John Hartford

Today John Hartford [note 1] is mainly remembered as the author of “Gentle On My Mind”, one of the most covered songs in the history of country music. In particular, Glen Campbell's version was the second most-played song on American radio in the second half of the twentieth century, surpassed only by “Yesterday” by the Beatles (source: Broadcast Music, Inc.). A singer with a deep yet flexible voice, and a superb banjo player and fiddler, between 1967 and 1970 he released six albums for RCA Victor with which he rewrote the rulebook and sparked the progressive country revolution [note 2]: he married the polish of urban country with the authenticity of its rural roots, generating complex visions with an intellectual bent influenced by rock singer-songwriter tradition as well as by the psychedelic movement (occasionally slipping in dissonances, bold orchestrations or drum patterns never before heard in that context).

Once his contract ended, he signed with Warner Bros. and released two albums that radically changed his output: he threw himself headlong into bluegrass [note 3], a niche within a niche, yet even there he upended every rule. In 1971, “Aereo-Plain” proved to be a downright radical record for the genre: made with the participation of Norman Blake, one of the greatest country and folk guitarists of all time, it features sixteen experimentally-minded tracks showing freely structured melodies, jazzy inflections, seemingly disconnected instrumental fragments, but also satirical and surreal lyrics [note 4]. Even more unexpected is the shift in Hartford's vocal approach: whereas his style had previously always been clean and velvety, close to that of the great pop and jazz crooners, he now also resorts to rapid tongue-twisters, onomatopoeic backing vocals, ungainly falsettos and sudden shifts in intensity.

The album unexpectedly gained a certain following, reaching the bottom of the Billboard 200 (which may seem modest, but for a genre like bluegrass, always relegated to the margins of the record industry, it wasn't). Its follow-up, “Morning Bugle” (1972), sadly failed to match its impact, despite boasting the presence of bassist Dave Holland, who lent it striking jazz shadings. Although the term progressive bluegrass was already in use at the time, these records redefined its meaning, having pushed further than anyone had dared before.

At that point Hartford, proving that perhaps the major-label industry was never really his home, decided not to renew his contract and, in a move outside any convention, went back to cultivating his greatest passion after music: riverboat navigation. Born and raised in Saint Louis, right where the Mississippi meets the Missouri, the American artist had always been fascinated by the river, its trade routes, its landscapes and its mythology, partly thanks to the novels of Mark Twain. As a young man he had worked on a barge tugboat, and reflecting on that experience he decided he wanted to earn his riverboat pilot's license. He would go on to work aboard the Julia Belle Swain [note 5] for three years, before feeling the pull to record again.

In 1976 he signed with Flying Fish, a young independent label specializing in folk, country, blues and related genres: the new album was released in June of that same year. Titled “Mark Twang”, it sums up Hartford's entire universe, grafting onto Mark Twain the onomatopoeic term for the sound of a banjo. The ten tracks on the tracklist were all recorded by Hartford solo and without overdubs, accompanying himself in turn with banjo, fiddle (the term for the violin in country and folk contexts) or guitar, adding only foot-stomps on a wooden board (a device borrowed from clogging, the traditional dance technique typical of Appalachia).

The album, on paper his most stripped-down and minimalist, also reveals itself to be his freest: with no other musicians to coordinate and no record label left to answer to, Hartford let himself run wild, and the result is a sequence of loose-limbed tracks in which the rhythmic flow undergoes surprise shifts, the fiddle screeches, the themes are dotted with repetitions in turn cracked by micro-variations, the structures are lopsided (the instrumental passages aren't interludes within the vocals, but rather the reverse), the vocal meters get so clogged up that he runs out of breath (and, so as not to compromise the authenticity of the result, the moment he catches his breath is left intact), the voice growls, mutters, alternates falsettos and low notes, before breaking into onomatopoeia.

The lyrics build a concept album based precisely on life on the river and on bluegrass music, which by that point were inextricable for Hartford. “Skippin In The Mississippi Dew” opens the tracklist at breakneck speed over slashing fiddle runs:

Well, I dream of a girl and a boat with a wheel,

a stove in the cabin and a brass engine telegraph,

her leaning against a post by the main deck stairs,

long hair dancing in the Mississippi dew.

Oh, the river runs wide, runs deep, runs muddy,

the river will keep running long after I'm gone,

with the steamboat turning in a wide curve,

dancing in the Mississippi dew.

Well, I went up the river last Sunday,

twelve feet of water on the Memphis gauge,

it wouldn't be home without the muddy water flowing,

the paddle wheel dancing in the Mississippi dew.

Once in spring I'd sign up on the river,

thirty-five days on a Valley Line boat,

I'd earn a little money, in spring I'd find a girl

and set off dancing in the Mississippi dew

Still on fiddle, but decidedly gentler, "Long Hot Summer Day" describes part of his working experience:

I've got to pick up some empty barges here,

as soon as I find out where they're moored,

tied to those launches and ready to leave,

on a long, hot summer's day.

For every day I work on the Illinois River

they give me half a paid day off,

all the time to couple the barges,

on a long, hot summer's day

Fingerpicked banjo drives "Let Him Go On, Mama", dedicated to Mike O'Leary, chief engineer on a boat Hartford had met a few years earlier and whose figure had struck him:

Well, he likes black coffee, fried eggs

and a well-done T-bone steak,

he likes a red dress and teeth white as pearls

and the sight of a nice tanned leg.

He used to say, you know, that in the Thirties

you never had it easy,

he's an engineer on the Ohio River,

works the commercial route to Pittsburgh.

He also worked at the inspection office in Louisville,

[but] he didn't stay behind a desk for long,

and he played in a band on two different boats,

working for the Strackfus company.

And a long time ago he used to smoke weed

and even brewed his own beer at home

and the weed came from New Orleans,

before World War II.

He's just a guy who worked on the river

his whole life next to a paddle wheel,

you say he's old-fashioned,

but that's surely no big deal

Almost an interlude, "Don't Leave Your Records In The Sun", for banjo, does nothing more than advise against leaving vinyl records out in the sun (at the end, both the voice and the banjo mimic a record skipping). "Tater Tate And Allen Mundy" is a vocal tour de force: after a slow introduction on the beauty of bluegrass, Hartford rushes to list, singing them off in just 50 seconds, some ninety musicians who made the scene great (it seems he was able to repeat the feat live as well, though there's no audio or video evidence of it).

"The Julia Belle Swain", again on banjo, returns to the river, telling the story of the steamboat of the same name. The most interesting verses of the lyrics are the fourth, in which he describes the crew's makeup, quite unusual for the era, and the fifth, in which he recounts the Great Steamboat Race of 1975-76, in which he himself took part as a crew member:

Now, the Julia Belle Swain is a feminist boat, the first one I ever knew,

she's got girls in the wheelhouse, girls on deck, and a lady down in the engine room,

now Donna's got her license, Cindy's learning how to steer,

little Julie keeps Moon out of trouble by wandering around everywhere.

When the Julia Belle enters a steamboat race, she's mighty hard to beat,

she's raced against the Belle Of Louisville, she's beaten the Delta Queen,

she doesn't need any help to maneuver, she can turn right around in no time,

and after the race she heads back up the river, because the Julia Belle still has time to spare

“Little Cabin Home On The Hill Waugh Waugh” takes the near-namesake ballad by Bill Monroe, a bluegrass standard, strips it of its music and recites the lyrics until they become unintelligible, repeating syllables and vowels as if to create a kind of echo or trumpet effect. The “Waugh Waugh” added to the original title is meant precisely to mimic the sound produced by this peculiar technique.

“Austin Minor Sympathy”, a nearly seven-minute fiddle instrumental, radically shifts gears and dares the unthinkable: it seems to attempt what was then an unprecedented marriage between bluegrass and classical minimalism.

As if to disown such ambition, “Trying To Do Something To Get Your Attention” closes the show by mocking love songs: Hartford pretends to believe it's too hard to write romantic lyrics, and lines up a series of bizarre alternative gimmicks to catch the attention of the person he loves, such as a solo made of breaths, a guitar solo (the only track on the record where the instrument actually appears), and one made of smacking and slapping cheeks.

“Mark Twang” obviously won't achieve any kind of commercial success, but it will be immediately celebrated by press and industry insiders, winning a Grammy in 1977 for “Best Ethnic or Traditional Folk Recording”. Hartford will keep operating on the margins of the record industry for his entire career, even as he's welcomed as a legend at bluegrass festivals and makes the occasional TV appearance, invited by the many colleagues who admired him, not just in bluegrass (Tony Rice, Béla Fleck), but across the most disparate fields, from Glen Campbell in country to Jerry Garcia in rock. He will die in 2001 of lymphoma, at 63, just in time to appear on the massively successful soundtrack of “O Brother, Where Art Thou?“.

In recent years, young phenomenon Billy Strings, who has almost single-handedly restored relevance to bluegrass, has shown great admiration for the master's work, playing several times at the John Hartford Memorial Festival.

[note 1] Born Harford, he was convinced to change his surname to make it more marketable: the one who advised him on this was Chet Atkins, a leading producer and guitarist in the Nashville industry, who landed him a record deal.

[note 2] Nothing to do with progressive rock. Progressive country was the movement that reinterpreted the genre's more traditional side in light of the era's counterculture, from Bob Dylan on down.

[note 3] Bluegrass is the strand of country music most committed to preserving the integrity of the genre's folk roots, while grafting onto them innovative elements drawn from the world of jazz. Today some consider it a separate context from country altogether, albeit closely related.

[note 4] In "Tear Down The Grand Ole Opry" he goes so far as to imagine a sacrilegious demolition of the building from which the Grand Ole Opry is broadcast, the radio program that has aired from Nashville since 1925 and is still considered the very symbol of country music: this is obviously a metaphor for the commercialization of country, at the expense of forms deemed closer to its roots, such as bluegrass.

[note 5] This is the boat used in the 1973-'74 film adaptations of "Tom Sawyer" and "Huckleberry Finn".

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28/09/2025