Hart, Alvin Youngblood

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Hart, Alvin Youngblood

1963—

Musician

Steeped in the acoustic blues tradition of his Mississippi ancestors, guitarist and singer Alvin Youngblood Hart has earned both critical and popular acclaim. His songs honor the blues heritage of such seminal figures as Leadbelly and Robert Johnson, but also incorporate more eclectic influences such as western swing, Jamaican ska, funk, jazz, and acid rock. Hart explained his wide-ranging musical tastes to Scott Barretta in Jefferson Blues Magazine, saying "I just want to hear it played good, white or black…I'm to the point of Gatemouth Brown, he says ‘I don't play the blues, I play music.’ I might play the blues here for five minutes, but then I might play something else, a Mexican polka. I'm just trying to play music, call it songster if you want. Like I'm up there with my wife, working on some gypsy song. I don't know what it's about, but it sounds pretty sad and bluesy to me." His taste appeals to audiences throughout the United States and Europe, where he tours extensively.

Gregory Edward Hart, who adopted the nickname Alvin from the television cartoon series Alvin and the Chipmunks, was born in 1963 in Oakland, California, where he spent his early childhood. Later, the family moved to Los Angeles, California, near Columbus, Ohio, and finally to Chicago, Illinois. Like many young people of his generation, Hart loved the music of Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, and Frank Zappa. But at home he also heard the more traditional music of rural Mississippi, from which his family had come. In an interview with Renee Montagne on National Public Radio's Morning Edition, quoted in Contemporary Musicians, Hart observed that "I just came upon the blues, what, just hearing it every day in the house." He also heard this music during family vacations to Mississippi, which immediately felt like home to him. "So much of myself goes back so far there," he said in remarks quoted on the Rykodisc Web site. "It's important to me to hold on to a little bit of something from the different cultures that evolved in the area from which I evolved." Music, he added, is "perhaps the easiest part of it. It's a thread I can bring forward."

Hart taught himself to play guitar at age 14 and was soon jamming with garage bands around his Chicago neighborhood. After graduating from high school, he moved to Los Angeles with the hope of starting a career as professional musician. Though it was difficult to break into the music business there, he did find work with various bands, playing everything from Hank Williams tunes to the music of Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters. In 1986 Hart joined the U.S. Coast Guard. He was stationed for a period on a riverboat in Natchez, Mississippi, where he enjoyed going to local music clubs. Soon he was playing for tips, or sitting in with whatever band was booked for the weekend.

Hart was later posted to Bolinas, California, in the San Francisco Bay area. Here he found even more musical success. In 1990 he opened at several local engagements for bluesman Joe Louis Walker, and in 1991 he played at the San Francisco Blues Festival. Hart was also making a name for himself restoring old instruments. As his appreciation of traditional blues music deepened, he explained to Andy Ellis in Guitar Player, he wanted to "play the instruments those guys were playing—mostly mail-order guitars that had fallen apart over the years." With his Coast Guard training in electronics, he also became interested in repairing and customizing amplifiers. As he commented to Ellis, "I fix a lot of my amps—I know enough to be dangerous."

In 1996 Hart released his first album, Big Mama's Door, the title song of which refers to the singer's Mississippi grandmother. The album received five W.C. Handy award nominations and earned Hart the honor of best new artist of the year. His second album, Territory, was similarly well received. Both Downbeat magazine and Living Blues magazine named it best blues album of the year, and it also received Living Blues's critics' award for best traditional/acoustic blues album. Critics expressed admiration for Hart's playing and singing, and for his personal engagement with his material. As Michael Point observed in a Downbeat piece, quoted in Contemporary Musicians, "Hart cuts straight through the soul of the music."

Start with the Soul, Hart's third solo album, featured more electrified music than his previous recordings. In fact, Hart dedicated the album to, among others, the late Phil Lynott of the Irish hard-rock band Thin Lizzy. Critics appreciated the influence of soul, country, and hard rock in Start with the Soul; indeed, Boston Globe reviewer Jonathan Perry admiringly described Hart's guitar work on the cut "Electric Eel" as "Link Wray-meets-Jimi Hendrix." In an All Music review quoted on the Rykodisc Web site, Al Campbell praised Hart for expanding his repertoire in a way that remained authentic to his musical roots.

Hart won a Grammy Award in 2005 for Beautiful Dreamer: The Songs of Stephen Foster, a tribute album to which he contributed the track "Nelly Was a Lady." Foster, who wrote such iconic American songs as "Oh! Susannah" and "Old Folks at Home (Swanee River)," was "the very first American songwriter," according to the album's executive producer, Tamara Saviano, quoted in a Boston Globe article by Devra First. Though Saviano acknowledged that, by twenty-first century standards, some of Foster's work appears racist, the composer held relatively progressive views for his time. "I think [Foster] represented his time well musically," Hart told First. "We make a big deal out of [the racial issues] now. We have a tendency to go overboard with that kind of stuff."

Like Hart's earlier recordings, his fifth solo album, Motivational Speaker, elicited rave reviews. Village Voice Online writer George Smith hailed Hart's "golden vibe" and declared that the album was worth of the "Congressional Medal of Honor for Satisfying Hard Rock." Jon Young, in Mother Jones, called the album "irresistible."

Hart has performed in venues across the United States as well as in Europe. He opened for Taj Mahal at Yoshi's in Oakland in 1995; he has also played with the Allman Brothers Band, Neil Young, Los Lobos, Ben Harper, Buddy Guy, and John Lee Hooker. He contributed two tracks to Paint it Blue, a Rolling Stones tribute album. In 2006 he provided musical support to Samuel L. Jackson in his role as a blues musician in the film Black Snake Moan.

Selected works

Albums

Big Mama's Door, Okeh/Sony, 1996.

(With others) Paint It Blue: Songs of the Rolling Stones, House of Blues, 1997.

Territory, Hannibal/Rykodisc, 1998.

(With others) Every Road I Take: The Best of Contemporary Acoustic Blues, Shanachie, 1999.

Start with the Soul, Hannibal/Rykodisc, 2000.

Down in the Alley, Memphis International Records, 2002.

(With others), Beautiful Dreamer: The Songs of Stephen Foster, American Roots, 2004.

Motivational Speaker, Tone-Cool/Artemis, 2005.

(With others) Secondhand Smoke: A Tribute to Frank Marino, WildMess Records, 2005.

At a Glance …

Born Gregory Edward Hart on March 2, 1963, in Oakland, CA; married Heidi Hart; children: one son.

Career:

U.S. Coast Guard, seaman and electronics technician, 1986-1993; musician, 1980s-.

Awards:

W.C. Handy Award, the Blues Foundation, for best new artist, 1997; Downbeat magazine award for best blues album, Territory, 1999; New York Times Top Ten Releases, and BBC Blues Record of the Year, for Soul, 2000; Grammy award, Traditional Folk Album, for contribution to Beautiful Dreamer: The Songs of Stephen Foster, 2005.