Stefan Grossman Stefan Grossman - Stefan Grossman's Guitar ...

A
s Stefan Grossman sits at his computer proudly
sharing digitally remastered tracks of Rev. Gary
Davis playing, singing and preaching from 1962,
a sense of nostalgia emanates from his face.
Stefan first recorded Rev. Davis almost 50 years ago
with an old reel-to-reel tape deck beside the stage at Gerdes Folk
City in Greenwich Village; in 2008, he put out a remastered three-CD
set of those concerts. And he recently brought a second volume (At
Home and Church) of the legendary black blues guitarist into the digital
age. This is perhaps Stefan’s most important project: preserving the
music of Rev. Davis, his early mentor, for the masses. And, yes, there are
masses of would-be guitarists and southern blues fans – one need look no
further than the number of hits on Grossman’s website or the number of
subscribers to his YouTube channel to see that.
Stefan Grossman is a musical Renaissance man. He’s not the most famous
musician, in the traditional sense of that phrase, but he’s one of the finest
guitar players in the world and has been for four decades: 20 years in
Europe during which he became a fixture on the British music scene,
then back in America for the last 22 years, where he has become one of
the primary resources for the dissemination of underappreciated guitar
styles. Grossman may well be the world’s foremost authority on American
southern blues music and how to play it. Such a title covers a lot of
territory. Today, he is a musician, a performer, a recording artist, a
visual artist, a writer, a teacher, a producer and a businessman.
Stefan Grossman was born in 1945 and grew up in Brooklyn,
N.Y. He didn’t take to the guitar right away, but around age
15, his obsession started. “It was a combination of puberty, shyness,
an attraction to the music and the realization that if you
played music and had a party it was an easier way to meet girls,”
he offered with a twinkle.
During our conversation, Stefan recalled some of his most
memorable onstage appearances: at Hyde Park in England with
Pink Floyd; at Carnegie Hall with the Even Dozen Jug Band;
in Bologna, Italy, with Mike Bloomfield; and at the Great
American Music Hall in San Francisco with John
Renbourn. But it all began in the early 1960s, on Sunday
afternoons in Washington Square Park in Greenwich
Village, where Grossman was one of countless
musicians vying for the eyes and ears of spectators, passersby
and one another. Out of that experience grew the
Even Dozen Jug Band, an eclectic group of iconoclasts
that “ended up playing concerts and making a record. We
played Carnegie Hall twice, Johnny Carson, the Hootenanny
show ... and then we broke up because we were all students,”
Grossman recalled. “It lasted just about a year.” The loosely
knit ensemble included John Sebastian, Maria D’Amato
(Muldaur), Joshua Rifkin, David Grisman and Steve Katz.
After the jug band, Grossman played briefly with two electric
groups – The Fugs and Chicago Loop – and signed in 1966 to play
in a band with Janis Joplin and Taj Mahal. But when both backed
out, Stefan headed for Europe, where there was no shortage of places
to stay and jam for a virtuoso blues guitarist. One of those places was
Eric Clapton’s house. “I was pretty close with all the guys in the Cream,”
he said, referring to Clapton, Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce. For Grossman,
it was the start of a unique career that, then and now, defies categorization.
Vol. 53 #4 • Sing Out! 53