Posted by Robert Damora on September 26, 102 at 12:21:40:
While reading the John Hartford website, I was moved by the words that many have written about Mr. Hartford, and the contribution he made to everybody's piece of mind.
As a 48 year old former music critic and feature writer, I can easily go back to those days in New Jersey and New York where I saw Hartford play to small and intimate crowds following the release of his Aereo-plane album; an album that might have set mainstream bluegrass music's compass to a different direction. Hartford was a truely creative force in the recording industry. He was substance over style - the bluegrass equivalent to the Grateful Dead.
Every once in a while, a talent comes along and makes a unique impact on a commercial recording industry. That talent was John Hartford. He took timely issues and reflected on those issues in poetic verse. As a master poet, he could easily articulate the beauty of love and the horrors of war. Not even the most skilled politican's oratorical abilities could hold a candle to Hartford's deft command of words.
No to sound to retorical, but in a world long filled with mass-produced musical pabulum directed to those who can't distinguish between good taste and bad taste, Hartford music was an oasis.
Maybe if President George Bush listened to John Hartford, the would rethink his warhawk position.