In my hometown back in the late 1980s, the place to be on a weekend night was at Mishawaka, IN’s Center Street Blues Café.  With the club’s proximity of only 90 miles east of Chicago, the city’s blues greats and up-and-comers regularly played the club.  Plus, due to the club not only offering blues on the weekend, but featuring it on Wednesday nights, as well, national blues touring acts were also frequently performing there.  Simply, for a blues fan, the Center Street Blues Café was the place to be.

Truly, I can’t remember if it was a Friday or Saturday evening at the club in the last 1980s, but something really special was going to take place.  As enamored as we all were with the Chicago blues stars and national blues performers who presented their brand of blues at the Center Street Blues Café, from time to time, a blues luminary would appear at the club who caused huge excitement among the regular patrons; the true blues fans.  Such was the case when John Hammond appeared for a weekend performance.

Typically, my friends and I occupied a table on the club’s main floor, center stage, toward the back of the room, perhaps 15’ from the stage.  This was our table, and it was the table that offered the best sightline of the stage, and the club overall; a sort of VIP area, if you will, where the real blues fans met, and long-running conversations could continue without others intercepting our spoken subject matter.

But on this night, I was distracted.  To our table’s right was a bank of booths where Hammond and an acquaintance of his were sitting.  I kept glancing his way, because the blues lore of Hammond was well-known to me, and on some level, I correctly felt like blues royalty was in the house.  Resplendent in a grey suit, Hammond even looked the part of a true celebrity.  He was to perform entirely acoustic this evening, and the club was still at capacity; this would normally be a rowdy crowd seeking electric blues.  Word had gotten out that Hammond was in our town, and genuine blues fans from the greater broader area of St. Joseph County came out to witness his blues.

At one point I needed to go to the club’s bar that was located in a different room from the performing area, and as I passed Hammond’s booth, I offered my appreciation for him being in our town.  He afforded me a polite “thank you” as we made eye contact, and I remain, to this day, grateful for that brief exchange.

Needless to say, Hammond put on a blues clinic with only his resonator style guitar (a Reso-Phonic model, I believe), his harmonica that was affixed to a harmonica rack, and his voice.  His broad-spectrum show took all of us at the club on a time capsule journey through his multitude of blues influences.  Hammond’s show was so different from what we usually experienced at the club, when blues artists and bands would plug-in, turn-up the amplifiers, and satisfy our need for the electric blues.  Not Hammond; his nuances and gradations of acoustic blues were richly satisfying, and remain a distinct highlight of the club’s broad series of blues shows.

John Hammond, who was born in New York City, comes from a musical pedigree, his father having been the John Hammond, Sr. who was the talent scout for Columbia Records.  However, Hammond was not nurtured by his father; his parents broke-up when he was young.  Hammond began his journey into the blues by beginning to play the guitar while in high school, at which time he fell under the sway of the slide guitar sound.  A defining moment for Hammond was when he had the opportunity to catch bluesman Jimmy Reed play at Harlem’s Apollo Theater on 125^th St.  It is said that this experience was the one that cemented Hammond to a blues life.

Hammond only attended a year of college in OH, after which he chose to make his mark upon the world as a blues artist.  This period, 1962, was one where young aspiring performers of all genres were playing the various coffeehouses, and through this route, he began to ply his trade in the character of the country blues masters that he venerated.  Hammond’s blues wheelhouse was the country blues of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, and the solo nature of the blues of these periods ideally suited his desires and capabilities. 

1963 was a monumental year for Hammond.  His first self-titled Vanguard label album was released.  The 13 tracks were textbook examples of Delta and East Coast blues from Hammond’s wide-ranging inspirations; he has many, including Reverend Gary Davis, Skip James, and Robert Johnson, among so many others.  Hammond recorded and released five albums for Vanguard through 1967 (including two in 1965).  At this time, a blues album from a white artist was very rare, to be sure.  

A chance encounter in 1966 saw Hammond, in some respects, steering a young Jimi Hendrix toward a gentleman, Chas Chandler, who was instrumental in getting Hendrix his freshman recording contract.  Hendrix had been passing through New York seeking work, and because the more subdued coffeehouse performance route was somewhat winding-down, Hammond assembled a band for Hendrix, finding work for group (which included himself) at various New York venues, including the famous Café Au Go Go.  A side note: Hammond worked one special show at the Gaslight Café in New York that included both Hendrix and Clapton in the same band.

Additional albums followed in 1967, 1968, and 1970 on the Atlantic label.

Hendrix and Clapton were not to be the only electric blues-based musician Hammond would make acquaintance with and perform alongside, with Duane Allman, Mike Bloomfield, Levon Helm and his band (named the New Hawks at the time – a band that also included Robbie Robertson that would go on to great fame as The Band), and New Orleans’ Dr. John.  Throughout the later part of the 1960s and into the early 1970s, Hammond continued his work in electric outfits.

However, due to his primary over-arching dedication and consistency of performing acoustically, and in essence, keeping alive traditional blues songs, Hammond was bestowed the highest regards from blues and blues rock luminaries such as John Lee Hooker, Charlie Musselwhite, Rory Gallagher, Roosevelt Sykes, among others.  It is important to note that Hammond was not known for his song writing mastery; hence, his interpretations of established tunes were his specialty.  Hammond’s blues work has served the purpose, due to his faithful dedication to classic blues songs, of guiding audiences toward the original versions of his performed songs, opening their ears to the early blues practitioners and their compositions. 

Hammond hooked-up with Columbia Records in 1971, releasing four albums through 1973 (two alone in 1971).  Following that series of releases, he recorded a total of 23 additional albums for labels including Capricorn, Vanguard (again), Rounder, Pointblank, Flying Fish, Biograph, Back Porch, and MIG, among others.  In total, Hammond has released 35 collections to-date. 

Hammond did win a Grammy Award in 1985 for Best Traditional Blues Recording for his collection entitled Blues Explosion.  He has been nominated a total of seven time for his work, the first time being in 1985, with nominations also occurring in 1993, 1995, 1997, 1999, 2006, and 2010. 

Hammond was inducted into the Blues Hall Of Fame in 2010.

For one evening so many years ago, Hammond provided a rapt Mishawaka, IN audience passage through his wide-ranging blues background.  Simply, it was Hammond, his guitar, and his harmonica.  Hammond held court with a style of blues that was not the sort club patrons were used to hearing on a weekend night.  We all walked away with a greater appreciation for both acoustic blues and John Hammond.