Fritz Richmond
Encyclopedia
John B. "Fritz" Richmond (July 10, 1939 - November 20, 2005) was an American
musician and recording engineer. Fritz Richmond was considered the foremost washtub bass
ist in the world, and was also the most successful professional jug
player.
Richmond, born in Newton
, Massachusetts
on July 10, 1939, was a founding member of The Hoppers, a school-chum jug band
that played the coffeehouse circuit in the Boston
area. Jug band music featured homemade or folk-style instruments such as the washboard
(used for percussion
), a large earthenware jug used as a wind instrument, and a single-string upright bass fashioned from a broomstick or similar handle, using a steel washtub as a resonator, with the player moving the handle in order to vary the tension on the string and thus vary the pitch of the note created by plucking. This type of music, in England, became known as skiffle music and was played by groups who could not afford electric instruments, such as The Quarrymen
, a Liverpool
skiffle group that evolved into The Beatles
.
After a stint in the Army and then a gig with The Charles River Valley Boys
, Richmond was a founding member and a longtime jug and washtub player in the extremely influential Jim Kweskin Jug Band
in the 1960s.
Following the breakup of the Kweskin band, Richmond moved to the West coast
and became an in-demand accompanist as American rock began to embrace folk and country roots. During his life, Richmond was routinely given accolades such as "[t]he world's best living jug player", "[t]he undisputed king and reigning world champion of the jug and washtub bass", and "the world’s greatest living jug and washtub bass player". Richmond’s washtub and jug stylings provided old-time music
flavor on recordings for a large network of artists that included Jackson Browne
, Loudon Wainwright III
, Maria Muldaur
, Geoff Muldaur
, Tom Rush
, Ry Cooder
, and The Grateful Dead.
Richmond also worked as a recording engineer for many artists, and his credits can be found, notably, on albums by Warren Zevon
, Bonnie Raitt
, and Jackson Browne.
Richmond also contributed a key counterculture
fashion accessory. Roger McGuinn
and John Sebastian
credit Richmond with the introduction of "granny glasses" in the early 1960s. A well-known photo by John Byrne Cooke shows Richmond wearing his homemade pair in 1963, long before John Lennon
popularized the "British welfare glasses". Spectacles like Richmond’s – consisting initially of colored non-prescription glass set into old wire-frames, thus shielding the often-stoned performer's eyes from public view – then became common on the San Francisco rock scene where the Jim Kweskin Jug Band was paired in concert with bands such as The Doors
and Big Brother and the Holding Company
. Janis Joplin
and Jerry Garcia
, who also socialized with Richmond, were among those who adopted the colored-lens look.
Richmond also came up with the name for the band The Lovin’ Spoonful.
Richmond continued to perform through 2004. For approximately the last decade of his life he was a core member of John Sebastian’s J-Band, and a sometime member of The Fountain of Youth.
Music writer Jim Mitchell described Richmond as a "notorious luminary in the field of old-time American music. Nobody with even the slightest knowledge of jug band music and traditional string-band repertoire can overlook his contributions … which are indeed of historical significance." One of Richmond’s washtub basses is in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Institution.
Richmond died in Portland, Oregon
of lung cancer
on November 20, 2005.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
musician and recording engineer. Fritz Richmond was considered the foremost washtub bass
Washtub bass
The washtub bass, or "gutbucket", is a stringed instrument used in American folk music that uses a metal washtub as a resonator. Although it is possible for a washtub bass to have four or more strings and tuning pegs, traditional washtub basses have a single string whose pitch is adjusted by...
ist in the world, and was also the most successful professional jug
Jug (musical instrument)
The jug as a musical instrument reached its height of popularity in the 1920s, when jug bands, such as Cannon's Jug Stompers were popular. The jug is just that: an empty jug played with the mouth...
player.
Richmond, born in Newton
Newton, Massachusetts
Newton is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States bordered to the east by Boston. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, the population of Newton was 85,146, making it the eleventh largest city in the state.-Villages:...
, Massachusetts
Massachusetts
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
on July 10, 1939, was a founding member of The Hoppers, a school-chum jug band
Jug band
A Jug band is a band employing a jug player and a mix of traditional and home-made instruments. These home-made instruments are ordinary objects adapted to or modified for making of sound, like the washtub bass, washboard, spoons, stovepipe and comb & tissue paper...
that played the coffeehouse circuit in the Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
area. Jug band music featured homemade or folk-style instruments such as the washboard
Washboard
A washboard is a tool designed for hand washing clothing. With mechanized cleaning of clothing becoming more common by the end of the 20th century, the washboard has become better known for its originally subsidiary use as a musical instrument....
(used for percussion
Percussion instrument
A percussion instrument is any object which produces a sound when hit with an implement or when it is shaken, rubbed, scraped, or otherwise acted upon in a way that sets the object into vibration...
), a large earthenware jug used as a wind instrument, and a single-string upright bass fashioned from a broomstick or similar handle, using a steel washtub as a resonator, with the player moving the handle in order to vary the tension on the string and thus vary the pitch of the note created by plucking. This type of music, in England, became known as skiffle music and was played by groups who could not afford electric instruments, such as The Quarrymen
The Quarrymen
The Quarrymen are a British skiffle and rock and roll group, initially formed in Liverpool in 1956, that eventually evolved into The Beatles in 1960...
, a Liverpool
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
skiffle group that evolved into The Beatles
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
.
After a stint in the Army and then a gig with The Charles River Valley Boys
Charles River Valley Boys
The Charles River Valley Boys were an American bluegrass group who toured and recorded in the 1960s and were best known for their 1966 album, Beatle Country, presenting bluegrass versions of songs by The Beatles.-History:...
, Richmond was a founding member and a longtime jug and washtub player in the extremely influential Jim Kweskin Jug Band
Jim Kweskin
Jim Kweskin is the founder of the Jim Kweskin Jug Band, with Fritz Richmond, Mel Lyman, and Geoff and Maria Muldaur...
in the 1960s.
Following the breakup of the Kweskin band, Richmond moved to the West coast
West Coast of the United States
West Coast or Pacific Coast are terms for the westernmost coastal states of the United States. The term most often refers to the states of California, Oregon, and Washington. Although not part of the contiguous United States, Alaska and Hawaii do border the Pacific Ocean but can't be included in...
and became an in-demand accompanist as American rock began to embrace folk and country roots. During his life, Richmond was routinely given accolades such as "[t]he world's best living jug player", "[t]he undisputed king and reigning world champion of the jug and washtub bass", and "the world’s greatest living jug and washtub bass player". Richmond’s washtub and jug stylings provided old-time music
Old-time music
Old-time music is a genre of North American folk music, with roots in the folk music of many countries, including England, Scotland, Ireland and countries in Africa. It developed along with various North American folk dances, such as square dance, buck dance, and clogging. The genre also...
flavor on recordings for a large network of artists that included Jackson Browne
Jackson Browne
Jackson Browne is an American singer-songwriter and musician who has sold over 17 million albums in the United States alone....
, Loudon Wainwright III
Loudon Wainwright III
Loudon Snowden Wainwright III is a Grammy Award-winning American songwriter, folk singer, humorist, and actor. He is the father of musicians Rufus Wainwright, Martha Wainwright and Lucy Wainwright Roche, brother of Sloan Wainwright, and the former husband of the late folk singer Kate McGarrigle.To...
, Maria Muldaur
Maria Muldaur
Maria Muldaur is a folk-blues singer who was part of the American folk music revival in the early 1960s...
, Geoff Muldaur
Geoff Muldaur
Geoff Muldaur is an American founding member of the Jim Kweskin Jug Band of Cambridge, Massachusetts; a member of Paul Butterfield's Better Days; and an accomplished solo guitarist, singer, and songwriter....
, Tom Rush
Tom Rush
Tom Rush is an American folk and blues singer, songwriter, musician and recording artist.- Life and career :Rush was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. His father was a teacher at St. Paul's School, in Concord, New Hampshire. Tom began performing in 1961 while studying at Harvard University after...
, Ry Cooder
Ry Cooder
Ryland Peter "Ry" Cooder is an American guitarist, singer and composer. He is known for his slide guitar work, his interest in roots music from the United States, and, more recently, his collaborations with traditional musicians from many countries.His solo work has been eclectic, encompassing...
, and The Grateful Dead.
Richmond also worked as a recording engineer for many artists, and his credits can be found, notably, on albums by Warren Zevon
Warren Zevon
Warren William Zevon was an American rock singer-songwriter and musician noted for including his sometimes sardonic opinions of life in his musical lyrics, composing songs that were sometimes humorous and often had political or historical themes.Zevon's work has often been praised by well-known...
, Bonnie Raitt
Bonnie Raitt
Bonnie Lynn Raitt is an American blues singer-songwriter and a renowned slide guitar player. During the 1970s, Raitt released a series of acclaimed roots-influenced albums which incorporated elements of blues, rock, folk and country, but she is perhaps best known for her more commercially...
, and Jackson Browne.
Richmond also contributed a key counterculture
Counterculture
Counterculture is a sociological term used to describe the values and norms of behavior of a cultural group, or subculture, that run counter to those of the social mainstream of the day, the cultural equivalent of political opposition. Counterculture can also be described as a group whose behavior...
fashion accessory. Roger McGuinn
Roger McGuinn
James Roger McGuinn is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist. He is best known for being the lead singer and lead guitarist on many of The Byrds' records...
and John Sebastian
John Sebastian
John Benson Sebastian Jr. is an American singer, songwriter, guitarist and autoharpist. He is best known as a founder of The Lovin' Spoonful, a band inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000...
credit Richmond with the introduction of "granny glasses" in the early 1960s. A well-known photo by John Byrne Cooke shows Richmond wearing his homemade pair in 1963, long before John Lennon
John Lennon
John Winston Lennon, MBE was an English musician and singer-songwriter who rose to worldwide fame as one of the founding members of The Beatles, one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music...
popularized the "British welfare glasses". Spectacles like Richmond’s – consisting initially of colored non-prescription glass set into old wire-frames, thus shielding the often-stoned performer's eyes from public view – then became common on the San Francisco rock scene where the Jim Kweskin Jug Band was paired in concert with bands such as 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...
and Big Brother and the Holding Company
Big Brother and the Holding Company
Big Brother and the Holding Company is an American rock band that formed in San Francisco in 1965 as part of the same psychedelic music scene that produced the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service and Jefferson Airplane. They are best known as the band that featured Janis Joplin as their...
. Janis Joplin
Janis Joplin
Janis Lyn Joplin was an American singer, songwriter, painter, dancer and music arranger. She rose to prominence in the late 1960s as the lead singer of Big Brother and the Holding Company and later as a solo artist with her backing groups, The Kozmic Blues Band and The Full Tilt Boogie Band...
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...
, who also socialized with Richmond, were among those who adopted the colored-lens look.
Richmond also came up with the name for the band The Lovin’ Spoonful.
Richmond continued to perform through 2004. For approximately the last decade of his life he was a core member of John Sebastian’s J-Band, and a sometime member of The Fountain of Youth.
Music writer Jim Mitchell described Richmond as a "notorious luminary in the field of old-time American music. Nobody with even the slightest knowledge of jug band music and traditional string-band repertoire can overlook his contributions … which are indeed of historical significance." One of Richmond’s washtub basses is in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Institution.
Richmond died in Portland, Oregon
Portland, Oregon
Portland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...
of lung cancer
Lung cancer
Lung cancer is a disease characterized by uncontrolled cell growth in tissues of the lung. If left untreated, this growth can spread beyond the lung in a process called metastasis into nearby tissue and, eventually, into other parts of the body. Most cancers that start in lung, known as primary...
on November 20, 2005.