chet and Merle.. so I could see , with my own eyes, that the instrument had a world of possibilities... magic time.... it still does and is...    more than ever...

Subject: RE: Who influenced you to become a musician
From: GUEST,Tunesmith
Date: 12 Aug 09 - 01:35 PM

Back in the early 60s, I went for a walk on a local beach. It was a lovely summer's day and hundreds of people were taking advantage of the great weather. There were a bunch of teenagers sitting on beach towels, and a couple of them had guitars. I went and sat near them to listen. They were singing the "pop" folk songs of the day - Kingston Trio and The Highwayman material. I thought it was terrific. I had a chat with them and they encouraged me to buy a guitar and learn a few songs. I did, and getting on for 50 years later, I wonder if they are still making music. I hope so, because I am.

Subject: RE: Who influenced you to become a musician
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 12 Aug 09 - 01:42 PM

My Mamma sang on radio, at weddings and church solos
My brothers always picked for solos in school, older brother went on make music production and performance his career
My daughters singing together and creating harmonies and winning solos, awards and scholarships

Various singers, performers and composers in numerous genre.
I sang different stuff and played guitar a bit half-heartedly off an on.

But when I heard Odetta singing a tiny bit of Waterboy on a youtube video in late November 2008, I had not really found my place. Until then I was just wandering around tasting and trying a bit of this and that. Now I found my niche and it is down to her.

Subject: RE: Who influenced you to become a musician
From: Amos
Date: 12 Aug 09 - 02:40 PM

I LOVED Teagarden's old 78's. I can still hear him doing "Meet Me Where They Play the Blues".

But for me the inspiration was my mum and her father, followed by Frank Warner, Huddy Ledbelly, Pete Seeger, and Richard Dyer-Bennett.

More or less in that order.


A

Subject: RE: Who influenced you to become a musician
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 12 Aug 09 - 02:50 PM

This is my cue to embarrass John Kelly (again)...

But first things first. Jozeph Roberts gave me my first floor-spot, the third time I went to Chorlton FC (February 2003). I did Sally Free and Easy, unaccompanied in a long fawn mac. Afterwards Jozeph said to me, slightly reproachfully, "You should have told us you sing." That was nice to hear (I mean, 'sing', not 'can sing'...) Thanks, Joe.

When I was a regular at Chorlton Kate Reigate used to be a semi-regular visitor, and was one of the few other performers who sang unaccompanied. But whereas I did whatever I felt like that week, Kate invariably did something traditional - and usually something I hadn't heard, despite my in-depth knowledge of the Pentangle and the Span. One week she did a completely different version of a song I thought I knew - that really got me interested. Thanks, Kate.

Les Jones was and is a Chorlton regular, and is also the onlie begetter of the Beech singaround, which got going in December 2007. There I met a bunch of people - former Song Carriers, Saracen's Head regulars and suchlike reprobates - whose knowledge of and enthusiasm for traditional song made me feel like a thirteen-year-old with his first Steeleye album. Fortunately I didn't run screaming; the experience opened a door that stayed open. Thanks, Les.

By the time I saw John Kelly do a full set, I was starting to get albums of traditional song & putting some work into finding songs and fitting them to my voice. (I was even starting to go off Anne Briggs.) So John didn't make me change direction, but he did absolutely confirm that I was on the right track - if a set of traditional material could sound like that, why would I want to mess around with anything else? Cheers, John.

Subject: RE: Who influenced you to become a musician
From: Old Vermin
Date: 12 Aug 09 - 02:51 PM

The musicians in the Ram Ciderhouse, Godalming [closed 1999]

Ed Rennie, Phil Atkinson, Keith Calton, Kevin Gorton and many others.

http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/351117.

Took a few years for it to work, but I'm beginning to get there.

Subject: RE: Who influenced you to become a musician
From: black walnut
Date: 12 Aug 09 - 03:12 PM

a. Grandma Moyer, playing the piano at the Baptist Church with her arthritic fingers.

b. And I just had to had to had to do it, that's all. I cried as a little kid to get a piano, until my parents finally caved in. I also cried for a harp, but unfortunately that didn't happen until I was in my 40's, with my own money. :-)

~b.w.

Subject: RE: Who influenced you to become a musician
From: Willie-O
Date: 12 Aug 09 - 06:35 PM

There is an interesting thing going on here...perhaps someone can count up the number of folks influenced by recording stars, and those influenced by someone playing live in front of them.

Now I had all kinds of recordings that influenced me...mostly my folks' Maritime folk music records (they moved to Ottawa shortly before I was born).   But to speak to the actual question...I always remember a public-school talent show kinda thing, around grade five or six. Three girls in my class--Kathy Kornelissen, Karen Parker and Hannah Ayukawa, I think--got up with a guitar and sang "Four Strong Winds". I just sat there as gob-smacked as a ten-year-old boy can get, and that is pretty goddamn gobsmacked in case you're wondering. I'd never heard the song before, and it was the only time I ever saw these girls sing with a guitar...I was just plain smitten. I like to think that my reaction was "I could do that", but really it was just "Wow, that's fantastic." (subtext: "Huh? It's not on a record!")

I will love that song till the day I die, just for the memory of when it carried me out of the cruddy interior of Fairfield Public School, to someplace where those winds sure can blow cold, way out there.

W-O

p.s. a couple of years ago the former Fairfield Public School was knocked down and replaced with 155 rowhouses. I guess the rsidents' kids will go to school somewhere but they sure won't have the acreage we enjoyed at recess..."You don't know what you've got till it's gone".

Subject: RE: Who influenced you to become a musician
From: Tootler
Date: 12 Aug 09 - 07:15 PM

I don't think any recording has influenced me to become a musician but they have influenced my musical tastes.

The people who have really influenced me as a musician are the various people who have taught me over the years. The teacher in my final year at primary school who first taught me recorder, the tutors at a Local College where I took a music course as an adult having rediscovered the recorder when my daughters started learning it at school. The Musical director of our local recorder society who taught a recorder class at the college. The various tutors at the Folkworks Caedmon Folk classes in Gateshead. Also several others at weekend and day workshops I have been to from time to time.

The feature all have shared is that they have encouraged my musical development and have never put me down, so I always felt encouraged to keep going.

Subject: RE: Who influenced you to become a musician
From: Commander Crabbe
Date: 12 Aug 09 - 07:33 PM

My self and Ralph McTell

CC

Subject: RE: Who influenced you to become a musician
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 12 Aug 09 - 07:55 PM

I was born one. Best answer I can give. It was many years after I'd fooled around with ukelele, harmonica and mandolin before I heard someone who influenced my music. No one influenced me to become one.
Plenty of musicians influenced over the years, but they were in many genres, from jazz to popular music to folk (once I realized it was called folk music.) Frankie Lane, Frank Sinatra, Clancy Hayes, Lonnie Donnegan, Tal Farlow... hard to characterize their similarities other than that they sounded like they loved the music they played.

Subject: RE: Who influenced you to become a musician
From: Smokey.
Date: 12 Aug 09 - 08:19 PM

My mother, with a wind-up gramophone and a piano.

Subject: RE: Who influenced you to become a musician
From: Acorn4
Date: 13 Aug 09 - 04:13 AM

An album called "The Paul Simon Song Book".

Subject: RE: Who influenced you to become a musician
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 13 Aug 09 - 05:05 AM

Alan "Pop" Morrow, my music teacher at school, 1958 - 1964, who showed me that there was more to music than Hank Marvin and Buddy Holly (great though they were). RIP "Pop".

My mum, who sang all day long and had the voice of an angel. I can still hear her singing "Too-Ra-Loo-Ra" to me as she cuddled me on her knee before bed. Aaaaaaaaaaaahhhh!   :-)

My dad, who could only play the gramophone - but what great stuff he played on it, The Ink Spots, The Andrews Sisters, Glenn Miller, Sinatra. The gramophone had a strange 'hot' smell when it was playing (it was one of the modern 'electric' models!), I can recall that smell even now, >50 years on.

And a guy who played the accordion for our sing-songs on the coach that used to take us on the annual outings from the factory my dad worked at. I always wanted to play the accordion, never made it.

Subject: RE: Who influenced you to become a musician
From: GUEST,Mr Red
Date: 13 Aug 09 - 06:05 AM

Well, as a drummer can I call myself a musician?
As a singist I guess I can include myself on that score loosely.

Well it was the dear departed ex-wife. She gave me the freedom not to embarrass her - or let her be embarrassed on my behalf.

May she forever stay departed. And I - for my part will never stop singing - just to prevent such good fortune deserting me - I've changed the locks anyway.

Subject: RE: Who influenced you to become a musician
From: kendall
Date: 13 Aug 09 - 06:24 AM

My friend, Gordon Bok encouraged me to go on stage and perform for audiences.

Subject: RE: Who influenced you to become a musician
From: olddude
Date: 13 Aug 09 - 08:12 AM

My friend Harry Chapin and I still miss him everyday

Subject: RE: Who influenced you to become a musician
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 13 Aug 09 - 10:21 AM

Gordon Bok has always been an encourager. Many years ago I booked Bok, Trickett and Muir for their very first ever concert together. Gordon stayed overnight at our place and we spent well into the night playing music after the concert. What moved me was that he just wanted to listen to me. I hadn't started performing concerts back then, with no expectation of doing a record and yet Gordon made me feel that I was important.

That is one of his finest gifts.

Jerry

Subject: RE: Who influenced you to become a musician
From: GUEST,Paco Rabanne
Date: 13 Aug 09 - 10:45 AM

Nick Griffin.

Subject: RE: Who influenced you to become a musician
From: Art Thieme
Date: 13 Aug 09 - 11:15 AM

This is not a facetious post!

ALL of the people in this music of ours who have influenced me musically and intellectually have been spoken about ad-infinitum here at Mudcat in hundreds of my posts. I will let those stand for themselves as they are eminently findable here in this forum.

My mother, my aunt and my uncle are the three people I wish to mention in this thread as being extremely influential in having me turn out to be a musician.

They fought me at every turn by expressing their disapproval of this sincere and heartfelt choice of mine!! None ever heard me play my music before they all died.

Art

Subject: RE: Who influenced you to become a musician
From: Wesley S
Date: 13 Aug 09 - 11:25 AM

My brother brought home a Gibson 12 string guitar and a banjo from his time in the air force. And lots of records by Joan Baez, the Brother Four , The Kingston Trio and Peter Paul and Mary. It rubbed off on me. I'm still grateful. Thanks Jeff.

Subject: RE: Who influenced you to become a musician
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 13 Aug 09 - 11:33 AM

The rock guitar gods of the '60s and early '70s (Hendrix, Clapton, Duane Allman et al) made me want to become a musician, but they've actually had almost no influence upon my playing. While I made a stab at learning guitar during those days, the stuff those guys were doing was so far above my understanding I more or less gave up.

The person who most influenced me to actually become a musician was my best friend during early adulthood. He was a good enough electric guiatrist to master some of that stuff I liked but couldn't grasp. I'd listen to him play, but never attempted to join in. Then, a few years later, he gravitated toward acoustic guitar and I thought I could handle some of what he was doing, so I decided to give it a try. He taught me enough that I could keep my head above water in jam sessions, which is where I've really learned most of what I do.

Of well-known musicians, the one who's most influenced my actual playing style is probably Norman Blake.

Subject: RE: Who influenced you to become a musician
From: John P
Date: 13 Aug 09 - 04:03 PM

I can't remember when I wasn't a musician. I was a relentless drummer by age 2, and started finding my way around on the piano not long after. I don't think anyone influenced me to start playing music, and I don't think I had any choice in the matter.

Subject: RE: Who influenced you to become a musician
From: Howard Jones
Date: 14 Aug 09 - 05:42 AM

Me too. I always wanted to play music from my earliest days. I can still remember the excitement of my first music lesson at primary school, and my disappointment at being made to play triangle when I wanted to play the drum.

I learned recorder at school, because you do, but I wanted to play guitar because that was what the pop stars played. However, by the time I had taught myself to play 3 chords pop music had gone all psychedelic and didn't work on an acoustic guitar. I found "Burl Ives' Book of Australian Folk Songs" in the local music shop, with tunes I could play, and that led me to folk music.

Subject: RE: Who influenced you to become a musician
From: SharonA
Date: 14 Aug 09 - 07:34 AM

-- My parents, who insisted that all their kids take piano lessons. My father had been a guitarist when he was able to play (pre-rheumatoid arthritis) and my mother was an elementary-school teacher (with a mental library of a bazillion children's songs), so there was no getting away from music in my family.

-- My two older brothers, whom I idolized as a kid, and who were playing brass instruments in the junior high school band while I was struggling with the piano. I especially adored my eldest brother's trombone (I was fascinated with the concept of a sliding tone and the way it freed one from the restrictions of pressing a key) and I wanted to learn to play trombone as well, but when the time came for my rite of passage to a second instrument, my arms were too short to deal with the trombone slide. I was handed a clarinet instead; I had virtually no choice in the matter! But I took to it in a way I never had taken to the piano, and I loved playing in the school band, which was an invaluable learning experience. Don't know that I would have considered risking the ridicule from my junior-high classmates (band was not exactly a "cool" activity) if my brothers hadn't done it first.

Subject: RE: Who influenced you to become a musician
From: Johnhartford
Date: 14 Aug 09 - 03:03 PM

hi

Like others here I seemed to have been born just loving any kind of music.

However it was Lonnie Donnegan that actually influenced me to buy a guitar and actually learn to play so that I could achieve my ambition to play and sing in public.

My old man had a couple of Donnegan records and although the skiffle wave had started to fade into memory I bought an old Hofner guitar and started to teach myself to play along with Lonnie. I have to be honest and say that I wasn't a great admirer of Lonnie's music but it got me playing. So I will always be thankful to Lonnie.

By some strange chance I actually met up with Lonnie some years later. He was visiting some people who he stayed with as an evacuee many years earlier in my home town in Cheshire, though I was unaware of this.

The guy who he stayed with by this time was the Mayor and Lonnie came up to do a set for the Mayor's charity.

I was playing with a band on the same show.

We had a beer together and talked about Jazz.

Cheers

John

Subject: RE: Who influenced you to become a musician
From: GUEST,Bruce Michael Baillie
Date: 14 Aug 09 - 05:52 PM

The Dubliners and a bit later Planxty, Andy Irvine and Christy Moor. I still regard Andy Irvine as my all time musical hero to this day. But also my mother who played the piano (self taught) in our house while I was growing up. Many's the duet we did together at family parties back in the 60's. Old traditional songs and also her filthy version of Old King Cole (was a bugger for his hole!) She gave me a love for music that I still have AND it all seemed so normal. Making music at home, how many people do that these days?

Subject: RE: Who influenced you to become a musician
From: deadfrett
Date: 15 Aug 09 - 06:01 PM

Dad and all those others

Subject: RE: Who influenced you to become a musician
From: SPB-Cooperator
Date: 15 Aug 09 - 06:07 PM

Michael Black

Subject: RE: Who influenced you to become a musician
From: Fidjit
Date: 16 Aug 09 - 12:29 AM

Quote Greg Stevens

Lonnie Donegan, who else?

And George Melly

Chas

Subject: RE: Who influenced you to become a musician
From: Kosmo
Date: 16 Aug 09 - 07:10 AM

My Taid who's an opera singer who taught me to read msuci and play the piano - he also plays the accordian.

My parents, who've sang and played folk around me since I was wee.

Queen, because I really love them.

ACDC, why not?

Luv
Kosmo

Subject: RE: Who influenced you to become a musician
From: Fidjit
Date: 16 Aug 09 - 08:13 AM

Pity they didn't teach you to spell

Chas

Subject: RE: Who influenced you to become a musician
From: GUEST,Gabe
Date: 16 Aug 09 - 10:07 AM

Dean Martin as incedible as it may sound. When I got my first guitar, "That's Amore" was the #1 tune on the hit parade. With it's 2 or 3 chords, I played it until I was almost exiled from home.

Gabe

Subject: RE: Who influenced you to become a musician
From: Stringsinger
Date: 16 Aug 09 - 12:33 PM

Music has been a journey for me that's covered a lot of territory.

My mother was a piano teacher during the Depression. As a small child I would hide
under the grand piano as she taught and practiced Chopin, Scriabin, Schumann, Mozart,
Beethoven etc.

At four years of age I would wake up a 6:00 A.M. in the East Side of Los Angeles and tune into KMTR, the voice of Tijuana Mexico and listen to Mariachi groups such as "Los Trabadajores de Mexico".

My step-father brought home 78's of Danny Kaye, Burl Ives, Leadbelly, Josh White,
Dwight Fiske (a name you don't hear any more), Gilbert and Sullivan, Lily Pons,
"The Lonesome Train" (Seeger, Ives, etc.) and an odd assortment of specialty songs such as "There are Lilies In The Bottom of My Garden", "Walter, Walter, Lead Me To the Altar"
"Suzanne is a Funny Old Man". My step-father Phil sang to me a song he had learned
hopping the freight cars from a Black hobo called "The Tennessee Blues". I still sing it
and have never heard anyone else sing it since.

I inherited an original copy of Carl Sandburg's "American Songbag" circa 192(?) from
my biological father who died four months before I was born.

I saw the movie "Smoky" and fell in love with Burl Ives.

Studied jazz guitar with Sam Surace who later became a sociologist professor at U.C.L.A.

My conservative aunt who was at that time a flaming Socialist introduced me to a 78 recording of "Hold The Line", a documentary of the Peekskill Riots. I'll never forget the opening, "This is Howard Fast".

Fell in love with Pete Seeger.

1949...went to my first Hootenanny. Bart van der Schelling (a vet of the Spanish Civil War) and his wife had them in their home in the Hollywood Hills. In subsequent meetings I met Cisco Houston, Woody Guthrie, Bess Lomax Hawes, Mickey and Mattie Miller, Jerry Atinsky,
Guy Carawan (who became my singing partner for a while), Rich Dehr and Frank Miller (later to become the Easy Riders with Terry Gilkyson) and a beautiful Black woman who played the autoharp and sang spirituals.

In high school, sang folk songs and played on folksong program for radio station KGIL in the San Fernando Valley. One of my fans was Wendell Corey, the actor who was most gracious and encouraging. Don Cherry was the M.C. I believe.

Through Will Geer, I met Cisco, the Weavers and my first exposure to Pete Seeger.
(Had to learn to play that kind of banjo, Pete blew me away so I took a couple of lessons from Eddie Mann.

Guy, Pete and I jammed together.

I met Woody at Will Geer's ranch and learned harmonica from him to perform in a local production of "Finian's Rainbow" playing the Sonny Terry part. We became "pickin' buddies".

Got into trad jazz and played trombone in jam sessions at the 47 club on Ventura Boulevard hosted by Zutty Singleton. Doc Rando, who played with Bob Crosby took me
under his wing. We became friends. (Practicing doctor who played jazz clarinet.)

Bess and Butch Hawes (with help from the UCLA music library) introduced me to
authentic trad American folkmusic .

Then one thing lead to another. I'm getting this down for an autobio. Mudcat folks have been encouraging and generous about this and I think it's our responsibility to see that these experiences get documented somehow. We all need to do this.

Couldn't do anything else but be in music because I was fired from every other job I attempted. Arrows pointed "Go this way".

Frank Hamilton

Subject: RE: Who influenced you to become a musician
From: Leadfingers
Date: 16 Aug 09 - 02:40 PM

Whichever of my parets bought my firat Mouth Organ I suppose !

Cant think of anyone else to balme

Subject: RE: Who influenced you to become a musician
From: Bernard
Date: 16 Aug 09 - 02:59 PM

101