Ramblin' Jack Elliott
Encyclopedia
Ramblin' Jack Elliott is an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 folk
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....

 singer and performer.

Life and career

Elliot Charles Adnopoz was born in Brooklyn
Brooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...

, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

 to Jewish parents in 1931. Elliott grew up inspired by the rodeos at Madison Square Garden
Madison Square Garden
Madison Square Garden, often abbreviated as MSG and known colloquially as The Garden, is a multi-purpose indoor arena in the New York City borough of Manhattan and located at 8th Avenue, between 31st and 33rd Streets, situated on top of Pennsylvania Station.Opened on February 11, 1968, it is the...

, and wanted to be a cowboy. Though encouraged to follow his father's example and become a surgeon, Elliott rebelled, running away from home at the age of 15 to join Col. Jim Eskew's Rodeo, the only rodeo east of the Mississippi. They traveled throughout the Mid-Atlantic states and New England. He was only with them for three months before his parents tracked him down and had him sent home, but Elliott was exposed to his first singing cowboy, Brahmer Rogers, a rodeo clown who played guitar and five-string banjo, sang songs, and recited poetry. Back home, Elliott taught himself guitar and started busking
Busking
Street performance or busking is the practice of performing in public places, for gratuities, which are generally in the form of money and edibles...

 for a living. Eventually he got together with Woody Guthrie
Woody Guthrie
Woodrow Wilson "Woody" Guthrie is best known as an American singer-songwriter and folk musician, whose musical legacy includes hundreds of political, traditional and children's songs, ballads and improvised works. He frequently performed with the slogan This Machine Kills Fascists displayed on his...

 and stayed with him as an admirer and student.

With banjo player Derroll Adams
Derroll Adams
Derroll Adams was an American folk musician.-Biography:Adams was born Derroll Lewis Thompson in Portland, Oregon. At 16, he served in the Army and later in the Coast Guard. He was a tall, lanky banjo player with a deep voice...

, he toured the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 and Europe. By 1960, he had recorded three folk albums for the UK record label
Record label
In the music industry, a record label is a brand and a trademark associated with the marketing of music recordings and music videos. Most commonly, a record label is the company that manages such brands and trademarks, coordinates the production, manufacture, distribution, marketing and promotion,...

 Topic Records. In London, he played small clubs and pubs by day and West End
West End of London
The West End of London is an area of central London, containing many of the city's major tourist attractions, shops, businesses, government buildings, and entertainment . Use of the term began in the early 19th century to describe fashionable areas to the west of Charing Cross...

 cabaret
Cabaret
Cabaret is a form, or place, of entertainment featuring comedy, song, dance, and theatre, distinguished mainly by the performance venue: a restaurant or nightclub with a stage for performances and the audience sitting at tables watching the performance, as introduced by a master of ceremonies or...

 nightclub
Nightclub
A nightclub is an entertainment venue which usually operates late into the night...

s at night. When he returned to the States, Elliott found he had become renowned in American folk music circles.

Woody Guthrie had the greatest influence on Elliott. Woody's son, Arlo
Arlo Guthrie
Arlo Davy Guthrie is an American folk singer. Like his father, Woody Guthrie, Arlo often sings songs of protest against social injustice...

, said that because of Woody's illness and early death, Arlo never really got to know him, but learned his father's songs and performing style from Elliott. Elliott's guitar and his mastery of Guthrie's material had a big impact on Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...

 when he lived in Minneapolis. When he reached New York, Dylan was sometimes referred to as the 'son' of Jack Elliott, because Elliott had a way of introducing Dylan's songs with the words: "Here's a song from my son, Bob Dylan." Dylan rose to prominence as a songwriter; Elliott continued as an interpretative troubadour, bringing old songs to new audiences in his idiosyncratic manner. Elliott also influenced Phil Ochs
Phil Ochs
Philip David Ochs was an American protest singer and songwriter who was known for his sharp wit, sardonic humor, earnest humanism, political activism, insightful and alliterative lyrics, and haunting voice...

, and played guitar and sang harmony on Ochs' song "Joe Hill
Joe Hill
Joe Hill, born Joel Emmanuel Hägglund in Gävle , and also known as Joseph Hillström was a Swedish-American labor activist, songwriter, and member of the Industrial Workers of the World...

" from the Tape from California
Tape from California
Tape From California is Phil Ochs' fifth album, released in mid-1968 on A&M Records. A step back from its predecessor Pleasures of the Harbor, a sort of cross between that album and 1966's Phil Ochs In Concert, it features folk with shades of rock, bluegrass and baroque music.The best-known track...

album. Elliott also discovered Singer-Songwriter, Guthrie Thomas, in a bar in Northern California in 1974 bringing Thomas to Hollywood where Thomas' music career
began.

Elliott appeared in Dylan's "Rolling Thunder Revue
Rolling Thunder Revue
The Rolling Thunder Revue was a famed U.S. concert tour consisting of a traveling caravan of musicians, headed by Bob Dylan, that took place in late 1975 and early 1976; the prevailing theory was that the tour was named after the Native American shaman Rolling Thunder. Others maintained that tour...

" concert tour and played "Longheno de Castro" in Dylan's movie Renaldo and Clara
Renaldo and Clara
Renaldo and Clara is a surrealist movie, directed by and starring Bob Dylan. Filmed in 1975, during Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue tour, it was released in 1978...

. In the movie, he sings the song "South Coast" by Lillian Bos Ross and Sam Eskin, from whose lyric the character's name is derived.
"My name is Longheno de Castro
My father was a Spanish grandee
Grandee
Grandee is the word used to render in English the Iberic high aristocratic title Grande , used by the Spanish nobility; Portuguese nobility, and Brazilian nobility....

'
But I won my wife in a card game
To Hell with those lords o'er the sea"


Elliott plays guitar in a traditional flatpicking style, which he matches with his laconic, humorous storytelling, often accompanying himself on harmonica
Harmonica
The harmonica, also called harp, French harp, blues harp, and mouth organ, is a free reed wind instrument used primarily in blues and American folk music, jazz, country, and rock and roll. It is played by blowing air into it or drawing air out by placing lips over individual holes or multiple holes...

. His singing has a strained, nasal quality which the young Bob Dylan emulated. His repertoire includes American traditional music from various genres, including country
Country music
Country music is a popular American musical style that began in the rural Southern United States in the 1920s. It takes its roots from Western cowboy and folk music...

, blues
Blues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...

, bluegrass
Bluegrass music
Bluegrass music is a form of American roots music, and a sub-genre of country music. It has mixed roots in Scottish, English, Welsh and Irish traditional music...

 and folk.

Elliott's nickname comes not from his traveling habits, but rather the countless stories he relates before answering the simplest of questions. Folk singer Odetta
Odetta
Odetta Holmes, known as Odetta, was an American singer, actress, guitarist, songwriter, and a human rights activist, often referred to as "The Voice of the Civil Rights Movement". Her musical repertoire consisted largely of American folk music, blues, jazz, and spirituals...

 claimed that it was her mother who gave him the name, remarking, "Oh Jack Elliott, yeah, he can sure ramble on!"

Elliott did ramble to Talkeetna, Alaska, several times in the early 1990s to play at the Latitude 62 Lodge as the guest of his friend Doug Geeting, a local musician.

His authenticity as a folksy, down-to-earth country boy, despite being a doctor's son from Brooklyn, and his disdain for other folk singers, were parodied by the Folksmen (Christopher Guest
Christopher Guest
Christopher Haden-Guest, 5th Baron Haden-Guest , better known as Christopher Guest, is an American screenwriter, composer, musician, director, actor and comedian. He is most widely known in Hollywood for having written, directed and starred in several improvisational "mockumentary" films that...

, Michael McKean
Michael McKean
Michael John McKean is an American actor, comedian, writer, composer and musician, perhaps best known for his portrayal of Squiggy's friend, Leonard 'Lenny' Kosnowski, on the sitcom Laverne and Shirley; and for his work in the Christopher Guest ensemble films, particularly as David St...

, and Harry Shearer
Harry Shearer
Harry Julius Shearer is an American actor, comedian, writer, voice artist, musician, author, radio host and director. He is known for his long-running role on The Simpsons, his work on Saturday Night Live, the comedy band Spinal Tap and his radio program Le Show...

) in the satirical documentary A Mighty Wind
A Mighty Wind
A Mighty Wind is a 2003 mockumentary about a folk music reunion concert in which three folk bands must reunite for a television performance for the first time in decades. It was directed by Christopher Guest...

in the name of their "hit" album Ramblin'. A Mighty Wind also referred to a former member of the New Main Street Singers, Ramblin' Sandy Pitnick, a somewhat geeky-looking white man in a cowboy hat, apparently in parody of Elliott.

Elliott's first recording in many years, South Coast, earned him his first Grammy Award
Grammy Award
A Grammy Award — or Grammy — is an accolade by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences of the United States to recognize outstanding achievement in the music industry...

 in 1995. He was awarded the National Medal of Arts
National Medal of Arts
The National Medal of Arts is an award and title created by the United States Congress in 1984, for the purpose of honoring artists and patrons of the arts. It is the highest honor conferred to an individual artist on behalf of the people. Honorees are selected by the National Endowment for the...

 in 1998.

His long career and strained relationship with his daughter Aiyana were chronicled in her 2000 film documentary, The Ballad of Ramblin' Jack.

At the age of 75, he changed labels and released I Stand Alone on the ANTI-
ANTI-
ANTI- is an American record label founded in 1999 as a sister label of Epitaph Records.While Epitaph's focus has shifted over the last decade from mostly punk rock, nowadays ANTI- has a more diverse roster, ranging from country , hip hop , reggae , Soul , folk , rap-rock , indie rock...

 label with an assortment of guest backup players including members of the Red Hot Chili Peppers
Red Hot Chili Peppers
Red Hot Chili Peppers is an American rock band, formed in Los Angeles in 1983. The group's musical style primarily consists of rock with an emphasis on funk, as well as elements from other genres such as punk, hip hop and psychedelic rock...

, another curious collection of little-known music delivered with humor and intensity. He said his intention was to title the album 'Not for the Tourists', because it was recorded in response to his daughter's request for songs he loved but never played in concert. When asked why he did not, he told her, "These songs are not for the tourists".

Studio

  • 1955: Woody Guthrie's Blues
    Woody Guthrie's Blues
    Woody Guthrie's Blues is an album by American folk musician Ramblin' Jack Elliott, released in 1955 in Great Britain.-Reissues:Woody Guthrie's Blues was originally issued as a 8-inch LP with 6 songs. The track order was changed and additional tracks were added for the 1963 LP reissue as Talking...

  • 1957: Jack Elliot Sings
    Jack Elliot Sings
    Jack Elliot Sings is an album by American folk musician Ramblin' Jack Elliott, released in Great Britain in 1958. Elliott's name is misspelled on the cover.-History:...

  • 1958: Jack Takes the Floor
    Jack Takes the Floor
    Jack Takes the Floor is an album by American folk musician Ramblin' Jack Elliott, released in Great Britain in 1958. The original release was a 10-inch LP.-Reissues:...

  • 1958: Ramblin' Jack Elliott in London
    Ramblin' Jack Elliott in London
    Ramblin' Jack Elliott in London is an album by American folk musician Ramblin' Jack Elliott, released in 1959 in Great Britain and in 1962 in the US...

    EMI Records
    EMI Records
    EMI Records is the flagship record label founded by the EMI company in 1972 and launched in January 1973 as the successor to its Columbia label. The EMI label was launched worldwide...

     33 SX 1166 recorded 5/7 November 1958
  • 1960: Ramblin' Jack Elliott Sings Songs by Woody Guthrie and Jimmie Rodgers
    Ramblin' Jack Elliott Sings Songs by Woody Guthrie and Jimmie Rodgers
    Ramblin' Jack Elliott Sings Songs by Woody Guthrie and Jimmie Rodgers is an album by American folk musician Ramblin' Jack Elliott, released in 1960 in Great Britain and in 1962 in the US on the Monitor label.-Reception:...

  • 1960: Jack Elliott Sings the Songs of Woody Guthrie
    Jack Elliott Sings the Songs of Woody Guthrie
    Jack Elliott Sings the Songs of Woody Guthrie is an album by American folk musician Ramblin' Jack Elliott, released in 1960. It consists of songs written or well-known as performed by Woody Guthrie.-Reception:...

  • 1961: Songs to Grow On by Woody Guthrie, Sung by Jack Elliott
    Songs to Grow On by Woody Guthrie, Sung by Jack Elliott
    Songs to Grow On by Woody Guthrie, Sung by Jack Elliott is an album by American folk musician Ramblin' Jack Elliott, released in 1961. It consists of songs for children written or performed by Woody Guthrie.-Side one:#"Jig Along Home"#"Car Song"...

    (Folkways Records
    Folkways Records
    Folkways Records was a record label founded by Moses Asch that documented folk, world, and children's music. It was acquired by the Smithsonian Institution in 1987, and is now part of Smithsonian Folkways.-History:...

    )
  • 1961: Ramblin' Jack Elliott
    Ramblin' Jack Elliott (album)
    Ramblin' Jack Elliott is an album by American folk musician Ramblin' Jack Elliott, released in 1961.Ramblin' Jack Elliott in London was reissued in 1971 on the Marble Arch label also titled as Ramblin' Jack Elliott.-Reception:...

    (Prestige
    Prestige Records
    Prestige Records was a jazz record label founded in 1949 by Bob Weinstock. The company was located at 203 South Washington Avenue in Bergenfield, New Jersey, and recorded hundreds of albums by many of the leading jazz musicians of the day, sometimes issuing them under the names of several...

    /Folklore)
  • 1962: Country Style
    Country Style (Ramblin' Jack Elliott album)
    Country Style is an album by American folk musician Ramblin' Jack Elliott, released in 1962.-Reception:Writing for Allmusic, music critic Ronnie D. Lankford, Jr. wrote the album "On Country Style, one can see the rambling doctor's son come into his own as a performer.....

    (Prestige/Folklore)
  • 1964: Jack Elliott
    Jack Elliott (Ramblin' Jack Elliott album)
    Jack Elliott is an album by American folk musician Ramblin' Jack Elliott, released in 1964. It was his only principal release on the Vanguard label.Bob Dylan appears playing harmonica as "Tedham Porterhouse"....

    (Vanguard
    Vanguard Records
    Vanguard Records is a record label set up in 1950 by brothers Maynard and Seymour Solomon in New York. It started as a classical label, but is perhaps best known for its catalogue of recordings by a number of pivotal folk and blues artists from the 1960s; the Bach Guild was a subsidiary...

    )
  • 1968: Young Brigham
    Young Brigham
    Young Brigham is an album by American folk musician Ramblin' Jack Elliott, released in 1968.-History:Young Brigham was Elliott's first major-label release on the Reprise label. The liner notes were written by his friend Johnny Cash....

    (Reprise
    Reprise Records
    Reprise Records is an American record label, founded in 1960 by Frank Sinatra. It is owned by Warner Music Group, and operated through Warner Bros. Records.-Beginnings:...

    )
  • 1970: Bull Durham Sacks & Railroad Tracks
    Bull Durham Sacks & Railroad Tracks
    Bull Durham Sacks & Railroad Tracks is an album by American folk musician Ramblin' Jack Elliott, released in 1970. It was his second, and last, release on the Reprise label. Elliott did not release another studio album for eleven years.-Reception:...

    (Reprise
    Reprise
    Reprise is a fundamental device in the history of art. In literature, a reprise consists of the rewriting of another work; in music, a reprise is the repetition or reiteration of the opening material later in a composition as occurs in the recapitulation of sonata form, though—originally in the...

    )
  • 1981: Kerouac's Last Dream
    Kerouac's Last Dream
    Kerouac's Last Dream is an album by American folk musician Ramblin' Jack Elliott, released in 1981.In his liner notes, Elliott writes ""I have been asked, sometimes, why I don't learn new songs. These are old ones and I have sung them for a long time...

    (Folk Freak/re-release by Conträr Musik, Germany)
  • 1995: South Coast
    South Coast (album)
    South Coast is an album by American folk musician Ramblin' Jack Elliott, released in 1998. It was his first new studio release in over 20 years.At the Grammy Awards of 1996, South Coast won the Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album.-Reception:...

    (Red House
    Red House Records
    Red House Records is an American independent record label specializing in folk music and is based in St. Paul, Minnesota.The label was originally created in 1981 by Greg Brown as a method to distribute his own music, and is named for a farmhouse in Iowa where he was living...

    )
  • 1998: Friends of Mine
    Friends of Mine (Ramblin' Jack Elliott album)
    Friends of Mine is an album by American folk musician Ramblin' Jack Elliott, released in 1998.Guests include Nanci Griffith, Emmylou Harris, Arlo Guthrie, Jerry Jeff Walker, John Prine, and Tom Waits.-Reception:...

    (HighTone
    HighTone Records
    HighTone Records was an independent record label based in Oakland, California. Hightone specialized in American roots music including, country, rockabilly, western swing, blues and gospel. The label was created by Larry Sloven and Bruce Bromberg in 1983...

    )
  • 1999: The Long Ride
    The Long Ride
    The Long Ride is an album by American folk musician Ramblin' Jack Elliott, released in 1999.Guests include Dave Van Ronk, Tom Russell, and Maria Muldaur.-Reception:...

    (HighTone
    HighTone Records
    HighTone Records was an independent record label based in Oakland, California. Hightone specialized in American roots music including, country, rockabilly, western swing, blues and gospel. The label was created by Larry Sloven and Bruce Bromberg in 1983...

    )
  • 2006: I Stand Alone
    I Stand Alone (Ramblin' Jack Elliott album)
    I Stand Alone is an album by American folk musician Ramblin' Jack Elliott, released in 2006. The album was nominated for Best Traditional Folk Album in the 49th Annual Grammy Awards....

    (ANTI-
    ANTI-
    ANTI- is an American record label founded in 1999 as a sister label of Epitaph Records.While Epitaph's focus has shifted over the last decade from mostly punk rock, nowadays ANTI- has a more diverse roster, ranging from country , hip hop , reggae , Soul , folk , rap-rock , indie rock...

    )
  • 2009: A Stranger Here
    A Stranger Here
    A Stranger Here is an album by American folk musician Ramblin' Jack Elliott, released in 2009. It reached number 5 on the Billboard Top Blues albums charts....

    (ANTI-
    ANTI-
    ANTI- is an American record label founded in 1999 as a sister label of Epitaph Records.While Epitaph's focus has shifted over the last decade from mostly punk rock, nowadays ANTI- has a more diverse roster, ranging from country , hip hop , reggae , Soul , folk , rap-rock , indie rock...

    )

With Derroll Adams

  • 1957: The Rambling Boys
    The Rambling Boys
    The Rambling Boys is an album by American folk musicians Ramblin' Jack Elliott and Derroll Adams, released in 1957 in Great Britain.The Rambling Boys was originally issued as a 10-inch record with 10 songs...

  • 1963: Roll On Buddy
  • 1969: Folkland Songs
  • 1969: Riding in Folkland
  • 1975: America

Compilations

  • 1963: Talking Woody Guthrie
    Woody Guthrie's Blues
    Woody Guthrie's Blues is an album by American folk musician Ramblin' Jack Elliott, released in 1955 in Great Britain.-Reissues:Woody Guthrie's Blues was originally issued as a 8-inch LP with 6 songs. The track order was changed and additional tracks were added for the 1963 LP reissue as Talking...

    (Topic)
  • 1964: Muleskinner (Topic)
  • 1976: The Essential Ramblin' Jack Elliott
    The Essential Ramblin' Jack Elliott
    The Essential Ramblin' Jack Elliott is a compilation album by American folk musician Ramblin' Jack Elliott, released in 1976. It was originally issued as a double LP including Elliot's only Vanguard release Jack Elliott and other live tracks...

    (Vanguard)
  • 1989: Hard Travelin' (reissue of Jack Elliott Sings the Songs of Woody Guthrie and Ramblin' Jack Elliott)
  • 1989: Talking Dust Bowl: The Best of Ramblin' Jack Elliott
  • 1990: Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Spider John Koerner, U. Utah Phillips: Legends of Folk (Red House)
  • 1990: Jack Elliott Plus / Jack Elliott
  • 1995: Me and Bobby McGee (reissue of Young Brigham and Bull Durham Sacks & Railroad Tracks)
  • 1995: Jack Elliott: Ramblin' Jack, The Legendary Topic Masters
  • 1999: Ramblin' Jack Elliott: Early Sessions
  • 2000: Best of the Vanguard Years
    Best of the Vanguard Years (Ramblin' Jack Elliott album)
    Best of the Vanguard Years is an album by American folk musician Ramblin' Jack Elliott, released in 2000.The 1964 Vanguard release Jack Elliott is included in its entirety. Seven tracks from Jack Elliott were also reissued on CD by Vanguard in 2007 on Vanguard Visionaries...

  • 2004: The Lost Topic Tapes: Cowes Harbour 1957
    The Lost Topic Tapes: Cowes Harbour 1957
    The Lost Topic Tapes: Cowes Harbour 1957 is an album by American folk musician Ramblin' Jack Elliott, released in 2004. Elliott recorded a number of albums on the Topic label in London in the 1950s. The songs on this compilation are taken from rediscovered tapes found in the British Library in...

  • 2004: The Lost Topic Tapes: Isle of Wight 1957
    The Lost Topic Tapes: Isle of Wight 1957
    The Lost Topic Tapes: Isle of Wight 1957 is an album by American folk musician Ramblin' Jack Elliott, released in 2004. Elliott recorded a number of albums on the Topic label in London in the 1950s. The songs on this compilation are taken from rediscovered tapes found in the British Library in...

  • 2007: Vanguard Visionaries
    Vanguard Visionaries (Ramblin' Jack Elliott album)
    Vanguard Visionaries is the title of a recording by American folk music artist Ramblin' Jack Elliott, released in 2007.-History:Vanguard Records had a high profile during the 1960s folk revival and released music by many folk artists such as Doc Watson, Odetta, John Fahey and many others...


External links

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