“My mother tells stories of going on writing retreats and there was Steve Martin or Rob Reiner,” says Hartford’s daughter Katie Hogue.
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with his family, Hartford was also hired as a writer for the Smothers’ series and was a regular on Campbell’s own variety show starting in 1969.
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“There would be this guy playing banjo on major network television,” recalls McCoury of watching the show when he was young. Before long Hartford was appearing on the hippest and most envelope-pushing variety show of its time. According to author David Bianculli, the idea of having Hartford on their show popped into their brains right then. Tom Smothers, then co-hosting The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour with his brother Dick, was smoking weed one day with musician and series regular Mason Williams, both listening to one of Hartford’s albums. (Hartford won for Best Folk Performance and Best Country & Western Song, and Campbell for Best Recording and Solo Male Vocal Performance, both in the country category.) But no one, not even Hartford, could have predicted what came next. In 1967, both men won separate Grammys for singing or writing it. Hartford cut the song first, but it was Campbell’s version that made it a standard. Zhivago and I walked out of that theater and I wanted to drink Julie Christie’s bathwater!’” “I once asked him, ‘John, how’d you write that song?’” recalls McCoury, the son of bluegrass legend Del and a friend and collaborator of Hartford’s. The song was inspired by his marriage - but also possibly by the movie. Hartford was so affected by the experience that as soon as he arrived home, he wrote “Gentle on My Mind” in 20 minutes. Zhivago, the romantic epic set in pre-World War I Russia. In 1966, Hartford and his wife went to see Dr. If it was something he was interested in, he would explore it to the fullest degree.” “I don’t think there would be anything from John that would seem surprising, because there was no box he was in. “I’ve been really inspired by his ability to be so open,” says Sierra Hull, who was nine when Hartford died and only recently discovered his music. On them, you’ll hear deadpan novelty songs, unconventional protest tunes (the anti-nuke “When the Sky Began to Fall”), and transcendent, strings-decorated ballads like “This Eve of Parting,” written when he was about to go on tour and leave his wife behind. Hartford’s earliest albums for the label are some of the most idiosyncratic released in Nashville in the Sixties. His publisher introduced him to Chet Atkins and producer Felton Jarvis, and Harford - now renamed Hartford - wound up with an RCA contract in 1966. He did studio work (including on the Byrds’ Sweetheart of the Rodeo, in 1968), signed a publishing deal, and became a DJ to pay the bills.
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He was pushing 30 by the time he, his wife, and young son moved to Nashville in 1965, where he attempted to make a living in the music business. As a teenager, he began playing fiddle at square dances, eventually moving to five-string banjo. Louis, John Cowan Harford didn’t appear destined for pop or country charts. It’s his version of David Bowie’s “Fame” - but, in Hartford’s case, before the fame.īorn in New York City in 1937 but raised in St. The first song on his debut album, 1967’s Looks at Life, starts with rippling banjo before Hartford enters, talking about “this demon called commercial music” that looks to lure in “struggling young artists” who succumb to the monster. Hartford foretold the path of his career right from the start. Some people only know Sinatra’s version, but they didn’t know that Sinatra didn’t write it.” “It’s like ‘Send in the Clowns’ in that way. “A lot of people know ‘Gentle on My Mind,’ but they don’t know where it came from,” says Cash. Both projects also aim to remind people of the often forgotten scope of Hartford’s work and life.
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Culled from a slew of annotated notebooks he kept - and published in conjunction with a book of those songs and writing, John Hartford’s Mammoth Collection of Fiddle Tunes - the album includes the first recordings of those compositions by, among others, mandolinist and new bluegrass star Sierra Hull, mandolinist Ronnie McCoury, banjo player Mark Howard, and producer and fiddler Matt Combs. The John Hartford Fiddle Tune Project, Volume 1 is a collection of never-recorded instrumentals Hartford was writing before his death.