Profile of John Hartford on Famous Like Me

John Cowan Hartford (December 30, 1937– June 4, 2001) was an American bluegrass composer and musician known for his mastery of the fiddle and banjo, as well as for his witty lyrics and unique vocal style. Hartford performed with a variety of ensembles throughout his career, and is perhaps best known for his solo performances where he would interchange the guitar, banjo, and fiddle from song to song. He also invented his own shuffle tap dance move, and danced on a amplified piece of plywood while he played and sang.

John Harford (he would change his name to Hartford later in life at the behest of Chet Atkins) was born on December 30, 1937 in New York City. He spent his childhood in St. Louis, MO where he fell in love with two things, music and the Mississippi River. He recorded more than 30 albums, and was a featured guest on many others, including the Byrds Sweetheart of the Rodeo. He won a Grammy award in 1968 for his song "Gentle on My Mind", after Glen Campbell's cover version became a hit. The notoriety and income that his hit provided allowed Hartford to forge his own path in music, allowing him to break free of the need to record hit after hit to support his career. He won another Grammy in 1976 for his album Mark Twang for Best Ethnic or Traditional Folk Recording.

More recently, Hartford performed on the soundtrack for the film, O Brother Where Art Thou? and hosted the live performance of the film's soundtrack at the famous Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, TN, as seen on the documentary "Down from the Mountain." His voice can be heard in Ken Burns' documentary Baseball.

Hartford was known to draw with both his left & right hands...at the same time. He earned his steamboat pilot license and was an expert at the history of our rivers and boats. John Hartford long maintained a parallel existence as a Mississippi riverboat pilot. Hartford grew up in St. Louis listening to stories and songs of the old steamboating days. His musical impulse came from seeing Flatt and Scruggs, the trendsetting bluegrass band made up of former Bluegrass Boys Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs, and from the old-time dances that were still being held in the area during his youth in the 1950s. Hartford said often that the first time he heard Earl Scruggs pick the banjo changed his life. He later moved to the West Coast, where he became a regular on the Smothers Brothers television show, and on to Nashville, where he put together a band featuring Vassar Clements and Norman Blake that became the cutting edge of a "new traditionalist" movement on the country scene. The album, "Steam-Powered Aereoplane" and its follow up "Morning Bugle", blended traditional and contemporary styles in a unique way, and became what many believe to be his masterpieces. His Grammy-winning "Mark Twang" features Hartford in a solo setting, reminiscent of his live solo performances playing the fiddle, guitar, banjo, and amplified plywood for tapping his feet. During his later years, he came back to the river every summer. "Working as a pilot is a labor of love," he said. "After a while, it becomes a metaphor for a whole lot of things, and I find for some mysterious reason that if I stay in touch with it, things seem to work out all right."

Along with his own compositions, Hartford was a voluminous repository of old river songs, calls, and stories. He could spend hours talking about the glory days of steamboating, or demonstrate the lead calls that the river's most famous chronicler took as his name, "Mark Twain" (or "two fathoms"). A virtuoso fiddler and banjo player, Hartford was simultaneously an innovative voice on the country scene and a thrilling reminder of a vanished era.

Hartford was also the author of "Steamboat in a Cornfield," a children's book that recounts the true story of the Ohio River Steamboat The Virginia and its somewhat comical beaching in a cornfield. At the time of his death, Hartford was also working on the biography of the blind fiddler Ed Haley. Hartford's album "Wild Hog in the Red Bush" is a collection of Haley's tunes.

He was a graduate of John Burroughs School in St. Louis, Missouri, and an honoree of that city's Walk of Fame. Hartford died from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in Nashville, Tennessee.

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