Fred Sokolow
Encyclopedia
Fred Sokolow is an American
multi-instrumentalist who is best known as the author of a library of instructional books and DVDs for guitar, banjo, Dobro, mandolin, lap steel and ukulele.
bluegrass scene, playing with Jody Stecher
, Brantley Kearns, Sandy Rothman
and Eric Thompson
. Relocating to Berkeley, he toured and recorded with a hippie rock band
throughout most of the 60s, the Bay Area-based Notes From the Underground (Vanguard Records). In the early 70s Fred performed with R&B, rock, country and bluegrass bands. By 1975 Fred had played with bluegrass luminaries like John Herald
, Frank Wakefield
and Jerry Garcia
, had opened for the Dead
, the Doors
, B.B. King
, Country Joe and the Fish
and countless other acts, and he was playing in jazz combos with some of the Bay Areas best studio players.
In 1975 Fred returned to Los Angeles. He recorded two ground-breaking banjo albums for Kicking Mule Records
and began touring with Bobbie Gentry
and Jim Stafford
, playing rock guitar
, bluegrass banjo and lap steel. He also toured with the folk group
the Limeliters, juggling seven different instruments. By the end of the 70s he had begun writing instructional books (methods, transcription books and arrangement books) for all the music print publishers: Mel Bay, Hal Leonard, Warner Brothers
, Carl Fischer and more. He recorded a banjo video for Hot Licks, and several guitar videos for Stefan Grossman
's Guitar Workshop. His transcription books became known for their accuracy, and his method books were lauded for their clarity and effectiveness in music magazines all over the world. He began teaching guitar and banjo seminars in music camps and stores, and he taught classes at McCabe's Guitar Shop
in Santa Monica.
Fred currently lives in Santa Monica and primarily performs retro jazz guitar
with some of LA's finest musicians, playing and singing songs of the 30s and 40s. He often plays and records with British ex-rock star Ian Whitcomb
. And he plays bluegrass, blues or rockabilly whenever the opportunity arises. He's active on the studio scene, playing on other people's albums and on numerous TV and movie soundtracks, and he was a musical advisor on Michael Mann's film, Public Enemies. Fred also records and performs with children's artists like Dan Crow, Greg & Steve, KPFK's Uncle Ruthie and Paul Stookey
. He relishes the diversity of his portfolio: he played lap steel on the Tonight Show
, mandolin on Rick James' last CD, played Dobro with Chubby Checker
and won on the Gong Show
(playing bluegrass banjo), jammed at the House of Blues
with Junior Brown
...and he performs with the legendary folksinger Tom Paxton
whenever Tom comes to California. He continues to create instructional material, including his very successful "Roadmaps" series, and is regarded as an authority on many musical genres, particularly what is now called "Americana."
There are currently over a hundred of his books or DVDs in print, sold all over the world. Fred has long been a well-known West Coast multi-string performer and recording artist
, particularly on the acoustic music
scene. The diverse musical genres
covered in his books and DVDs, along with several bluegrass, jazz and rock CDs he has released, demonstrate his mastery of many musical styles. Whether he's playing Delta bottleneck blues, bluegrass or old-time banjo, 30s swing guitar or screaming rock solos, he does it with authenticity and passion.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
multi-instrumentalist who is best known as the author of a library of instructional books and DVDs for guitar, banjo, Dobro, mandolin, lap steel and ukulele.
Biography
Sokolow was born in Los Angeles and by the early 1960s he was well known in the Southern CaliforniaSouthern California
Southern California is a megaregion, or megapolitan area, in the southern area of the U.S. state of California. Large urban areas include Greater Los Angeles and Greater San Diego. The urban area stretches along the coast from Ventura through the Southland and Inland Empire to San Diego...
bluegrass scene, playing with Jody Stecher
Jody Stecher
Jody Stecher is an American singer and musician, who plays bluegrass and old-time music on banjo, mandolin, fiddle and guitar, and Dagar-vani dhrupad on the sursringar, a rare Indian instrument that is a baritone relative of the sarod....
, Brantley Kearns, Sandy Rothman
Sandy Rothman
Sandy Rothman is a San Francisco Bay Area bluegrass multi-instrumentalist and record producer, who plays mandolin, dobro and banjo, and was a friend and colleague of Grateful Dead bandleader Jerry Garcia, and a member of the Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band...
and Eric Thompson
Eric Thompson
Eric Norman Thompson was an English actor, producer and television presenter.Thompson was born in Sleaford, Lincolnshire, the son of George Henry and Anne Thompson, and grew up Rudgwick, Sussex, attending Collyer's School, Horsham...
. Relocating to Berkeley, he toured and recorded with a hippie rock band
Rock Band
Rock Band is a music video game developed by Harmonix Music Systems, published by MTV Games and Electronic Arts. It is the first title in the Rock Band series. The PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions were released in the United States on November 20, 2007, while the PlayStation 2 version was...
throughout most of the 60s, the Bay Area-based Notes From the Underground (Vanguard Records). In the early 70s Fred performed with R&B, rock, country and bluegrass bands. By 1975 Fred had played with bluegrass luminaries like John Herald
John Herald
John Herald was an American folk and bluegrass songwriter, solo and studio musician, and one-time member of The Greenbriar Boys trio.-Biography:...
, Frank Wakefield
Frank Wakefield
Franklin Delano Roosevelt Wakefield is an innovative American mandolin player in the bluegrass music style. Wakefield is known for his collaborations with a number of important and well-known bands, including Red Allen, Don Reno, Jerry Garcia, David Grisman and the Greenbriar Boys.-Biography:Born...
and Jerry Garcia
Jerry Garcia
Jerome John "Jerry" Garcia was an American musician best known for his lead guitar work, singing and songwriting with the band the Grateful Dead...
, had opened for the Dead
The Dead (band)
The Dead is an American rock band composed of some of the former members of the Grateful Dead.After the death of Jerry Garcia in 1995, Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Mickey Hart, and Bill Kreutzmann formed a band called The Other Ones. They performed concert tours in 1998 , 2000 , and 2002, and released one...
, the Doors
The Doors
The Doors were an American rock band formed in 1965 in Los Angeles, California, with vocalist Jim Morrison, keyboardist Ray Manzarek, drummer John Densmore, and guitarist Robby Krieger...
, B.B. King
B. B. King
Riley B. King , known by the stage name B.B. King, is an American blues guitarist and singer-songwriter.Rolling Stone magazine ranked him at No.3 on its list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time. According to Edward M...
, Country Joe and the Fish
Country Joe and the Fish
Country Joe and the Fish was a rock band most widely known for musical protests against the Vietnam War, from 1966 to 1971, and also regarded as a seminal influence to psychedelic rock.-History:...
and countless other acts, and he was playing in jazz combos with some of the Bay Areas best studio players.
In 1975 Fred returned to Los Angeles. He recorded two ground-breaking banjo albums for Kicking Mule Records
Kicking Mule Records
Kicking Mule Records was an independent American record label founded in 1972 by Stefan Grossman and Eugene "ED" Denson. Denson was previously a co-owner of Takoma Records. The company's title comes from the country blues sexual two-timing allegory "there's another mule kicking in your stall"....
and began touring with Bobbie Gentry
Bobbie Gentry
Roberta Lee Streeter , professionally known as Bobbie Gentry, is a former American singer-songwriter notable as one of the first female country artists to compose and produce her own material...
and Jim Stafford
Jim Stafford
James Wayne "Jim" Stafford is an American comedian, musician, and singer-songwriter, prominent in the 1970s. Stafford is self-taught on guitar, fiddle, piano, banjo, organ and harmonica....
, playing rock guitar
Guitar
The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...
, bluegrass banjo and lap steel. He also toured with the folk group
Folk music
Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....
the Limeliters, juggling seven different instruments. By the end of the 70s he had begun writing instructional books (methods, transcription books and arrangement books) for all the music print publishers: Mel Bay, Hal Leonard, Warner Brothers
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
, Carl Fischer and more. He recorded a banjo video for Hot Licks, and several guitar videos for Stefan Grossman
Stefan Grossman
Stefan Grossman is an American acoustic fingerstyle guitarist and singer, music producer and educator, and co-founder of Kicking Mule records.-Early life and influences:Born in Brooklyn, New York, to Herbert and Ruth Grossman...
's Guitar Workshop. His transcription books became known for their accuracy, and his method books were lauded for their clarity and effectiveness in music magazines all over the world. He began teaching guitar and banjo seminars in music camps and stores, and he taught classes at McCabe's Guitar Shop
McCabe's Guitar Shop
McCabe's Guitar Shop is a musical instrument store and live music venue on Pico Boulevard in Santa Monica, California. Opened in 1958, McCabe's specializes in acoustic and folk instruments, including guitars, banjos, mandolins, dulcimers, fiddles, psaltries, bouzoukis, sitars, ouds, and ethnic...
in Santa Monica.
Fred currently lives in Santa Monica and primarily performs retro jazz guitar
Jazz guitar
The term jazz guitar may refer to either a type of guitar or to the variety of guitar playing styles used in the various genres which are commonly termed "jazz"...
with some of LA's finest musicians, playing and singing songs of the 30s and 40s. He often plays and records with British ex-rock star Ian Whitcomb
Ian Whitcomb
Ian Whitcomb is an entertainer, singer, songwriter, author, record producer, and actor...
. And he plays bluegrass, blues or rockabilly whenever the opportunity arises. He's active on the studio scene, playing on other people's albums and on numerous TV and movie soundtracks, and he was a musical advisor on Michael Mann's film, Public Enemies. Fred also records and performs with children's artists like Dan Crow, Greg & Steve, KPFK's Uncle Ruthie and Paul Stookey
Noel Stookey
Noel Paul Stookey is a singer-songwriter best known as "Paul" in the folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary. He took the stage name "Paul" as part of the trio Peter, Paul and Mary, but he has been known as Noel otherwise, throughout his life...
. He relishes the diversity of his portfolio: he played lap steel on the Tonight Show
The Tonight Show
The Tonight Show is an American late-night talk show that has aired on NBC since 1954. It is the longest currently running regularly scheduled entertainment program in the United States, and the third longest-running show on NBC, after Meet the Press and Today.The Tonight Show has been hosted by...
, mandolin on Rick James' last CD, played Dobro with Chubby Checker
Chubby Checker
Chubby Checker is an American singer-songwriter. He is widely known for popularizing the twist dance style, with his 1960 hit cover of Hank Ballard's R&B hit "The Twist"...
and won on the Gong Show
The Gong Show
The Gong Show is an amateur talent contest franchised by Sony Pictures Television to many countries. It was broadcast on NBC's daytime schedule from June 14, 1976 through July 21, 1978, and in first-run syndication from 1976–1980 and 1988–1989. The show was produced by Chuck Barris, who also served...
(playing bluegrass banjo), jammed at the House of Blues
House of Blues
House of Blues is a chain of 13 live music concert halls and restaurants in major markets throughout the United States. House of Blues first location was in Cambridge's Harvard Square. It was opened in 1992 by Isaac Tigrett, co-founder of Hard Rock Cafe, and Dan Aykroyd, star of The Blues Brothers...
with Junior Brown
Junior Brown
Jamieson "Junior" Brown is an American country guitarist and singer. He has released nine studio albums in his career, and has charted twice on the Billboard country singles charts. Brown's signature instrument is the "guit-steel" double neck guitar, a hybrid of electric guitar and lap steel...
...and he performs with the legendary folksinger Tom Paxton
Tom Paxton
Thomas Richard Paxton is an American folk singer and singer-songwriter who has been writing, performing and recording music for over forty years...
whenever Tom comes to California. He continues to create instructional material, including his very successful "Roadmaps" series, and is regarded as an authority on many musical genres, particularly what is now called "Americana."
There are currently over a hundred of his books or DVDs in print, sold all over the world. Fred has long been a well-known West Coast multi-string performer and recording artist
Musician
A musician is an artist who plays a musical instrument. It may or may not be the person's profession. Musicians can be classified by their roles in performing music and writing music.Also....* A person who makes music a profession....
, particularly on the acoustic music
Acoustic music
Acoustic music comprises music that solely or primarily uses instruments which produce sound through entirely acoustic means, as opposed to electric or electronic means...
scene. The diverse musical genres
Music genre
A music genre is a categorical and typological construct that identifies musical sounds as belonging to a particular category and type of music that can be distinguished from other types of music...
covered in his books and DVDs, along with several bluegrass, jazz and rock CDs he has released, demonstrate his mastery of many musical styles. Whether he's playing Delta bottleneck blues, bluegrass or old-time banjo, 30s swing guitar or screaming rock solos, he does it with authenticity and passion.