Henry Vestine
Encyclopedia
Henry Charles Vestine a.k.a. "The Sunflower", was an American guitar player known mainly as a member of the band Canned Heat
. He was with the group from its start in 1966 to July 1969. In later years he played in local bands but occasionally returned to Canned Heat for a few tours and recordings.
In 2003 Vestine was ranked 77th in Rolling Stone magazine list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time"
, Vestine was the only son of Harry
and Lois Vestine. His father was a noted physicist specializing in gravity studies. The Vestine Crater
on the Moon had been named posthumously after him. Henry Vestine married twice, first in 1965 and in the mid 1970s to Lisa Lack and with whom he moved to Anderson, South Carolina
. In 1980 they had a son, Jesse. In 1983, after they separated, Vestine moved to Oregon
.
Vestine's love of music and the blues in particular was fostered at an early age when he accompanied his father on canvasses of black neighborhoods for old recordings . Like his father, Henry became an avid collector, eventually coming to own tens of thousands of
recordings of blues, hillbilly, country, and Cajun music. At Henry’s urging, his father also used to take him to blues shows at which he and Henry were often the only white people present.
Later Henry was instrumental in the "rediscovery" of Skip James
and other Delta musicians.
In the mid-1950s, Henry and his childhood friend from Takoma Park, John Fahey
began to learn how to play guitar and sang a mixed bag of pop, hillbilly, and country music, particularly Hank Williams. Soon after the family moved to California, Henry Vestine joined his first junior high band Hial King and the Newports. On his first acid trip with a close musician friend, he went to an East LA tattoo parlor and got the first of what was to be numerous tattoos: the words "Living The Blues". Later, in 1969, that became the title of a double album by Canned Heat
. By the time he was seventeen he was a regular on the Los Angeles club circuit. He became a familiar sight at many black clubs, where he often brought musician friends to turn them on to the blues. Henry became friends with Cajun guitarist Jerry McGhee. It was from him that Henry learned the flat pick and 3-fingerstyle that was to become so much a part of Henry’s own style. He was an early fan of Roy Buchanan
and
his favorite guitar players included T-Bone Walker
, Johnny "Guitar" Watson, Sonny Sharrock
, Freddie King
, and Albert Collins
. In Canned Heat he was able to play and record with John Lee Hooker
whom he had admired since the late 1950s.
for the original Mothers of Invention in 1965. Vestine was in the Mothers for only a few months and left before they recorded their debut album.
His friend Fahey was to be instrumental in the formation of Canned Heat. He had introduced Al Wilson
, whom he knew from Boston, to Henry and Bob and Richard Hite. Wilson, Vestine and the Hite brothers formed a jug band
that rehearsed at Don Brown’s Jazz Man record Shop. Bob Hite and Alan Wilson started Canned Heat with Kenny Edwards as a second guitarist, but Henry was asked to join. The first notable appearance of the band was the following year when they played at the Monterey Pop Festival
. Shortly after Canned Heat’s first album
was released, Henry burst into musical prominence
as a guitarist who stretched the idiom of the blues with long solos that moved beyond the conventional genres. He had his own style and a trademark piercing treble guitar sound.
Vestine missed playing at the Woodstock Festival in 1969, having quit the band
the previous week. In 1995, he explained to an Australian reporter that "[a]t the time, it was just another gig. It was too bad I wasn’t there, but I just couldn’t continue with the band at the time." There had some tension between him and bassist Larry Taylor
. When Taylor quit Canned Heat, Vestine returned; their alternating membership in the band was to be repeated a few more times over the years.
While Canned Heat played at Woodstock in August 1969, Henry was invited to New York City for session work with avant-garde jazz great Albert Ayler
. That session work resulted in two releases on the Impulse
label.
At the same time he developed an intense interest in Harley Davidson motorcycles. He eventually owned eleven of them. Prior to his death he was looking forward to playing at their 75th Anniversary Celebration. Over the years he had also a close relationship with the
Hells Angels
.
. There he lived on a farm in rural Blodgett
for a year and then in Corvallis
, making a living doing odd jobs and playing music at rodeos and taverns in a country band with Mike Rosso, an old friend from southern California who had also moved to Oregon. He also played with Ramblin' Rex.
Terry Robb brought Vestine to Portland
and they did some recording together. Henry began playing with the Pete Carnes Blues Band and made his way to Eugene
when the band folded in the mid 1980s. He played the regional club scene with a number of blues and blues-rock groups including James T. and The Tough. From that band he was to bring James Thornbury to a reconstituted Canned Heat.
Vestine toured with Canned Heat in Australia and Europe, where the band had a popularity that far surpassed the recognition they got in the United States. When he returned to Eugene he would play with The Vipers, a group of veteran Eugene blues musicians who perform
throughout the Northwest. He continued to record including sessions with Oregon bands such as Skip Jones and The Rent Party Band, Terry Robb, and The Vipers. He also recorded the album Guitar Gangster with Evan Johns in Austin.
hotel on the morning of October 20, 1997, just as the band was to return to the United States.
Henry Vestines's ashes are interred at the Oak Hill Cemetery outside of Eugene, Oregon
. A memorial fund has been set up in his name. The fund will be used for maintenance of his resting place at Oak Hill Cemetery and, when it is possible, for conveyance of some of his ashes to the Vestine Crater on the moon, as has been his wish.
Canned Heat
Canned Heat is a blues-rock/boogie rock band that formed in Los Angeles, California in 1965. The group has been noted for its own interpretations of blues material as well as for efforts to promote the interest in this type of music and its original artists...
. He was with the group from its start in 1966 to July 1969. In later years he played in local bands but occasionally returned to Canned Heat for a few tours and recordings.
In 2003 Vestine was ranked 77th in Rolling Stone magazine list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time"
Biography
Born in Takoma Park, MarylandTakoma Park, Maryland
Takoma Park is a city in Montgomery County, Maryland, United States. It is a suburb of Washington, D.C., and part of the Washington Metropolitan Area. Founded in 1883 and incorporated in 1890, Takoma Park, informally called "Azalea City," is a Tree City USA and a nuclear-free zone...
, Vestine was the only son of Harry
Ernest Harry Vestine
Ernest Harry Vestine was an American geophysicist and meteorologist.He was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota to Swedish parents. At the age of two his family moved to Alberta, Canada, where he was raised. He earned a B.S. in math and physics in 1931 from the University of Alberta. The following year...
and Lois Vestine. His father was a noted physicist specializing in gravity studies. The Vestine Crater
Vestine (crater)
Vestine is a heavily eroded impact crater on the Moon's far side, just beyond the northeastern limb. It lies to the southwest of the large walled plain Harkhebi, and to the northwest of the Maxwell–Richardson crater pair....
on the Moon had been named posthumously after him. Henry Vestine married twice, first in 1965 and in the mid 1970s to Lisa Lack and with whom he moved to Anderson, South Carolina
Anderson, South Carolina
Anderson is a city in and the county seat of Anderson County, South Carolina, United States. The population was estimated at 26,242 in 2006, and the city was the center of an urbanized area of 70,530...
. In 1980 they had a son, Jesse. In 1983, after they separated, Vestine moved to Oregon
Oregon
Oregon is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is located on the Pacific coast, with Washington to the north, California to the south, Nevada on the southeast and Idaho to the east. The Columbia and Snake rivers delineate much of Oregon's northern and eastern...
.
Vestine's love of music and the blues in particular was fostered at an early age when he accompanied his father on canvasses of black neighborhoods for old recordings . Like his father, Henry became an avid collector, eventually coming to own tens of thousands of
recordings of blues, hillbilly, country, and Cajun music. At Henry’s urging, his father also used to take him to blues shows at which he and Henry were often the only white people present.
Later Henry was instrumental in the "rediscovery" of Skip James
Skip James
Nehemiah Curtis "Skip" James was an American Delta blues singer, guitarist, pianist and songwriter, born in Bentonia, Mississippi, died in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania....
and other Delta musicians.
In the mid-1950s, Henry and his childhood friend from Takoma Park, John Fahey
John Fahey (musician)
John Fahey was an American fingerstyle guitarist and composer who pioneered the steel-string acoustic guitar as a solo instrument. His style has been greatly influential and has been described as the foundation of American Primitivism, a term borrowed from painting and referring mainly to the...
began to learn how to play guitar and sang a mixed bag of pop, hillbilly, and country music, particularly Hank Williams. Soon after the family moved to California, Henry Vestine joined his first junior high band Hial King and the Newports. On his first acid trip with a close musician friend, he went to an East LA tattoo parlor and got the first of what was to be numerous tattoos: the words "Living The Blues". Later, in 1969, that became the title of a double album by Canned Heat
Living the Blues
Living the Blues is the third album by Canned Heat, a double album released in 1968. It was one of the first double albums to place well on album charts. It features Canned Heat's signature song, "Going Up the Country," which would later be used in the Woodstock film. John Mayall appears on...
. By the time he was seventeen he was a regular on the Los Angeles club circuit. He became a familiar sight at many black clubs, where he often brought musician friends to turn them on to the blues. Henry became friends with Cajun guitarist Jerry McGhee. It was from him that Henry learned the flat pick and 3-fingerstyle that was to become so much a part of Henry’s own style. He was an early fan of Roy Buchanan
Roy Buchanan
Roy Buchanan was an American guitarist and blues musician. A pioneer of the Telecaster sound, Buchanan was a sideman and solo artist, with two gold albums early in his career, and two later solo albums that made it on to the Billboard chart. Despite never having achieved stardom, he is still...
and
his favorite guitar players included T-Bone Walker
T-Bone Walker
Aaron Thibeaux "T-Bone" Walker was a critically acclaimed American blues guitarist, singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, who was one of the most influential pioneers and innovators of the jump blues and electric blues sound. He is the first musician recorded playing blues with the...
, Johnny "Guitar" Watson, Sonny Sharrock
Sonny Sharrock
Warren Harding "Sonny" Sharrock was an American jazz guitarist. He was once married to singer Linda Sharrock, with whom he sometimes recorded and performed....
, Freddie King
Freddie King
Freddie King , thought to have been born as Frederick Christian, originally recording as Freddy King, and nicknamed "the Texas Cannonball", was an influential African-American blues guitarist and singer. He is often mentioned as one of "the Three Kings" of electric blues guitar, along with Albert...
, and Albert Collins
Albert Collins
Albert Collins was an American electric blues guitarist and singer whose recording career began in the 1960s in Houston and whose fame eventually took him to stages across the US, Europe, Japan and Australia...
. In Canned Heat he was able to play and record with John Lee Hooker
John Lee Hooker
John Lee Hooker was an American blues singer-songwriter and guitarist.Hooker began his life as the son of a sharecropper, William Hooker, and rose to prominence performing his own unique style of what was originally closest to Delta blues. He developed a 'talking blues' style that was his trademark...
whom he had admired since the late 1950s.
The 1960s
Throughout the early to mid 1960s Henry played in various musical configurations and eventually was hired by Frank ZappaFrank Zappa
Frank Vincent Zappa was an American composer, singer-songwriter, electric guitarist, record producer and film director. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa wrote rock, jazz, orchestral and musique concrète works. He also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed...
for the original Mothers of Invention in 1965. Vestine was in the Mothers for only a few months and left before they recorded their debut album.
His friend Fahey was to be instrumental in the formation of Canned Heat. He had introduced Al Wilson
Alan Wilson (musician)
Alan "Blind Owl" Christie Wilson was the leader, singer, and primary composer in the American blues band Canned Heat. He played guitar and harmonica, and wrote most of the songs for the band.-Early years:...
, whom he knew from Boston, to Henry and Bob and Richard Hite. Wilson, Vestine and the Hite brothers formed a 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 rehearsed at Don Brown’s Jazz Man record Shop. Bob Hite and Alan Wilson started Canned Heat with Kenny Edwards as a second guitarist, but Henry was asked to join. The first notable appearance of the band was the following year when they played at the Monterey Pop Festival
Monterey Pop Festival
The Monterey International Pop Music Festival was a three-day concert event held June 16 to June 18, 1967 at the Monterey County Fairgrounds in Monterey, California...
. Shortly after Canned Heat’s first album
Canned Heat (album)
Canned Heat is the 1967 debut album by Canned Heat. It was released shortly after their appearance at the Monterey Pop Festival, and features performances of several blues covers....
was released, Henry burst into musical prominence
as a guitarist who stretched the idiom of the blues with long solos that moved beyond the conventional genres. He had his own style and a trademark piercing treble guitar sound.
Vestine missed playing at the Woodstock Festival in 1969, having quit the band
the previous week. In 1995, he explained to an Australian reporter that "[a]t the time, it was just another gig. It was too bad I wasn’t there, but I just couldn’t continue with the band at the time." There had some tension between him and bassist Larry Taylor
Larry Taylor
Larry Taylor is an American bass guitarist, best known for his work as a member of Canned Heat from 1967. Before joining Canned Heat he had been a session bassist for The Monkees and Jerry Lee Lewis...
. When Taylor quit Canned Heat, Vestine returned; their alternating membership in the band was to be repeated a few more times over the years.
While Canned Heat played at Woodstock in August 1969, Henry was invited to New York City for session work with avant-garde jazz great Albert Ayler
Albert Ayler
Albert Ayler was an American avant-garde jazz saxophonist, singer and composer.Ayler was among the most primal of the free jazz musicians of the 1960s; critic John Litweiler wrote that "never before or since has there been such naked aggression in jazz" He possessed a deep blistering tone—achieved...
. That session work resulted in two releases on the Impulse
Impulse! Records
Impulse! Records was an American jazz record label, originally established in 1960 by producer Creed Taylor as a subsidiary of ABC-Paramount Records, based in New York City...
label.
At the same time he developed an intense interest in Harley Davidson motorcycles. He eventually owned eleven of them. Prior to his death he was looking forward to playing at their 75th Anniversary Celebration. Over the years he had also a close relationship with the
Hells Angels
Hells Angels
The Hells Angels Motorcycle Club is a worldwide one-percenter motorcycle gang and organized crime syndicate whose members typically ride Harley-Davidson motorcycles. In the United States and Canada, the Hells Angels are incorporated as the Hells Angels Motorcycle Corporation. Their primary motto...
.
The 1970s
Through the 1970s gradually Canned Heat had become a part time occupation with occasional gigs and recordings sessions. When Vestine's marriage broke up in 1983, he moved to OregonOregon
Oregon is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is located on the Pacific coast, with Washington to the north, California to the south, Nevada on the southeast and Idaho to the east. The Columbia and Snake rivers delineate much of Oregon's northern and eastern...
. There he lived on a farm in rural Blodgett
Blodgett, Oregon
Blodgett is an unincorporated community in Benton County, Oregon, United States, where Oregon Route 180 meets U.S. Route 20 in the Central Oregon Coast Range 15 miles west of Corvallis. It is near the confluence of the Tumtum and Marys rivers. The population was 58 at the 2010 census.Blodgett was...
for a year and then in Corvallis
Corvallis, Oregon
Corvallis is a city located in central western Oregon, United States. It is the county seat of Benton County and the principal city of the Corvallis, Oregon Metropolitan Statistical Area, which encompasses all of Benton County. As of the 2010 United States Census, the population was 54,462....
, making a living doing odd jobs and playing music at rodeos and taverns in a country band with Mike Rosso, an old friend from southern California who had also moved to Oregon. He also played with Ramblin' Rex.
Terry Robb brought Vestine to Portland
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...
and they did some recording together. Henry began playing with the Pete Carnes Blues Band and made his way to Eugene
Eugene, Oregon
Eugene is the second largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon and the seat of Lane County. It is located at the south end of the Willamette Valley, at the confluence of the McKenzie and Willamette rivers, about east of the Oregon Coast.As of the 2010 U.S...
when the band folded in the mid 1980s. He played the regional club scene with a number of blues and blues-rock groups including James T. and The Tough. From that band he was to bring James Thornbury to a reconstituted Canned Heat.
Vestine toured with Canned Heat in Australia and Europe, where the band had a popularity that far surpassed the recognition they got in the United States. When he returned to Eugene he would play with The Vipers, a group of veteran Eugene blues musicians who perform
throughout the Northwest. He continued to record including sessions with Oregon bands such as Skip Jones and The Rent Party Band, Terry Robb, and The Vipers. He also recorded the album Guitar Gangster with Evan Johns in Austin.
Death
Vestine had finished a European tour with Canned Heat when he died from heart and respiratory failure, in a ParisParis
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
hotel on the morning of October 20, 1997, just as the band was to return to the United States.
Henry Vestines's ashes are interred at the Oak Hill Cemetery outside of Eugene, Oregon
Eugene, Oregon
Eugene is the second largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon and the seat of Lane County. It is located at the south end of the Willamette Valley, at the confluence of the McKenzie and Willamette rivers, about east of the Oregon Coast.As of the 2010 U.S...
. A memorial fund has been set up in his name. The fund will be used for maintenance of his resting place at Oak Hill Cemetery and, when it is possible, for conveyance of some of his ashes to the Vestine Crater on the moon, as has been his wish.