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Jorma Kaukonen

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Jorma Kaukonen
Kaukonen performing at the Crossroads Guitar Festival and playing the just-released Martin M-30 Jorma Kaukonen Custom Artist Edition guitar.
Kaukonen performing at the Crossroads Guitar Festival and playing the just-released Martin M-30 Jorma Kaukonen Custom Artist Edition guitar.
Background information
Birth nameJorma Ludwik Kaukonen, Jr.
Born (1940-12-23) December 23, 1940 (age 83)
Washington, D.C., U.S.
Genres
Occupations
  • Musician
  • songwriter
Instruments
  • Guitar
  • vocals
Years active1964–present
Labels
Websitejormakaukonen.com

Jorma Ludwik Kaukonen, Jr. (born December 23, 1940) is an American blues, folk, and rock guitarist,[2][3][4] best known for his work with Jefferson Airplane and Hot Tuna. Rolling Stone magazine ranked him #54 on its list of 100 Greatest Guitarists.[5]

Early life

Born in Washington, DC, the son of Beatrice Love (née Levine) and Jorma Ludwig Kaukonen,[6][7] Jorma Kaukonen had Finnish paternal grandparents and Russian Jewish ancestry on his mother's side.[8]

Kaukonen learned to play guitar as a teenager in Washington, DC, but before moving to the DC area, Jorma and family lived in Pakistan, the Philippines and other locales as he followed his father's State Department career from assignment to assignment before returning to the place of his birth. As a teenager in Washington, future Jefferson Airplane bassist Jack Casady (who at the time played six-string guitar) and he formed a band named The Triumphs. Kaukonen departed Washington for studies at Antioch College, where friend Ian Buchanan taught him fingerstyle guitar playing. Buchanan also introduced Kaukonen to the music of Reverend Gary Davis, whose songs have remained important parts of Kaukonen's repertoire throughout his career.[9]

In 1962, Kaukonen moved to the San Francisco Bay Area and enrolled at Santa Clara University. During this time, he taught guitar lessons at Benner Music Company in San Jose. As a self-described blues purist, Kaukonen never had any ambition to play in a rock band. He played as a solo act in coffee houses and can be heard accompanying a young Janis Joplin on acoustic guitar on an historic 1964 recording (known as "The Typewriter Tapes" because of the obtrusive sound of Kaukonen's first wife, Margareta, typing in the background).[10] In 1965, friend and classmate Paul Kantner invited Kaukonen to join a rock band he was forming with Marty Balin. Kaukonen found his imagination excited by the arsenal of effects available to electric guitar and later said, "I was sucked in by technology." Kaukonen suggested the name Jefferson Airplane, inspired by an eccentric friend who had given his dog the name "Blind Lemon Jefferson Airplane".[11]

Jefferson Airplane

Kaukonen with Jefferson Airplane
Kaukonen at the Bonnaroo Music Festival, June 16, 2007
Hot Tuna at MerleFest, 2006. Left to right: Jack Casady, Jorma Kaukonen, and Barry Mitterhoff

Though never a prolific singer and songwriter during his Airplane tenure, Kaukonen contributed some distinctive material. On the band's second album, Surrealistic Pillow, his song "Embryonic Journey" showcased his fingerstyle acoustic guitar virtuosity. On the next album, After Bathing at Baxter's, his sound had a harder edge inspired by Mike Bloomfield of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Cream, and other touring groups that performed in San Francisco. These stylistic changes are prominent in the acid rocker, "The Last Wall of the Castle", as well as the long (9:12) instrumental, "Spare Chaynge", cowritten with bandmates bassist Jack Casady and drummer Spencer Dryden. The improvisation marking "Spare Chaynge" is also present in the free-form extended jams, "Thing" and "Bear Melt", both live instrumentals recorded in 1968. Kaukonen insists, however, in the liner notes of the Live at the Fillmore East album, that these jams were not chaotic "free for alls", but were "complex rehearsed arrangements." Two songs that were later to become Hot Tuna signature tunes, "Rock Me Baby" and "Good Shepherd", a gospel ballad, were also recorded during the period 1968–1969. "Star Track", a song from 1968's Crown of Creation album, was also written by Kaukonen. He says it is about his own dealing with sudden fame, as the lyrics suggest: "Take your head in hand and make your own demands or you'll crystallize on the shelf/ The freeway's concrete way won't show you where to run or how to go."

Original compositions by Kaukonen on the 1971 Jefferson Airplane album, Bark are an instrumental, "Wild Turkey", "Feel So Good", and the acoustic autobiographical "Third Week in the Chelsea", detailing his feelings about the disintegration of the band. For the 1972 Long John Silver album, he wrote "Trial by Fire", a song which he still plays, and "Eat Starch Mom", a heavy song and the closer of the album, additionally significant for it being possibly the only Kaukonen-written song which Grace Slick sings by herself.

Hot Tuna and solo career

Hot Tuna

In 1969–70, Kaukonen and Jack Casady formed Hot Tuna, a spinoff group that allowed them to play as long as they liked. An early incarnation of Hot Tuna included Jefferson Airplane vocalist Marty Balin and featured Joey Covington on drums and vocals. This grouping came to an end after an unsuccessful recording jaunt to Jamaica, the sessions of which have never been released. Pared down to Kaukonen and Casady, Hot Tuna lived on as a vehicle for Kaukonen to show off his Piedmont-style acoustic blues fingerpicking skills. The self-titled first album was all acoustic and recorded live. With the dissolution of Jefferson Airplane in 1972, Hot Tuna went electric, with Airplane fiddler Papa John Creach joining for the next two albums. Hot Tuna scored an FM hit with "Ja Da (Keep on Truckin')" from their third (and first studio) album, Burgers. At this time, Kaukonen's songwriting began to dominate, as further evidenced by the next album, The Phosphorescent Rat, which featured only one cover song. Beginning with their fifth album, America's Choice (1974), the addition of drummer Bob Steeler encouraged a rise in volume and a change of band personality —a rampaging, Cream-like rock with often quasimystical lyrics by Kaukonen. During this period, the power trio was known for its very long live sets and instrumental jamming.

Solo career

In 1974, Kaukonen recorded the first and most successful of several solo albums, Quah, together with Tom Hobson. Produced by Jack Casady, and featuring (somewhat surprisingly) string overdubs on some tracks, this album contained some of Kaukonen's most deft fingerpicking work, especially on "Hamar Promenade", "Blue Prelude", "Genesis", and " Flying Clouds". The curious picture that adorns Quah's cover is today on display at Donkey Coffee and Espresso, a coffee shop in Athens, Ohio.

Kaukonen toured vigorously throughout the 1970s in both the United States and Europe, but with Hot Tuna's break up in 1978, the first phase of the band's career ended. Casady left to form the new wave band SVT, while Kaukonen released his second solo album, Jorma, a mix of electric guitar and acoustic fingerstyle in 1979. Meanwhile, he had formed the band Vital Parts.

Vital Parts

In 1979, Kaukonen and Bob Steeler formed the band Hidden Klitz (later White Gland) with bassist Denny DeGorio, who had played in a San Francisco band called The Offs with Steeler. Kaukonen, experimenting with a new image, not only cut his hair, but dyed it purple then bright orange, and had extensive tattoos adorn his body, back, and arms. Steeler left in late '79 and was replaced by Danny O'Brien on drums, who in turn, was later replaced by John Hanes. Now called Vital Parts, they recorded the album Barbeque King which was released in 1980. Kaukonen's traditional fan base did not warm to this new, perceived to be "punk" image, and sales of the album were so disappointing that Jorma was soon dropped from RCA Records.

He continued playing as a solo artist throughout the 1980s at such venues as The Chestnut Cabaret in Philadelphia, The Capitol Theater in Passaic, New Jersey, and in Port Chester, New York. As in his Hot Tuna days, he played very long sets, usually beginning with an hour-long acoustic set followed by a long intermission and then a two-hour electric set, sometimes accompanied by bass and drums. Having briefly reformed for a tour in 1983 that closed with a farewell show at Jonathan Swift's in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on 12/30/1983, Hot Tuna again reformed in the late 1980s. At a 1988 Hot Tuna performance at The Fillmore, Kaukonen surprised fellow Airplane alumnus Paul Kantner, who was sitting in, with a surprise appearance by his estranged lover Grace Slick; the success of this performance helped to pave the way for a Jefferson Airplane reunion tour and record in 1989.

There Goes the Neighborhood

In 1985, Kaukonen performed with a band There Goes the Neighborhood with Jaco Pastorius (bass), Doug McClean (harmonica), Whitie Melvin (percussion), Ben Prevo (guitar), and Rashied Ali (congas).

Notable projects

In 1984, Kaukonen appeared on Robert Hunter's Amagamalin Street. This was the third album released by Relix Records, a label, founded by Les Kippel, that specialized in bands from the San Francisco Bay Area. Relix also released Splashdown, featuring a rare performance by Hot Tuna on WQIV, a now-defunct radio station in New York. Kippel was instrumental in reuniting Kaukonen and Casady in 1985 for a Hot Tuna theater tour. Relix Records remained Hot Tuna's record label until 2000, and also released Classic Hot Tuna Acoustic, Classic Hot Tuna Electric, Live at Sweetwater, and Live at Sweetwater Two.

Two notable projects featuring Kaukonen were David Crosby's debut solo album If I Could Only Remember My Name, on Atlantic (1971) and Warren Zevon's Transverse City on Virgin in 1989. In 1993, he collaborated with ex-Grateful Dead keyboardist Tom Constanten in recording numerous arrangements of "Embryonic Journey". The resulting tracks were released as Embryonic Journey, the album, in 1994 on the Relix label. In 1999, he played several gigs with Phil Lesh and Friends. In 2000, he appeared with jam band Widespread Panic during their summer tour.

Current projects

With his wife Vanessa, Kaukonen currently owns and operates the Fur Peace Ranch, a 119-acre (0.48 km2) music and guitar camp in the hills of southeast Ohio, north of Pomeroy, complete with a 32 track studio.[12] He is currently under contract as a solo artist to Red House Records and still records and tours with Jack Casady and other friends such as Barry Mitterhoff as Hot Tuna. His 2002 album Blue Country Heart, also released as a 5.1 single layer SACD, was widely acclaimed by critics as one of the definitive examples of American "Depression-era" music and features Kaukonen backed by an all-star Nashville bluegrass band. The album was nominated for a Grammy Award.

Recent solo albums include Stars in My Crown (2007) and River of Time (2009).

Films

His track "Genesis" from the 1974 album Quah is featured in the films Margot at the Wedding (Noah Baumbach, 2007), and Transcendence (2014) [13] starring Johnny Depp and Rebecca Hall, the signature romance theme to the main two characters in the film.

Equipment

As a member of Jefferson Airplane, Kaukonen's primary guitar was a Gibson ES-345, noted for the visible Varitone dial on the guitar and the signature 345 logo on the headstock. Jorma presently endorses Martin Guitars. In 2010, Martin Guitars released the Martin M-30 Jorma Kaukonen Custom Artist Edition.[1] This guitar was designed by Jorma using ideas from two Martin guitars that he had previously been playing – a David Bromberg Custom Artist Edition and an M-5 prototype.

Jorma also uses and endorses the Fishman Loudbox amp.

Discography

See also: Jefferson Airplane discography and Hot Tuna discography

References

  1. ^ a b "Martin M-30 Jorma Kaukonen | C.F. Martin & Co". Martinguitar.com. Retrieved November 4, 2015.
  2. ^ Jorma Kaukonen at Allmusic
  3. ^ Jefferson Airplane at Allmusic
  4. ^ Hot Tuna at Allmusic
  5. ^ "100 Greatest Guitarists: David Fricke's Picks". Rollinstone.com. Retrieved November 4, 2015.
  6. ^ Got a revolution!: the turbulent flight of Jefferson Airplane – Jeff Tamarkin – Google Books. Books.google.ca. Retrieved September 17, 2012.
  7. ^ "Jorma Kaukonen". Hotguitarist.com. December 23, 1940. Retrieved September 17, 2012.
  8. ^ [1] Archived January 9, 2009, at the Wayback Machine
  9. ^ Tamarkin, Jeff. Got a Revolution!: The Turbulent Flight of Jefferson Airplane. New York: Atria Books, 2005, p. 29.
  10. ^ Tamarkin, p. 31
  11. ^ "Jefferson Airplane: Jorma Kaukonen". jeffersonairplane.com. Retrieved July 21, 2016.
  12. ^ Berkowitz, Kenny. "Full Circle: Rock Star Jorma Kaukonen Revisits his Youth with a Rootsy Collection of Early Classics." Acoustic Guitar. January 2003.
  13. ^ "Transcendence (I) (2014)". IMDb.com. Retrieved November 4, 2015.
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