|
|
|
|
|
|
||
| Alvin Youngblood Hart | |||||
Bluesman still remembers "Big Mama's Door"Alvin Youngblood Hart was born Gregory E. Hart in Oakland, California on March 2, 1963. (The "Alvin," believe it or not, comes from the Alvin of the Chipmuks - a favorite cartoon character of the singer's youth. As a child, he accompanied his parents on visits to his maternal grandparents' home in the Mississippi hills. "When I visited Mississippi as a boy, I saw people living in the 19th century," Alvin recalls. "My grandma had neither indoor plumbing or a phone - people were still driving horse-drawn wagons there. Part of what I'm trying to communicate is that I did see the people who invented this music."In addition to his talents as a songwriter and instrumentalist, Alvin is a skilled guitar craftsman and repairman (as is his wife). He has often bought badly damaged or unplayable instruments from the '20s, '30s and '40s, and put them back into playable condition. On his CD BIG MAMA'S DOOR, Alvin plays a National brass-bodied guitar and a wooden National guitar with aluminum resonator; a pre-war Regal 12-string guitar; a Stella 6-string guitar ("a very old guitar from the mid-'30s that I'd worked on"), and a Regal 4-string tenor guitar. |
|||||
|
|||||