Nearly 25 years since his death, songwriter/performer/banjoist/steamboat pilot John Hartford is thoughtfully and candidly remembered in a new book by his friend and bandmate Bob Carlin.
My Memories of John Hartford is a revealing portrait of a multi-dimensional man who wrote “Gentle on My Mind,” one of the most recorded songs of all time.
“When I began working alongside John Hartford, I thought I knew something about music and performing,” writes Carlin, who’s well known for his clawhammer banjo playing and vast knowledge of the instrument’s complex history. “It turned out that I only knew a fraction of what I was about to learn in his music workshop. I came out the other end a much better entertainer and performer than before my experience with John.”
Their first meeting came in 1985 when Carlin interviewed Hartford for NPR's Fresh Air. By then, Hartford, who was raised in St. Louis and had become enthralled with Earl Scruggs's banjo and Benny Martin’s fiddle, was a star, thanks to “Gentle on My Mind” and his appearances on television shows such as The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. As Carlin writes in the book, though, Hartford had relocated from Hollywood to Nashville and had re-imagined himself.
“He had successfully transitioned from sensitive singer-songwriter in the mid-1960s to late 1960s folk-rocker to newgrass band leader in the early 1970s and, for the remainder of the 1970s, an electrified wide-eyed hippie prankster. Finally, for his middle age during the 1980s, John distanced himself from these prior images to become a Victorian riverboat pilot.”
Though Carlin was not a bluegrass banjo player--his clawhammer style predates the genre and has roots in string band music and minstrel shows--Hartford hired him to play in his band. A friendship grew out of their working relationship. Though he didn’t know Hartford in his Hollywood days, Carlin has insight into those years.
“He had a lot of these sayings that he would use a lot,” Carlin remembers “And one of them was, ‘I'm really glad you didn't know me back then. I was a real son of a bitch.’ And the other was, ‘You spend the second half of your life apologizing for the first half.’
Carlin writes that a diagnosis of and recovery from cancer during that time contributed to Hartford’s transformation, professionally and personally. Despite its success, Hollywood has faced frustrations.
“I think he was getting a little fed up with people in Hollywood. His managers were trying to make him into something he wasn't. They saw him more as an actor, as a character in, like a detective series. Like a Columbo. He didn't see himself that way.”
My Memories of John Hartford explores the many facets of Hartford’s life: piloting steamboats; a rigorous and disciplined approach to songwriting; countless appearances at clubs, festivals, and on TV; jams that had his Cumberland River house nearly bursting at the seams; road life in a bus with intractable mechanical issues; and his obsession with the fiddle that consumed his later years. Carlin witnessed much of it, including Hartford’s decline, when the cancer returned.
Savage as it was, it couldn’t keep Hartford from playing his unique music on stages across the country to adoring fans. And working with Hartford, Carlin saw an artist who always followed his passions.
“Don’t get famous doing something you don’t want to do,” Hartford is quoted as saying in the very first words of the book. “I do what’s in my heart, and if that works, that’s great. If it doesn’t work, I haven’t wasted my time. If I didn’t do what was in my heart, the worst thing that would happen is that I’d be successful, and I’d have to do it again. It would be awful to be successful at something that I didn’t enjoy doing.”
In the final years of his life, Hartford’s heart led him to the fiddle music of Ed Haley.
“And he didn't care if it was commercially viable or not,” Carlin explains. “That's what he wanted to be doing. I think at that point in time, he was aware that his days were numbered. The cancer was starting to catch up with him. He loved this particular fiddle music, and he wanted to figure out a way to make it sellable to the American public. And in many ways, he succeeded through the strength of his celebrity, convincing people they should hear it. And, if I may be egotistical and self-centered, I think he put a damn good band together to do it.”
As a member of that band who, over time, practically assumed the role of road manager, Carlin’s unique perspective enables him to write an illuminating account of one of bluegrass music’s most creative, enigmatic, and beloved artists.
“The main thing I started out to do was create an appreciation of John Hartford. And I show he's human because I talk about some of his flaws as well. But I just want to give the fans an inside view of what it was like and what was going on, at least in that latter part of his life.”