Stefan Grossman
Encyclopedia
Stefan Grossman is an American acoustic fingerstyle guitarist and singer, music producer and educator, and co-founder of Kicking Mule records.
, New York, as "lower middle-class", and his parents as "very leftist", valuing education and the arts. He began playing guitar at the age of nine, when his father bought him a Harmony
f-hole
acoustic guitar. Later he moved on to an archtop
Gibson
guitar which he played between the ages of nine and eleven, taking lessons and learning to read music. For a few years, he gave up playing but resumed again at the age of 15.
Grossman's interest in the Folk revival
was sparked by attending the Washington Square Park "Hoots", and he started listening to old recordings of artists such as Elizabeth Cotten
, Big Bill Broonzy
, Leadbelly
, Josh White
, Lightnin' Hopkins
, Rev. Gary Davis, Blind Willie Johnson
, Blind Boy Fuller
, Son House
, Charlie Patton
, Skip James
, Blind Blake
, Blind Lemon Jefferson
and Woody Guthrie
.
He took guitar lessons for several years from Rev. Gary Davis, whom he later described as "one of the greatest exponents of fingerstyle blues and gospel guitar playing" and "an incredible genius as a teacher". He spent countless hours learning and documenting Davis's music, recording much of it on a tape recorder, and developing a form of tablature
to take down his teacher's instructions.
In the folk and country blues revival of the 1960s he was listening to Broonzy, Brownie McGhee
and Lightnin' Hopkins and beginning to collect old 78 rpm records from the 1920s and 1930s. This brought him into contact with other collectors, including John Fahey
, ED Denson, Bernie Klatzko, Tom Hoskins and Nick Perls. Collecting the 78s developed into searching for the artists who had recorded them, with many successes: during the mid-60s, Grossman met, befriended and studied guitar with Mississippi John Hurt
, Son House
, Skip James
, Mississippi Fred McDowell
and other major blues artists.
. Although they only recorded one LP on the Elektra Records
label (long since out of print but available at iTunes), other members were also to have successful musical careers, including David Grisman, Steve Katz (Blood, Sweat & Tears
), John Sebastian (The Lovin' Spoonful
), Joshua Rifkin and Maria Muldaur. In the early summer of 1966 there was an effort by Elektra’s Paul Rothchild to put together a folk rock group (like The Mamas & the Papas
) with Grossman, Taj Mahal
, guitarist Steve Mann
and a recently returned folk singer from Texas named Janis Joplin
. They actually had a rehearsal in Berkeley, sometime in June (Joplin’s first show with Big Brother and the Holding Company
was at the Avalon Ballroom June 10, 1966, but she had been in the Bay Area for about 10 days). However, Janis would not abandon her new band and the deal was scuttled. Subsequently Grossman spent about three months with The Fugs
and a further four months with a band called Chicago Loop. At the same time, however, he was beginning his career as a guitar teacher. With his friend Rory Block
and also Mike Cooper, he produced and released one of the earliest (if not the very first) guitar instructional LPs, How To Play Blues Guitar and began the publication of a five volume series of instructional books with Oak Publications called the Oak Anthology of Blues Guitar. These drew on his studies with Rev. Davis and the other older blues artists and on his obsessive listening to old 78s. The Country Blues Guitar, Delta Blues, Texas Blues, Ragtime Blues Guitar and Rev. Gary Davis/Blues Guitar have remained in print through various editions. They were well received by other guitarists seeking to learn the various styles of acoustic blues.
In the mid 1960s, Stefan Grossman recorded a number of cuts for Joe Bussard
and his Frederick, Maryland based Fonotone Records and performed at the Jabberwock coffeehouse in Berkeley under the nom du folk of "Kid Future". The origins of the name Kid Future date back in the 1930s where there were a number of country blues artists called Willie Brown, the best known of these, and a friend of Son House
, recorded a song called Future Blues, using an open G tuning. The song was considered very difficult to master and puzzled many experienced blues players but Grossman, when still in his teens, figured out how to play it. Given Bussard's penchant for creating noms de plume, as he did famously for John Fahey
when recording him as Blind Thomas in the 1950s, it seems likely that the origins of the name Kid Future lie in Federick, MD and a talented teenager who had mastered Future Blues. Grossman also played on Pat Kilroy's Light of Day album released in 1966.
In 1967, Grossman travelled to Europe as a first step on a planned journey to India which was not completed. In London he stayed at first with Eric Clapton
whom he had met whilst in Chicago Loop and met guitarists and singers on the British folk scene including Bert Jansch
, John Renbourn
, Davy Graham and Ralph McTell
and The Young Tradition
. He began playing in folk clubs around the country and made his first solo recordings for the Philips/Fontana label (Aunt Molly's Murray Farm and The Gramercy Park Sheikh) and then for Nathan Joseph's Transatlantic
label, including Yazoo Basin Boogie and Ragtime Cowboy Jew (see discography). He also traveled widely in Europe and eventually settled in Italy, where he lived for seven years. Travelling around Europe for gigs brought him into contact with many other fine guitarists, but few of them had record deals; Grossman saw a niche in the market for solo acoustic guitar records which were accompanied by a tablature book to allow the buyer to try playing the arrangements and, with his friend Ed Denson taking care of the US side of business, founded Kicking Mule Records. Over the next few years KM released albums by such artists as John James, Happy Traum
, Ton van Bergeyk, Dave Evans, Peter Finger and the late Sam Mitchell. Grossman also released his own original and instructional albums on KM, the latter including seminal works such as Fingerpicking Guitar Techniques, How To Play Ragtime Guitar and Famous Ragtime Guitar Solos which had a major influence on acoustic guitarists in Europe, the UK and the US. During these years Grossman was also touring as a solo artist and in partnership with John Renbourn and continuing to write and publish instructional books, often accompanied by the then new technology of a cassette tape.
Grossman also began to acquire concert footage of the old blues and country artists who had been rediscovered in the 1960s and had often made TV appearances; this was the basis of Vestapol Videos, which edited and reissued this footage. It was a breakthrough for younger guitarists to be able to watch Big Bill Broonzy, Lightnin' Hopkins, Rev. Gary Davis and many others long after these players had died. Vestapol rapidly expanded to include concert footage from living artists too. Although originally issued as video tapes, almost all of this material (both instructional and concert) has in the last few years been re-issued on DVD. The Guitar Workshop mails worldwide from its bases in New Jersey and Yorkshire.
Much of the music which Grossman recorded on vinyl during his years in Europe has been reissued on CD, as have many of the Kicking Mule albums (although the vinyl LPs remain treasured collectors' items). One of the most significant recent CD reissues (2008) is of the original How To Play Blues Guitar LP from 1967, including outtakes and later recordings from subsequent editions of the album. The skills of the two young guitarists (Grossman was only 19 and Rory Block a mere 14 when the LP was recorded) remain remarkable after over forty years. The LP tracks are on the CD Country Blues Guitar: The Archival Recordings 1963-1971 (SGGW103) by Rory Block and Stefan Grossman.
Stefan Grossman resumed touring in 2006, since when he has appeared in Europe and Japan as well as the US. He is a frequent visitor to England (where he has family) and conducts well-attended guitar workshops as well as giving concerts. He remains a market leader in making instructional materials available in many formats, most recently online: the Guitar Workshop has its own YouTube channel where clients can sample the wares available. Music CDs and DVDs now come with a pdf file of the music and tablature instead of a booklet.
In 2008 C. F. Martin & Company
honoured Stefan Grossman with a Custom Edition guitar, the HJ-38 Stefan Grossman Custom Signature Edition, adding his name to an illustrious list of guitarists who have been so honoured.
OM-45 and a Martin HJ-38.
In the past, he has also played a Martin
OM-28, "Euphonon" and "Prairie State" guitars. He favours medium-gauge strings (.013, .017, .026, .036, .046, .056)
Stefan has worked with the Martin Guitar Company to produce a Stefan Grossman Signature Model guitar, based on a Jumbo size the guitar has 14 frets to the body, Madagascar Rosewood back and sides and Sitka spruce top. This guitar appears to be his guitar of choice in 2010 http://www.martinguitar.com/guitars/choosing/guitars.php?p=m&m=HJ-38%20Stefan%20Grossman
Early life and influences
Born in Brooklyn, New York, to Herbert and Ruth Grossman. Grossman described his upbringing, in QueensQueens
Queens is the easternmost of the five boroughs of New York City. The largest borough in area and the second-largest in population, it is coextensive with Queens County, an administrative division of New York state, in the United States....
, New York, as "lower middle-class", and his parents as "very leftist", valuing education and the arts. He began playing guitar at the age of nine, when his father bought him a Harmony
Harmony Company
thumb|right|250px|A collection of Harmony guitars:SS Stewart gold acoustic, H73 [[Roy Smeck]], H37 Hollywood, Silvertone 1446, H44 StratotoneThe Harmony Company was an American company that, in its heyday, was the largest musical instrument manufacturer in the USA...
f-hole
Sound hole
A sound hole is an opening in the upper sound board of a stringed musical instrument.The sound holes can have different shapes: round in flat-top guitars, F-holes in instruments from the violin or viol families and in arched-top guitars, rosettes in lutes. Bowed Lyras have D-holes and Mandolins may...
acoustic guitar. Later he moved on to an archtop
Archtop guitar
An archtop guitar is a steel-stringed acoustic or semi-acoustic guitar with a full body and a distinctive arched top, whose sound is particularly popular with blues and jazz players.Typically, an archtop guitar has:* 6 strings...
Gibson
Gibson Guitar Corporation
The Gibson Guitar Corporation, formerly of Kalamazoo, Michigan and currently of Nashville, Tennessee, manufactures guitars and other instruments which sell under a variety of brand names...
guitar which he played between the ages of nine and eleven, taking lessons and learning to read music. For a few years, he gave up playing but resumed again at the age of 15.
Grossman's interest in the Folk revival
American folk music revival
The American folk music revival was a phenomenon in the United States that began during the 1940s and peaked in popularity in the mid-1960s. Its roots went earlier, and performers like Josh White, Burl Ives, Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, Richard Dyer-Bennett, Oscar Brand, Jean Ritchie, John Jacob...
was sparked by attending the Washington Square Park "Hoots", and he started listening to old recordings of artists such as Elizabeth Cotten
Elizabeth Cotten
Elizabeth "Libba" Cotten was an American blues and folk musician, singer, and songwriter.A self-taught left-handed guitarist, Cotten developed her own original style. Her approach involved using a right-handed guitar , not re-strung for left-handed playing, essentially, holding a right-handed...
, Big Bill Broonzy
Big Bill Broonzy
Big Bill Broonzy was a prolific American blues singer, songwriter and guitarist. His career began in the 1920s when he played country blues to mostly black audiences. Through the ‘30s and ‘40s he successfully navigated a transition in style to a more urban blues sound popular with white audiences...
, Leadbelly
Leadbelly
Huddie William Ledbetter was an iconic American folk and blues musician, notable for his strong vocals, his virtuosity on the twelve-string guitar, and the songbook of folk standards he introduced....
, Josh White
Josh White
Joshua Daniel White , better known as Josh White, was an American singer, guitarist, songwriter, actor, and civil rights activist. He also recorded under the names "Pinewood Tom" and "Tippy Barton" in the 1930s....
, Lightnin' Hopkins
Lightnin' Hopkins
Sam John Hopkins better known as Lightnin’ Hopkins, was an American country blues singer, songwriter, guitarist and occasional pianist, from Houston, Texas...
, Rev. Gary Davis, Blind Willie Johnson
Blind Willie Johnson
"Blind" Willie Johnson was an American singer and guitarist, whose music straddled the border between blues and spirituals....
, Blind Boy Fuller
Blind Boy Fuller
Blind Boy Fuller was an American blues guitarist and vocalist. He was one of the most popular of the recorded Piedmont blues artists with rural Black Americans, a group that also included Blind Blake, Josh White, and Buddy Moss.-Life and career:Fulton Allen was born in Wadesboro, North Carolina,...
, Son House
Son House
Eddie James "Son" House, Jr. was an American blues singer and guitarist. House pioneered an innovative style featuring strong, repetitive rhythms, often played with the aid of slide guitar, and his singing often incorporated elements of southern gospel and spiritual music...
, Charlie Patton
Charlie Patton
Charlie Patton , better known as Charley Patton, was an American Delta blues musician. He is considered by many to be the "Father of the Delta Blues", and is credited with creating an enduring body of American music and personally inspiring just about every Delta blues man...
, 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....
, Blind Blake
Blind Blake
"Blind" Blake was an American blues and ragtime singer and guitarist.-Biography:...
, Blind Lemon Jefferson
Blind Lemon Jefferson
"Blind" Lemon Jefferson was an American blues singer and guitarist from Texas. He was one of the most popular blues singers of the 1920s, and has been titled "Father of the Texas Blues"....
and 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...
.
He took guitar lessons for several years from Rev. Gary Davis, whom he later described as "one of the greatest exponents of fingerstyle blues and gospel guitar playing" and "an incredible genius as a teacher". He spent countless hours learning and documenting Davis's music, recording much of it on a tape recorder, and developing a form of tablature
Tablature
Tablature is a form of musical notation indicating instrument fingering rather than musical pitches....
to take down his teacher's instructions.
In the folk and country blues revival of the 1960s he was listening to Broonzy, Brownie McGhee
Brownie McGhee
Walter Brown McGhee was a Piedmont blues singer and guitarist, best known for his collaborations with the harmonica player Sonny Terry.-Life and career:...
and Lightnin' Hopkins and beginning to collect old 78 rpm records from the 1920s and 1930s. This brought him into contact with other collectors, including 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...
, ED Denson, Bernie Klatzko, Tom Hoskins and Nick Perls. Collecting the 78s developed into searching for the artists who had recorded them, with many successes: during the mid-60s, Grossman met, befriended and studied guitar with Mississippi John Hurt
Mississippi John Hurt
John Smith Hurt, better known as Mississippi John Hurt was an American country blues singer and guitarist.Raised in Avalon, Mississippi, Hurt taught himself how to play the guitar around age nine...
, Son House
Son House
Eddie James "Son" House, Jr. was an American blues singer and guitarist. House pioneered an innovative style featuring strong, repetitive rhythms, often played with the aid of slide guitar, and his singing often incorporated elements of southern gospel and spiritual music...
, 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....
, Mississippi Fred McDowell
Mississippi Fred McDowell
Fred McDowell known by his stage name; Mississippi Fred McDowell, was an American Hill country blues singer and guitar player.-Career:...
and other major blues artists.
Early career
In 1964, Grossman and a group of friends formed the Even Dozen Jug BandEven Dozen Jug Band
The Even Dozen Jug Band was founded in 1963 by Stefan Grossman and Peter Siegel in New York City, New York...
. Although they only recorded one LP on the Elektra Records
Elektra Records
Elektra Records is an American record label owned by Warner Music Group. In 2004, it was consolidated into WMG's Atlantic Records Group. After five years of dormancy, the label was revived by Atlantic in 2009....
label (long since out of print but available at iTunes), other members were also to have successful musical careers, including David Grisman, Steve Katz (Blood, Sweat & Tears
Blood, Sweat & Tears
Blood, Sweat & Tears is an American music group, originally formed in 1967 in New York City. Since its beginnings in 1967, the band has gone through numerous iterations with varying personnel and has encompassed a multitude of musical styles...
), John Sebastian (The Lovin' Spoonful
The Lovin' Spoonful
The Lovin' Spoonful is an American pop rock band of the 1960s, named to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000. When asked about his band, leader John Sebastian said it sounded like a combination of "Mississippi John Hurt and Chuck Berry," prompting his friend, Fritz Richmond, to suggest the name...
), Joshua Rifkin and Maria Muldaur. In the early summer of 1966 there was an effort by Elektra’s Paul Rothchild to put together a folk rock group (like The Mamas & the Papas
The Mamas & the Papas
The Mamas & the Papas were a Canadian/American vocal group of the 1960s . The group recorded and performed from 1965 to 1968 with a short reunion in 1971, releasing five albums and 11 Top 40 hit singles...
) with Grossman, Taj Mahal
Taj Mahal (musician)
Henry Saint Clair Fredericks , who uses the stage name Taj Mahal, is an American Grammy Award winning blues musician. He incorporates elements of world music into his music...
, guitarist Steve Mann
Steve Mann
Steven Mann , is a tenured professor at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto.-Education:...
and a recently returned folk singer from Texas named 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...
. They actually had a rehearsal in Berkeley, sometime in June (Joplin’s first show with 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...
was at the Avalon Ballroom June 10, 1966, but she had been in the Bay Area for about 10 days). However, Janis would not abandon her new band and the deal was scuttled. Subsequently Grossman spent about three months with The Fugs
The Fugs
The Fugs are a band formed in New York in late 1964 by poets Ed Sanders and Tuli Kupferberg, with Ken Weaver on drums. Soon afterward, they were joined by Peter Stampfel and Steve Weber of the Holy Modal Rounders...
and a further four months with a band called Chicago Loop. At the same time, however, he was beginning his career as a guitar teacher. With his friend Rory Block
Rory Block
-Festival appearances:*Long Beach Blues Festival - 1993*San Francisco Blues Festival - 1999*Notodden Blues Festival - 2006-See also:*List of blues musicians*List of contemporary blues musicians*List of Austin City Limits performers-External links:****...
and also Mike Cooper, he produced and released one of the earliest (if not the very first) guitar instructional LPs, How To Play Blues Guitar and began the publication of a five volume series of instructional books with Oak Publications called the Oak Anthology of Blues Guitar. These drew on his studies with Rev. Davis and the other older blues artists and on his obsessive listening to old 78s. The Country Blues Guitar, Delta Blues, Texas Blues, Ragtime Blues Guitar and Rev. Gary Davis/Blues Guitar have remained in print through various editions. They were well received by other guitarists seeking to learn the various styles of acoustic blues.
In the mid 1960s, Stefan Grossman recorded a number of cuts for Joe Bussard
Joe Bussard
Joe Bussard is an American collector of 78-rpm records.Based in Frederick, Maryland, Bussard maintains a collection of more than 25,000 records, primarily of American folk, gospel, and blues from the 1920s and 1930s, believed to be the largest in the world.He was the subject of a documentary film,...
and his Frederick, Maryland based Fonotone Records and performed at the Jabberwock coffeehouse in Berkeley under the nom du folk of "Kid Future". The origins of the name Kid Future date back in the 1930s where there were a number of country blues artists called Willie Brown, the best known of these, and a friend of Son House
Son House
Eddie James "Son" House, Jr. was an American blues singer and guitarist. House pioneered an innovative style featuring strong, repetitive rhythms, often played with the aid of slide guitar, and his singing often incorporated elements of southern gospel and spiritual music...
, recorded a song called Future Blues, using an open G tuning. The song was considered very difficult to master and puzzled many experienced blues players but Grossman, when still in his teens, figured out how to play it. Given Bussard's penchant for creating noms de plume, as he did famously for 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...
when recording him as Blind Thomas in the 1950s, it seems likely that the origins of the name Kid Future lie in Federick, MD and a talented teenager who had mastered Future Blues. Grossman also played on Pat Kilroy's Light of Day album released in 1966.
In 1967, Grossman travelled to Europe as a first step on a planned journey to India which was not completed. In London he stayed at first with Eric Clapton
Eric Clapton
Eric Patrick Clapton, CBE, is an English guitarist and singer-songwriter. Clapton is the only three-time inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: once as a solo artist, and separately as a member of The Yardbirds and Cream. Clapton has been referred to as one of the most important and...
whom he had met whilst in Chicago Loop and met guitarists and singers on the British folk scene including Bert Jansch
Bert Jansch
Herbert "Bert" Jansch was a Scottish folk musician and founding member of the band Pentangle. He was born in Glasgow and came to prominence in London in the 1960s, as an acoustic guitarist, as well as a singer-songwriter...
, John Renbourn
John Renbourn
John Renbourn is an English guitarist and songwriter. He is possibly best known for his collaboration with guitarist Bert Jansch as well as his work with the folk group Pentangle, although he maintained a solo career before, during and after that band's existence .While most commonly labelled a...
, Davy Graham and Ralph McTell
Ralph McTell
Ralph McTell is an English singer-songwriter and acoustic guitar player who has been an influential figure on the UK folk music scene since the 1960s....
and The Young Tradition
The Young Tradition
The Young Tradition were a British folk group of the 1960s, formed by Peter Bellamy, Royston Wood and Heather Wood. They recorded three albums of mainly traditional British folk music, sung in arrangements for their three unaccompanied voices.-Biography:...
. He began playing in folk clubs around the country and made his first solo recordings for the Philips/Fontana label (Aunt Molly's Murray Farm and The Gramercy Park Sheikh) and then for Nathan Joseph's Transatlantic
Transatlantic Records
Transatlantic Records was a British independent record label. It was established in 1961. It started began primarily as an importer of American folk, blues and jazz records - by many of the artists who influenced the burgeoning British folk and blues boom. Within a couple of years, the company had...
label, including Yazoo Basin Boogie and Ragtime Cowboy Jew (see discography). He also traveled widely in Europe and eventually settled in Italy, where he lived for seven years. Travelling around Europe for gigs brought him into contact with many other fine guitarists, but few of them had record deals; Grossman saw a niche in the market for solo acoustic guitar records which were accompanied by a tablature book to allow the buyer to try playing the arrangements and, with his friend Ed Denson taking care of the US side of business, founded Kicking Mule Records. Over the next few years KM released albums by such artists as John James, Happy Traum
Happy Traum
Happy Traum is an American folk musician who started playing music in the Fifties. Happy is most famously known as one half of Happy and Artie Traum, a duo he began with his brother...
, Ton van Bergeyk, Dave Evans, Peter Finger and the late Sam Mitchell. Grossman also released his own original and instructional albums on KM, the latter including seminal works such as Fingerpicking Guitar Techniques, How To Play Ragtime Guitar and Famous Ragtime Guitar Solos which had a major influence on acoustic guitarists in Europe, the UK and the US. During these years Grossman was also touring as a solo artist and in partnership with John Renbourn and continuing to write and publish instructional books, often accompanied by the then new technology of a cassette tape.
Later career
In 1987 Grossman returned to live in the US. He toured much less - at least partly due to a painful back problem - and began to consolidate his various teaching and instructional materials under the roof of one company, Stefan Grossman's Guitar Workshop, working at first in cooperation with the Shanachie Records company . He was quick to see the potential of video as well as audio as an instructional tool: budding players could buy an instructional tape for the cost of a single 'real' lesson and have it constantly available. The material which had appeared on LPs such as How To Play Blues Guitar now became available to watch as well as hear. Nor was Grossman the only instructor: the Guitar Workshop 'faculty' included such artists as Chet Atkins, John Renbourn, Woody Mann, Ari Eisinger, John Miller, Larry Coryell, David Laibman, Ernie Hawkins and many others.Grossman also began to acquire concert footage of the old blues and country artists who had been rediscovered in the 1960s and had often made TV appearances; this was the basis of Vestapol Videos, which edited and reissued this footage. It was a breakthrough for younger guitarists to be able to watch Big Bill Broonzy, Lightnin' Hopkins, Rev. Gary Davis and many others long after these players had died. Vestapol rapidly expanded to include concert footage from living artists too. Although originally issued as video tapes, almost all of this material (both instructional and concert) has in the last few years been re-issued on DVD. The Guitar Workshop mails worldwide from its bases in New Jersey and Yorkshire.
Much of the music which Grossman recorded on vinyl during his years in Europe has been reissued on CD, as have many of the Kicking Mule albums (although the vinyl LPs remain treasured collectors' items). One of the most significant recent CD reissues (2008) is of the original How To Play Blues Guitar LP from 1967, including outtakes and later recordings from subsequent editions of the album. The skills of the two young guitarists (Grossman was only 19 and Rory Block a mere 14 when the LP was recorded) remain remarkable after over forty years. The LP tracks are on the CD Country Blues Guitar: The Archival Recordings 1963-1971 (SGGW103) by Rory Block and Stefan Grossman.
Stefan Grossman resumed touring in 2006, since when he has appeared in Europe and Japan as well as the US. He is a frequent visitor to England (where he has family) and conducts well-attended guitar workshops as well as giving concerts. He remains a market leader in making instructional materials available in many formats, most recently online: the Guitar Workshop has its own YouTube channel where clients can sample the wares available. Music CDs and DVDs now come with a pdf file of the music and tablature instead of a booklet.
In 2008 C. F. Martin & Company
C. F. Martin & Company
C.F. Martin & Company is a US guitar manufacturer established in 1833 by Christian Frederick Martin. Martin is highly regarded for its steel-string guitars, and is a leading mass manufacturer of flattop acoustics with models that retail for thousands of dollars and vintage instruments that often...
honoured Stefan Grossman with a Custom Edition guitar, the HJ-38 Stefan Grossman Custom Signature Edition, adding his name to an illustrious list of guitarists who have been so honoured.
Guitars and guitar playing
Grossman's principal (acoustic) guitars are a 1930 MartinC. F. Martin & Company
C.F. Martin & Company is a US guitar manufacturer established in 1833 by Christian Frederick Martin. Martin is highly regarded for its steel-string guitars, and is a leading mass manufacturer of flattop acoustics with models that retail for thousands of dollars and vintage instruments that often...
OM-45 and a Martin HJ-38.
In the past, he has also played a Martin
C. F. Martin & Company
C.F. Martin & Company is a US guitar manufacturer established in 1833 by Christian Frederick Martin. Martin is highly regarded for its steel-string guitars, and is a leading mass manufacturer of flattop acoustics with models that retail for thousands of dollars and vintage instruments that often...
OM-28, "Euphonon" and "Prairie State" guitars. He favours medium-gauge strings (.013, .017, .026, .036, .046, .056)
Stefan has worked with the Martin Guitar Company to produce a Stefan Grossman Signature Model guitar, based on a Jumbo size the guitar has 14 frets to the body, Madagascar Rosewood back and sides and Sitka spruce top. This guitar appears to be his guitar of choice in 2010 http://www.martinguitar.com/guitars/choosing/guitars.php?p=m&m=HJ-38%20Stefan%20Grossman
Music books edited by Stefan Grossman
- Contemporary Fingerpicking Guitar Workshop (Almo Pubs, 1981).
- Fingerpicking Guitar Styles (Oak Pubs, 1991).
- Grossman, Stefan & Fuller, Blind Boy Stefan Grossman's early masters of American blues guitar: Blind Boy Fuller Alfred Publishing, 1993 ISBN 0739043315, 9780739043318 at Google Books