So, you must be wondering, is this a story about John Hammond or a piece about Tom Waits? Yes, it is. I said I'd never heard anything like him before, and he moved to New York in the late '70s, so I got to see him a whole bunch and got to see his star rise, ya know what I mean?" But I went on and played, and after the show he was hangin' out and told me he was a big fan of mine. "I didn't want him to stop, and then when the show ended, I didn't want to go on. "This is before Tom's voice had gotten rough, and he did the most incredible songs," Hammond continues, smiling at the recollection. He puffs on an American Spirit and sounds very much like a man who was born in New York City and who still lives in New Jersey. Hammond squints through the pool's reflection, and beneath blinding blue skies, he looks a great deal younger than his 58 years - lean and trim beneath his black tee shirt. "When Tom went on, I did that double take: ' What? Who is that?'" Hammond recalls now, sitting beside a Holiday Inn in south Austin. He'd never heard of him no one else had either. He decided on this night to show up early to the club to catch the opening performer, some guy named Tom Waits. Hammond, a man who's spent more time on the road than asphalt, was touring the Southwest at the time, and he was bored out of his skull. One night in '74, Hammond and Waits met up in a Scottsdale nightclub called Balcony Hall, and 27 years would pass before either man realized just how much that night meant for both of them. Waits had released but two albums, Closing Time and The Heart of Saturday Night he was still fumblin' with the blues, still chasing that grapefruit moon, still lonely. His voice had yet to succumb to smoke and drink he was only starting to get weird. He was a veteran, and he was only 32.īy 1974, Tom Waits was just in his mid-20s and still trying to find himself somewhere out on Jack Kerouac's dirt road and in Raymond Chandler's ashtray. By the early '70s, Hammond had appeared on some 17 records, a couple of them even best-ofs - that's how long he'd been in the blues, in the biz. He put together a club band in 1966 that featured a kid named Jimi Hendrix on guitar, and had to his credit the soundtrack to a Dustin Hoffman pic ( Little Big Man, no small feat).
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John when Mac Rebennack was just out of residency. He had made records with Robbie Robertson and Levon Helm when they were still young Hawks, with Bill Wyman when the Rolling Stone was still but a pebble, and Dr.
By 1974, John Hammond had played with damn near every great bluesman who ever lived: Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Duane Allman, Charlie Musselwhite, Mike Bloomfield, John Lee Hooker, the Staples Singers.
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